Jackie Lemmon was born Jackie Ford on July 24, 1965 in Downey, California, USA, the youngest of six children. She was graced with extraordinary physical beauty and radiated cheerfulness and sweetness to everyone. She was an excellent and diligent student, and she rose to be a star in songleading, cheerleading and beauty contests, culminating in her election as homecoming queen at her large public high school and Miss Downey runner-up. This placed her in the public eye in a prominent way. Despite the attentions received, Jackie was drawn to a deep spiritual life. She attended Thomas Aquinas College in California, strove mightily for a religious vocation, but was called to marriage. She happily settled down with her husband and became a homeschooling mother of nine beautiful children.

 

In her early teens, Jackie became a particular devotee of the Little Way of St. Therese, and she mastered that way of spirituality through constant attention to Our Lord and to others and by forgetting herself. Though she was known for her beauty, a deep humility and unceasing gratitude to God for her faith, her family and her friends marked her short life. She had a devotion to the crucified Lord, and kissed the feet of the crucifix in her bedroom each night after turning out the lights. In late Spring 2003, when she was 37 years old and expecting her tenth child (one miscarriage), Our Lord called her to be a Victim Soul four times over as many months. Jackie pleaded with Him, but said “yes” to Him the fourth time, describing Him as the “Hound of Heaven.” Immediately thereafter, she began to experience symptoms of a rare soil fungus infection called Valley Fever, and she almost died of excruciating meningitis, 105 degree fevers and pneumonia from the Valley Fever on February 12, 2004 the night her baby, Marguerite Marie, was born. Mother and child were placed in separate hospital ICU units since baby Maggie was also presumed to be infected. They were finally reunited three weeks after Maggie’s birth.

 

Despite her critical condition in ICU, Jackie was insistent on breast-feeding Maggie. The doctors later determined Jackie’s breast milk had just the right dose of the required drug to treat baby Maggie. Jackie lived for another year, with all specialists confident she would fully recover. Nonetheless, after continual headaches and constant nausea, she suffered a brain-stem stroke at the end of January 2005, and spent the next month in a “locked- in” state (in perfect union with Terry Schiavo, whose fate was being decided at that very time), understanding and feeling everything, moving a limb or winking a beautiful eye in response to questions ending with a "yes" or "no" but unable to communicate orally.

 

Before her stroke, and from the time of her calling as a Victim, Jackie had an unceasing hunger to help souls on earth most in need of Christ’s Mercy (she united herself profoundly to all the souls caught unawares in the Tsunami which occurred in December of 2004 during her first long hospital stay) and priests, those she knew personally were experiencing crises in their priesthood and also in general as a result of the recent scandals plaguing the Church. She thirsted to suffer for all their intentions. People sent emails and cards and brought their requests in person. In her last words, she asked that an email intention be re-read to her so she could pray for that person. Jackie was united to her patroness, St. Therese, on March 2, 2005, preceding her beloved John Paul II to their heavenly Home by precisely one month.