There's no doubt that Kathaleen Perry is a Neighbourhood Hero but I'm having trouble just starting to write this column about her.

Since she was nine months old Kathaleen has been through unbelievable life challenges and still come out a winner, challenges so unimaginable that if I'm not careful, this column could easily read like a "pity party" report and believe me, that's the last thing Kathaleen would want.

"Pity drives me insane," she told me. "I can't stand it when people feel sorry for me."

When she was nine months old, Kathaleen was severely burned in a house fire. In her words her cheeks were severely scarred, she had a witches nose -- severely crooked with a large bump -- and she had no neck. Most of her fingers were also burned so badly only stumps remain.

From nine months until she was 18, Kathaleen spent six months a year at the Shriner's Burn Hospital in Montreal, alternating three months in hospital and three months at home. Then, when she turned nineteen - she took her eighteenth year off -- she was in once a year for three months. That schedule continued until she was twenty-seven.

In total she had ninety-six separate surgeries but none of them could be done on her face until she was eighteen and her skull fully grown.

Can you imagine living through your teens with such a badly scarred face and maintaining any sense of self-esteem and self-confidence? If you think back you'll recall that as teenagers most of us thought a zit was a disaster.

Until she was sixteen and moved to Montreal on her own, Kathaleen says she really didn't like herself. However given constant support from the Montreal Shriners, things began to change.

"They made me feel I was a person, that I didn't have to hide behind my scars or worry about what people might say ... Now I'm not saying people can't hurt me because I'd be lying ... I've lived with my scars all my life and they still bother me but I've overcome it by thinking if people don't have the time to get to know me, it's their problem, not mine."

Kathleen married young in Montreal. But after her second child, she returned to school, completed her high school education and went on to qualify as a Long Term Practical Nurse. Eventually that job didn't work out because of problems with her hands, problems that resulted from the fire. She then qualified as a Medical Office Assistant. Neither of these qualifications is recognized in British Columbia today.

Three years ago Kathaleen became a single mother with six children and soon after started the Social Work Diploma Program at Malaspina U-C.

Kathleen's primary reason for going back to school had less to do with finding a good job than it had to do with motivating her kids.

"Even if I don't get a great job," she says, "I will teach my kids that it's important to finish school before you start a family."

Some of the primary lessons Kathleen says she has learned so far in life include:

• Focus on what you have, not what you don't have. Focus on your strengths and gifts.
• If you are having a bad day, let it go. Don't carry that baggage into tomorrow.
• And of course, you can's judge a book by its cover.

As we were ending our conversation Kathleen said something that keeps coming up for me.

"When you are different," she said, "people have fear of the unknown and it's easier for them to not go near you and see what you are all about."