Countywide : Wallenda Walks Life’s Tightrope

It was only natural for Angel Wallenda to take to the high wire when she married into the famous Flying Wallenda family. It took her a month to perfect the moves.

When she relearned those skills, it took four months. But this time, she did it with an artificial leg. In an effort to battle her spreading cancer, doctors amputated her right leg and portions of both lungs. Since then, she and her family have continued their aerial performances, often to raise money for charities, including the American Cancer Society.

Angel Wallenda, 23, her husband, Steven, 35, and their 4-year-old son, Steven Jr., already a wire walker, traveled from their home in Tioga, Pa., to Orange County this week. Angel Wallenda is scheduled to speak at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove on Sunday.

The trip was paid for by a fan who was inspired after reading an article about Wallenda. She regularly receives piles of mail, offering encouragement or suggesting cures for spindle cell lyomayo sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that doctors say is terminal.

Parts of the couple’s life resemble a storybook romance. Steven, the nephew of Karl, the Great Wallenda, whisked Angel away to “join the circus” and get married after meeting her in an ice-cream parlor in 1985.

Known for feats such as walking the cable on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, Steven Wallenda taught the trade to his young wife. They traveled, entertaining people at state fairs and shopping malls, happily carrying on the tradition of eight generations of Flying Wallendas.

But life for Angel Wallenda was not always the stuff of dreams. Born Elizabeth Pintye in New York, she spent her childhood bouncing between a troubled home with an abusive father and a series of foster homes.

“A lot of kids that go through the experiences I went through end up dysfunctional, in jail or on drugs,” Angel Wallenda said. “The way I was, I was just always very happy and tried to have fun . . . I always made the best out of what I had.”

When doctors found that she had cancer in 1987, she continued to make the best of her situation. After the amputation, doctors told her that she would never again walk the wires, but she refused to believe it.

“A lot of times, people take what doctors say as gospel truth, but that’s not true. They’re not God,” she said.

She is unable to perform some of the tricks she once did, such as riding a bicycle across the wire. But in the Wallenda family tradition, she continues to perform without a safety net. Steven Wallenda’s uncle plunged to his death in 1978 during a wire act, but Angel Wallenda said she isn’t afraid because they have trained themselves to catch the wire if they fall.

In a way, walking the wire is easier than battling cancer, Angel Wallenda said. She stopped going to traditional doctors a year ago after they told her that the only thing they could do was provide chemotherapy, which would give her a 30% chance of improving but create serious side effects that could keep her hospitalized much of the time.

Doctors told her that the illness was terminal, but she never asked how long she had to live. She said she refuses to give in to the disease. Recently Angel Wallenda spent time at a clinic in Massachusetts exploring techniques such as massage and aromatherapy she says a doctor told her “create happy molecules.”

“People need to think about positive attitudes,” she said. “I think a positive attitude has a lot to do with (why I’m still alive) because what else do I have that’s different than everybody else?”

Ideally, Angel Wallenda said, the family would like to set up shop at a theme park somewhere where they could perform during the summer. In the meantime, they continue to perform and speak around the nation, hoping to help others realize what they can do with their lives. Often they speak at homes for abused children.

“When kids come from broken homes, abused backgrounds, the kids don’t always have positive attitudes,” Angel Wallenda said. “But when they listen to me and hear my story, each and every one of them has at least one characteristic in common with me.”

She will be speaking at the Crystal Cathedral on Sunday at 8:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. She also will be appearing on the “Hour of Power” television show next weekend.

The one thing she wants to tell people, she said, is “if you focus on what you have and not what you don’t have, you’ll be just fine.”