Five minutes that changed Carolyn Gilbert's life

In January 2008, 16-year-old Angel Facio stabbed Elgin High School teacher Carolyn Gilbert. She survived, but was seriously injured. Facio talked recently for the first time about attacking his teacher. Daily Herald Staff Writer Kerry Lester previously wrote a three-part series about Gilbert and her physical and emotional recovery. You can read the 2009 Gilbert series here. Below is some of the paper's earlier coverage of the attack.

Carolyn Gilbert should have been grading the dozens of first semester exams she'd just finished giving.

Or heading home to Bloomingdale to begin a three-day weekend with Elizabeth and Caitlin, her two teenage daughters.

Instead, on Friday, Jan. 18, 2008, she found herself sitting in a Sherman Hospital bed, trying to wrap her mind around the horrific sequence of events that had unfolded hours before.

A little after 11 a.m., the family and consumer science teacher at Elgin High had just finished giving her last exam when 16-year-old Angel Facio walked in, asking to wait until the bus came.

Gilbert had taught Facio the year before as a freshman in child development.

He had been an average student. Friendly. Gilbert knew she was one of his favorite teachers.

Facio had come to her classroom at the same time the day before but had left after Gilbert told him that she had to go and run some tests through a grading machine.

This time, she let him wait, as she began to file some papers.

After a few minutes, Facio ran up from behind her, threw a coat over her head and pulled her to the floor. He began stabbing her over and over again #8212; in the head, the neck and the eye #8212; with a serrated kitchen knife.

Gilbert screamed, loud enough for Mike Gannon, the math and computer science teacher in the next room, to hear her through the cinder block wall.

The normally mild-mannered teacher ran in and shouted, #8220;You get off her!#8221;

Facio, weighing close to 200 pounds, immediately obeyed, dropping the knife to the floor.

Gannon ordered the boy to sit in a classroom desk and not move. He called for help, as Gilbert

pulled herself up and got out of the classroom and into the hallway.

#8220;I didn't feel a thing until I got out of there,#8221; Gilbert said. #8220;I didn't feel my shoulder from where he slammed me into the floor. It was just my eye. I've always been protective of my eyes. I've worn glasses, contacts, everything since the second grade.#8221;

Gilbert was sent by ambulance, alone, to Sherman Hospital in Elgin.

She knew she was covered in blood from the stab wounds, but she couldn't see. With one eye seriously injured, the other had closed up as her body tried to protect it, doctors told her.

As doctors worked on Gilbert, fellow teachers and staff kept vigil at the hospital, shooing away reporters. Several Elgin police officers were stationed outside her room.

Her daughters were sent to the hospital after they got home from school.

#8220;I told everyone, #8216;Don't let them see me like this,'#8221; said the 51-year-old single mom. #8220;By the time they came over they had cleaned me up, cut my clothes off, put my gown on.#8221;

She found herself exhausted from the pain medication. The stitches in the back of her head were uncomfortable.

Elizabeth, then a Lake Park High School senior, took charge of calling family members from the hospital and reading the fine print on hospital forms.

Despite the tremendous pain she was experiencing, #8220;I didn't pass out,#8221; Gilbert said. #8220;I just told them to give me something, knock me out. Shoot me, do something.#8221;

Initially, Gilbert said, what upset her the most was #8220;knowing that I knew Angel liked me #8230; I thought maybe this is an initiation to a gang, but then I thought, #8216;Well, no, he's not a gang kid. That can't be it.' But see, it was very hard because I wanted to know why.#8221;

In a few hours, Gilbert would be moved to the University of Illinois Medical Center's Ear and Eye Infirmary in Chicago. There, she would go through several painful surgeries to try to save her eye and begin a difficult emotional healing process.