A year after her open-heart surgery, Stella is strong, vivacious, and a straight-A student

Stella Vallagi is 6, and she loves her French bulldog, Cookie.

Her favorite color is orange, and her favorite meal is chicken francese.

She loves to color, and paint, and collect shells at the beach. She can dance, too – ballet, jazz, tap.

She wears bows in her hair and takes martial arts.

If you see Stella do a cannonball dive into a swimming pool or work on her strikes at karate class, you will never guess that a little more than a year ago she underwent eight hours of open-heart surgery to repair a life-threatening birth defect.

“Never,” said her mom, Jackie. “Never in a million years.

“Until she takes off her shirt and shows you her scar.”

That four-inch scar in the middle of Stella’s chest was recently celebrated with a dinner at her favorite Italian restaurant near the family’s Coral Springs home.

Stella ordered her favorite dish.

“And garlic rolls,” she said.

It had been one year since the surgery. Stella’s heartaversary, Jackie called it. There was Stella and her mom, her father, Jack, and her younger brother, Bobby, 5. A handful of family and friends joined them.

A happy occasion.

“The surgery was something huge in our life and in her life, and I want her to celebrate her scar, and I want her to be proud of it,” Jackie said. “So, I tell her to really soak it in, that she is a warrior, that that's something to celebrate, that she made it through.”

The little warrior was walking the day after surgery. Less than two weeks later, she began kindergarten.

With the help of a Florida education choice scholarship managed by Step Up For Students, Stella enrolled in Florida Virtual School (FLVS), where she earned straight A’s and received the student of the year award for her class.

“She fell in love with the whole process of learning,” Jackie said. “The arts and crafts, the ABCs, the one-two-threes. She really did. She did it all with a smile on her face.”

“I love school,” Stella said.

Anything specific?

“Everything,” she said. “I love my classes with my friends.”

When Jackie was 20 weeks pregnant, Stella was diagnosed with an atrioventricular canal defect, which is a leaking valve in the top chamber of her heart and multiple murmurs. It can be fatal without surgery. Jackie said the doctor cried when she delivered the news.

Stella was expected to undergo open heart surgery shortly after birth, but she defied the odds when she came into the world an otherwise healthy 8 pounds, 14 ounces.

“And they said, ‘Well, she's healthy, and she's doing great, so let's hold up on the surgery for her to get a little bigger,’” Jackie said.

Stella was monitored with regular echocardiograms and electrocardiograms. She was on blood pressure medication and diuretics.

“It was really hard, and she took it like a champ,” Jackie said. “She took it better than all of us.”

Meanwhile, Stella continued to grow. And the doctors continued to delay the surgery, telling Jackie and Jack that the longer they waited, the healthier Stella would be and the technology for the operation would be more advanced.

The wait ended July 30, 2025, when Stella was 5.

“We had a bunch of fun before then, trying to keep her mind off of it and keep our mind off of it,” Jackie said. “And then it came time for the surgery, and of course, we were all scared as could be. And I will never forget her face going in (to the operating room), and she said, ‘I'm scared,’ and I said, ‘You're allowed to be scared. We're all a little scared, but you're going to do great.’”

For the next eight hours, her parents paced the hospital’s hallways.

“The longest eight hours of my life,” Jackie said.

Stella made it through in great shape and was home after a week. The doctors think she might need another open-heart surgery, but that won’t be until she’s in her 30s.

“You hear kids are resilient, but you don't believe it till you see it,” Jackie said.

Because of her heart, a common cold could send Stella to the ICU. So, Jackie and Jack decided to keep their daughter away from germ-carrying classmates and opted for home education.

They picked FLVS because of its flexibility and because it provided Jackie with a weekly plan that she could easily follow. Jackie is a stay-at-home mom, and Jack owns his own junk-hauling business, so, Jackie said, the scholarship has been a boon to the family.

“It paid for Florida Virtual School, and it paid for all our extracurricular activities and our supplies and everything in between,” Jackie said. “It's just been such an amazing advantage for us to have that scholarship money because it really helped us out a lot.

“A lot.”

Bobby, who just started kindergarten, receives a Florida education choice scholarship and is also enrolled in FLVS.

“It’s been a great, great, great thing for our family,” Jackie said.

Stella loves school so much she actually got a jump on first grade by beginning classes early in the summer.

She looked forward to her heartaversary dinner and not because of the chicken francese and garlic rolls. She understands what it means, what the scar on her chest represents.

“I’m strong,” she said.

Jackie said Stella was the strongest one in the family as they navigated their way through the ordeal – the years of waiting for the surgery and the surgery itself.

“She's one of a kind, I'll tell you,” Jackie said. “She's got such a great personality. She's funny. She is a little ahead of her time, I think, because of everything that she's been through. But she's very, very smart and very aware of her surroundings.

“She’s just full of life, this kid. She’s a good time.”

Roger Mooney, manager, communications, can be reached at [email protected].