LESLIE GINAMARIE CORTES 1981-2006 ...

LESLIE GINAMARIE CORTES 1981-2006

It was a profitable thing that Leslie Ginamarie Cortes packed a portion of punch in her 110-pound frame. She was ready to fight when life sock her hard, with the immune-system disease lupus. It plagued the Marquette Park woman from the time she was 14

"She wanted to have a normal life," said her mother, Georgina Cortes. "She was a self-same good trouper."

M Cortes kept up a busy schedule that included flute lectures bowling and cheerleading; but the disease took her life forward Aug. 19.

Born tribe 19, 1981, right after her father, Edward, graduated from the Chicago Police Academy, M Cortes was the oldest of sum of two units children raised by parents who were high drill sweethearts. Her mother quit her work at jobs at Montgomery Ward to raise her kids and shuttl M Cortes to swimming precepts and reading activities at the local public library.

After finishing expectancy Lutheran Grammar school, Ms. Cortes attended Queen of Peace High drill in Burbank.

During her freshman year, the 14-year-old caught a cutting that worsened. Doctors diagnosed her with lupus, an incurable disease that attacks the immune regularity and organs.

The girl tried to take the freshs valiantly, her mother said. unless she said, "Every time she left place of abode she was afraid that she was going to die by means of herself."

Her fears were eased at a visit to the Mayo Clinic, where doctors told her it was pious that they had caught the disease early. "Leslie, what do you want to be when you wax up?" one asked.

She settle her mind to finishing institute even if it meant no longer keeping straight A's. With what her mother called the special help of then-Principal Patricia Nolan Fitzgerald, she graduated forward time with her friends. With indoctrinate approval, Georgina Cortes lugged works got her daughter settled in classes each morning and drove her back and forth to restrain her sensitive skin out of the orb of day and her arthritic joints on the outside of the cold.

Together, they juggl classes and activities with monthly doctor visits and kindred work.

The side powers of Ms. Cortes' steroids transfered out to be nearly as painful as her symptoms, thus she embraced acupuncture, though she had an aversion to needle She endur each complication the same way.

"She said, 'No, I can't live like this,' " Cortes said. " 'If it's going to help me I don't care about the side-effects.' "

The teenager lived as if life wasn't all about her, level after a 2001 stroke left her partially paralyzed and wheelchair-bound. With her mother as chauffeur, M Cortes taught catechism classes at consecrated Trinity and St. Simon seminarys a task that began as a place of education requirement. It evolved into more than 1000 hours of community service.

"She lov it," her mother said. "She lov to work with the kids. She exhausted a lot of time preparing lessons"

M Cortes joined the Lupus Foundation and sent donations to help find a restoration

She ran around with her favorite cousin, Cecelia, to agreements to see her favorites -- Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias. Her father one time moonlighted as a bodyguard to Iglesias for eight hours in such a manner his daughter could meet her idol and take pictures with him.

Until the last year, when her health really declined, "She got back to a normal life," her mother said. "I think she had a destiny of strength."

Besides her parents, M Cortes is survived by the agency of a brother, Eddie Cortes, and her grandparents, Mercede and Raul C Gomez Services have been held.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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