300 gather to support teen attacked in Magnolia

Hannah Geiger has her game face on.

It's what those close to her call the "Hannah look" — a quiet, piercing stare, brow slightly furrowed, as though she's keenly interested in something just over your shoulder. A silver medalist in the Special Olympics and a die-hard Mariners fan, she constantly looks braced, ready, like nothing could knock her off track.

And then something did. A story.

"You know what story I'm going to tell," Wayne Grytting, Geiger's teacher for four years, said to her with a laugh as she squirmed nervously behind him. Grytting was standing at a lectern, Geiger by his side, addressing the crowd of about 300 supporters and friends gathered at a community barbecue thrown in her honor Wednesday evening in Magnolia.

So he started his story — the one that explains her best:

A student who uses a wheelchair starts at West Seattle High School. He has a hard time with basic tasks, like getting around and feeding himself. But one student steps up and helps him. She was there every day, to take him from the bus to class to lunch and back again.

"And I'm going to let you guess who that student was," Grytting said.

And the crowd shouted: "Hannah!"

For the first time since she was thrust into the local spotlight after surviving what police say was a violent hate crime, Geiger's game face cracked into an embarrassed, but resolute, smile.

On June 1, the Haitian-born 19-year-old started out on her three-block walk from her home to one of her favorite palaces, Magnolia Community Center, when she was stopped by two white men who accosted her because of her race and disability before beating her unconscious. No arrests have been made.

The story sent shock waves through the neighborhood and the city. Wednesday night, people gathered at the center to celebrate Geiger and tell her in their own words how important her story was to them.

"It makes me want to cry," said Jane Horowitz, who brought her daughter, Svetlana, to meet Geiger. Like Geiger, Svetlana was adopted as a toddler and is a special-needs child. Horowitz said her daughter and Geiger already made plans to meet up.

About 300 people — friends, strangers, supporters — attended the barbecue, despite the small rain flurries that swept across the community center playground.

Even the Mariners, Geiger's favorite sports team, sent a representative, armed with signed baseballs, a jersey, bobbleheads and a promise of tickets for her whole family.

"When's the next game?" Geiger asked eagerly. Her body weighed down by her packed Mariners-blue gift bag and 15 Special Olympics medals, she managed to push her hand out as Stephanie Brosio, who works with the team's community-relations department, handed her a schedule.

"Hand this to my mom," Geiger said, pushing the gift bag to a volunteer so she could better read the team's schedule.

"I live a block away, and it broke my heart," said Brosio about the attack on Geiger. "But there are tons of people who love her and support her."

Indeed, Magnolia rarely sees this level of community support outside of sporting events, said Darrell Drew, president of the Magnolia Community Center advisory council.

"It's bringing the heart of the community together," said Drew. "I've lived in the community for 40 years, and I've never seen it come together this way.

"It's the small, little thing that turned out to be a big success," he said.

But it took a lot of work to get the celebration together — and even more hot dogs. Volunteers cooked 50 pounds of hot dogs for the seemingly never-ending line in front of the community center.

"We think we have enough, and then 100 more kids show up," said Dan Larson, a volunteer at the center. Larson teaches a Wednesday cooking class at the center, so he was the natural choice for the demanding and thankless job of grill master.

"They don't always say thank you," he said. "I've gotten over that."

Geiger is one of Larson's regular cooking-class students.

"Hannah's like the school's hero," he said, flipping hot dogs over to reveal a charred underside. "She's a leader for the younger kids."

A leader and a natural-born helper, say those who've taught her.

"She has been a teacher to all of us about how to care for each other," said Grytting. "I think we are just beginning to scratch the surface of the gem we have in Hannah."

Lindsay Toler: 206-464-2463 or ltoler@seattletimes.com