By Lisa Fernandez
lfernandez@mercurynews.com
Posted: 12/24/2009 05:43:05 PM PST
Updated: 12/24/2009 06:15:00 PM PST
Days before her first Christmas alone, Abha Appu finally found the courage to thank her "angel.''
For nine months, she didn't know her angel's name, and had no idea if she'd recognize her. The fair-haired woman had appeared in Appu's darkest moment, holding her, imploring her to "Stay with me!'' as Appu lay bleeding from a spray of gunshot wounds in front of her new Santa Clara townhome.
In an unexplainable burst of violence, Appu's husband had turned an uneventful Sunday family dinner in March into one of Santa Clara's deadliest nights ever, wounding his wife and killing five relatives, including their two young children, before killing himself.
Appu had been tempted for months to look up the woman who risked her own life by comforting her during the excruciating wait for paramedics.
And on the day before Christmas Eve, Appu's "angel'' knocked on her door.
Cheryl Abbate entered the tiny Cupertino apartment with a bouquet of flowers and a police chaplain she brought along for support.
"It's good to see you,'' she whispered into Appu's ear. She stroked Appu's long black hair. She dabbed away tears. "You look good.''
"All my family members are so grateful to you, Cheryl,'' Appu said, as her mother, Devaky Appu, who flew in from India to care for her, sat silently nearby.
Earlier this week, Appu, 35, had called the Mercury News seeking help in finding the woman who helped save her. It felt right, she said, because
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it's Christmas. Even though she is Hindu, she celebrated the holiday last year with a plastic tree and a cake she baked with her 11-year-old son Akhil Dev, one of the victims in the March 29 shootings.
For months, Appu had thought about driving back to the townhome complex and knocking on Abbate's front door. But she couldn't go back. She's still plagued with nightmares of hit men chasing her.
Abbate, too, gets emotional when she glances next door.
"Time is healing the wounds," Abbate said. "But that night, the door was still hanging open, and I didn't realize her husband had killed himself. I thought he might be coming out.''
Until she was contacted by the Mercury News this week, Abbate had been uncertain about meeting Appu.
"Is she even grateful to be alive?'' Abbate said she asked herself. "I keep wondering if I did a good thing.''
They had been next-door neighbors for all of four days. Abbate, a 40-year-old office manager with two children of her own, remembers greeting Appu and her husband Devan Kalathat, a Yahoo web analytics engineer, unpacking in the garage. Appu's husband had announced only days before that the family would be moving from their Sunnyvale apartment to the larger, upscale Rivermark townhome on Headen Way.
The women's next encounter began when Abbate's son heard popping noises. She rushed outside and found Appu on the sidewalk. She comforted her and called 9-1-1. Appu still remembers the woman telling her to "hold on honey, hold on.'' At first, Abbate thought Appu had simply fallen.
But suddenly, Abbate's tone grew desperate with dispatchers: "She says her husband shot everybody.''
To this day, Appu has no idea why. She had never spoken publicly about the shootings before this week. Nothing seemed unsual when her brother and sister-in-law and their 11-month-old daughter came over for dinner that night. They had finished a home cooked meal of chicken and curried rice when Kalathat retreated upstairs. When he returned, he was brandishing two .45-caliber handguns; one he had bought six weeks before, the other a week before.
"I just remember his face,'' Appu said, her mouth breaking into a strangely beautiful smile that masks her pain. "He had no emotion. Like a robot. I kept thinking, No one knows where I'm living now. How can I reach my parents and tell them?"
She was shot six times in the abdomen and also in the left arm and spent 15 days in a coma. A fifth surgery is planned to repair her instestinal organs. Her hand still tingles and aches nonstop.
The couple's son and 4-year-old daughter, Negha, were among the dead. Kalathat also gunned down Appu's brother, Ashok Appu Poothemkandi, 35, an HP employee from Bangalore living in Fremont; his wife, Suchitra Sivaraman, 25, and their daughter, Ahana.
During Kalathat's autopsy, medical examiners discovered a benign tumor at the base of his skull, which isn't necessary fatal but can cause headaches. Appu knew nothing about it. She wonders, if that may have triggered the bloodbath.
"He was a perfectionist,'' she said of the man she had wed in an arranged marriage in their home state of Kerala in 1995, the same year they moved to the United States. "If he had a hair out of place, he got very, very worried. If he got sick, he'd get very concerned, like he was going to die.''
But only later did she discover that five days before the killings, Kalathat, 42, had sent checks totalling $500,000 to his five siblings in India. When she has the strength, Appu hopes to recover that money with legal help.
While her family encourages her to move back to India, she said she can't bear to return and face the questions. Instead, she has moved to Cupertino and is slowly making a strong circle of friends. And finding her angel.
A lot was left unasked and unspoken at the brief meeting this week with Abbate. How do you ask a near stranger what really happened that night? Or if you're really happy to be alive? Abbate sat quietly on the couch, not wanting to pry.
It was Pastor Ryan Wright who helped with the awkward moments. He asked Appu about her physical well-being and told her that "this was not God's plan.''
Wright volunteers with Santa Clara police as a chaplain and ended up counseling officers as well as Abbate the night of the shootings. She has since become a member of the congregation he leads at Community Church of Santa Clara.
"God would tell you, I'm so sorry,'' Wright offered to Appu. "But he'd tell you you're not abandoned either. There is still good for you. There's no place so bad that God can't redeem it. I hope that you find that healing.''
Before they said goodbye, Appu handed Abbate a bag. It was filled with chocolate, a note and a gold heart pendant with diamonds.
"Without you,'' she told her, "I wouldn't have survived.''
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