MIDLAND, Texas — The 18-month old girl pulled from a backyard well two decades ago is now a young wife and mother — one waiting to collect donations given to her during her ordeal that are expected to total $1 million or more.
The anniversary of Jessica McClure's rescue passed Tuesday like almost every other day in her 21-year-old life, with no public comment from her about the event that once captivated viewers around the world.
She is living quietly in this West Texas oil patch city, the same one where she fell into the backyard well.
"Jessica's just been a wonderful, wonderful mother," said her father, Chip McClure. "That's always been Jessica's dream, to be a stay-at-home mom."
In 3 1/2 years, however, her quiet existence might change when all the donations sent to her when she was a baby mature into a payment of $1 million or more.
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Many of the sympathetic strangers who remained glued to television coverage until Jessica was freed from 22 feet below the ground showered her family with teddy bears, homemade gifts, cards and cash. It will remain in a trust fund until she turns 25.
Her father says Jessica is a happy and active woman, and doing "all the normal stuff" with her year-old son, Simon.
A woman who answered the phone at a listing for Jessica McClure's husband, Daniel Morales, identified herself as Jessica but told an Associated Press reporter she had reached a wrong number.
Richardo Morales, Simon's uncle, said Jessica has talked about the windfall and has plans "to put it into a fund for Simon."
In 1987, Chip and Cissy McClure were poor teenagers struggling to make ends meet during the depths of the oil bust. Cissy McClure left Jessica in her sister's yard while she went to answer the phone. Moments later, Jessica happened upon an 8-inch hole and innocently touched off a global event.
When rescuers brought her to the surface 2 1/2 days later, her head was bandaged, she was covered with dirt and bruises and her right palm was immobilized to her face. The image was ingrained in millions of people's memories.
About three years after the TV cameras left Midland, Chip and Cissy divorced. Each has remarried.
Throughout their daughter's childhood, they worked to give her a normal life.
"At the end of the day, she went through a lot and was loved by millions and millions," said Chip McClure, 38, who sells real estate in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Jessica has no memory of the ordeal, the loss of part of one foot and the 15 operations that followed the 2 1/2 days she spent wedged all alone in the well, singing about Winnie the Pooh.
Life didn't turn out as smoothly for others involved in the toddler's rescue.
In 1995, paramedic and rescuer Robert O'Donnell, who wriggled into the passageway and slathered a frightened Jessica in petroleum jelly before sliding her out into the bright television lights, shot and killed himself at his parents' ranch outside Midland.
His brother, Rick, has said O'Donnell's life "fell apart" because of the stress of the rescue, the attention it created and the anticlimactic return to everyday life.
In 2004, William Andrew Glasscock Jr., a former Midland police officer who helped in the rescue, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison on charges of sexual exploitation of a child and improper storage of explosives. A year later, he was sentenced to 20 years on two state charges of sexual assault.
Meanwhile, Jessica graduated from high school in Greenwood, not far from Midland, and married Daniel Morales in early 2006.