KANE'OHE — This is the story of a Marine who lost his "family" but gained an 'ohana on Thanksgiving Day.

If not for that, Pfc. Michael Stafford said, he'd probably have spent yesterday sitting around a deserted barracks at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kane'ohe, eating ramen noodles and feeling sorry for himself.

Instead, thanks to the intervention of one young Portlock woman who knows the pain, frustration and loneliness that he faces all too well, Stafford had a holiday dinner he won't ever forget: turkey, stuffing, pies and, best of all, friends he can always count on in a dark hour.

Stafford said his real "family," several hundred fellow members of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Division weapons company, are off in California, training for a likely deployment in Iraq early next year. Stafford, though, can't join them. He said that after suffering an injury in boot camp earlier this year, he developed a severe seizure disorder that in all likelihood will end his military career.

"Every day, I wake up and it hurts," Stafford said. "It just pains me that the time of their deployment is coming and I'm not going to be with my buddies. The Marine Corps is my brotherhood, and I'm not going to be part of it anymore."

Starlite Hiatt refuses to let Stafford get depressed, though.

A self-proclaimed "miracle child," Hiatt and her mother, Lita Schweizer, have taken Stafford under their family wing and given him hope where a few months ago he saw little. They've stayed with him in a hospital room during the worst of the seizures, they plan to "hanai" him into their extended family and, yesterday, they brought tears to his eyes with a dinner that Starlite helped cook.

At first glance, the two friends couldn't be more different.

Stafford, 22, is a 6-foot-2 former varsity swimmer and ocean lifeguard from Florida who said he decided to join the Marines after hearing about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. His younger brother, Nathan, also is in the Marines, fighting in Iraq.

Hiatt is 3 feet 9 and has been confined to a wheelchair all her life. Born with spina bifida, a congenital defect of the spinal column, she has had 70 operations, spent more than half her life in hospitals and once was in a coma for more than a year. Doctors told her mother early on that Starlite wouldn't live to adulthood; she'll celebrate her 32nd birthday next month.

When a chance meeting brought Schweizer and Stafford together several months ago, she knew the Marine had to talk to her daughter. He had been in and out of Tripler Army Medical Center more than a dozen times before doctors finally diagnosed him with juvenile monoclonal epilepsy, which Hiatt also suffers from.

"I told him that me and my mom had been through plenty of tough times, but all you can do is stay upbeat and have people by your side," Hiatt said. One day, when Hiatt and Schweizer were visiting Stafford at Tripler, he had one of his worst seizures. Hiatt simply told her mother: "Go get my stuff in the car. We're spending the night here."

And they've been helping ever since.

Hiatt said she got the idea for making Thanksgiving dinner for Stafford a few months ago after her grandfather told her about his experience with the Marines. On Dec. 7, 1941, then 16-year-old Wilfred Dias saw Japanese planes bombing Pearl Harbor and immediately rushed to the base, hoping to enlist. Told he was too young, he asked if there was anything else he could do to help. Military officials put him to work burying the bodies of those killed in the attack, Schweizer said.

"When Star heard that, she said we've got to do something to honor her grandfather's legacy," Schweizer said. "We all have to do something for our soldiers. We all can find some way to help."

Stafford said that after months of trying, doctors have found the right medicines to control his seizures, but he'll still have to give up his dream of fighting for the Marines. Instead, he now thinks about staying in Hawai'i, becoming an emergency medical technician and, possibly, going to the University of Hawai'i to study psychology.

"My mom's a fighter, and she made me a fighter," Hiatt said.

And now she's teaching the Marine what it really means to fight.

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.