ATWATER -- Emily Tolentino wasn't supposed to be alive today. Fourteen years ago, on Nov. 27, 1997, Tolentino was born at 24 weeks. She weighed 590 grams, or just about a pound, and had only a 5 percent survival rate.
"Despite whatever (doctors) told us, I knew that she was going to make it," her mother, Patricia Tolentino, recalled on a recent afternoon at the family's Atwater home. "She proved everybody wrong."
It's so uncommon for babies that tiny to survive that Emily receives Social Security checks every month for $549 and will continue to receive them until she turns 18.
Emily was born at Phoenix Children's Hospital. "My husband held her in the palm of his hands," Patricia Tolentino said.
Not too long after she was born, Emily suffered a brain bleed because her veins weren't fully developed. Just as bad, her parents weren't able to touch her for four months because her skin wasn't fully developed.
She lived in an incubator for 5½ months before being released from the hospital. She spent so much time in the incubator, doctors counted that time as being in the womb. "Every day she gained an inch and gained a pound," her mother said.
Her parents never left her side, spending long days at the hospital with little rest. John Tolentino hired a nanny to take care of the couple's two other children, Eric and Erika.
"Every day, it felt unreal because you had to come back to the hospital every day," John Tolentino said. "I'm grateful that she made it. If I had to do it all over again, I would."
Emily was so small that Patricia's mother had to make special clothes for her, small enough to fit a doll.
By the time she got to go home with her family on her mother's original due date, Emily weighed 4 pounds. "I wanted all my strength to go to her," Patricia Tolentino remembered.
Emily weighed just 8 pounds when she turned 1. Nationwide, she was the sixth out of seven babies born so small -- weighing a pound or less -- that year who survived, her mother said.
Patricia Tolentino, who still keeps in touch with Emily's neonatologist, said that with today's technological advances, Emily would have a 40 percent chance of surviving if born now.
Fourteen years later, Emily, who now weighs 97 pounds, is a healthy girl. She's even a cheerleader at Buhach Colony High School, where she's an eighth-grader.
"It's a blessing to have her that small and have her survive," her father said. "I'm very proud of her. She's growing up healthy and she's even into sports and has good grades."
Emily was being monitored by various specialists at Children's Hospital Central California, but was recently released because she's never had any health complications.
In 2002, Emily reunited with her doctors. They threw a party for her to give other mothers hope that there are preemie babies who can make it.
Emily is here to prove it.
The 14-year-old girl wants other parents to know "that it is possible, and not to give up. Anything can happen."
Emily, who lives the normal life of any other teenager, says that of all her activities she enjoys cheerleading the most. "It keeps me out of trouble," she said. "It keeps me busy."
Emily is a good girl, her father says. "She's not out of control," he said. "She hasn't had a boyfriend; she finally is working on one now," he said, laughing.
Whoever gets to keep her, he said, will "really, really need to be approved by us -- she's our baby," he said, looking at her.
Last month, what's known to be the third-smallest baby in the world was released from a Los Angeles hospital.
Emily knows just what she's going through. And Emily made it.
Reporter Yesenia Amaro can be reached at (209) 385-2482 or yamaro@mercedsunstar.com.
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