A tiger shark chomped off 13-year-old Bethany Hamilton’s left arm while she surfed the waters of Kauai, Hawaii on October 31, 2003. But the media frenzy has been just as intense. Now her family struggles with the interviews, the book deals, and the TV offers — all the trappings of 15 minutes of fame.

But as other death-defying hero stories play the media circuit and bow out, Hamilton continues to draw attention, even though she’d rather surf. She calls the one-and-half-inch stump on her left side “Stumpy,” and she doesn’t like to wear her prosthetic arm. She has wise words about courage (“Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid. Courage means you don’t let fear stop you.” Guideposts for Teens, June/July 2004) and isn’t going to let something like a missing arm slow her down (“I know not everyone believes in a guiding hand. Sometimes it’s really hard to see — like when things aren’t going your way. But this was God’s plan for my life, and I’m going to go with it.”).