Sunday Mail editorial: Kiri Schroeter the face of life-changing surgery

HE’S the boy who prompted South Australians to come together and admire the work of craniofacial surgery pioneer David David.

Kiri Schroeter at his Nuriootpa home with daughter Holly. Picture: Calum Robertson

HE’S the boy who prompted South Australians to come together and admire the work of craniofacial surgery pioneer David David.

Kiri Schroeter’s story is an amazing triumph over circumstances and possibly even tragedy.

Abandoned at a Cambodian orphanage as a nine-month-old and left in a shoebox without feet and hands, and with facial deformities, Kiri was adopted by a wonderful Barossa Valley family.

Professor David performed more than 40 surgeries on Kiri as a child and teenager; helping transform him from a baby unable to eat except through a straw to the remarkable young father that he is today.

Just as Nuriootpa couple Robyn and Neville Schroeter quickly came to love their adopted son, so did SA. South Australians grew to admire Kiri’s resilience and strength and follow his extraordinary story. At one stage, we followed his every move. We read eagerly as he went to school and made his first friends.

But it was not until the extraordinary Prof David was awarded the South Australian of the Year award last week that we’ve become reacquainted with Kiri’s story. The 26-year-old animation and computer programming student tells his story in the Sunday Mail today.

It’s a heartwarming tale of Kiri with his own family, partner Mariana, 24, and beautiful four-year-old daughter Holly. A doting father, Kiri is doubtlessly showing them the same love that South Australia showed him. The little boy with such limited life prospects is now transformed into an award-winning skateboarder.

Kiri is much more than a high-profile patient of a renowned surgeon.

It’s the love shared between Kiri and Prof David that underlines why the pioneering craniofacial surgeon is such a deserving winner of South Australian of the Year. Kiri credits Prof David for giving him life, for helping him to fulfil his life’s ambitions through each of the 40 life-changing surgeries the surgeon performed.

The remarkable story about Kiri – the courageous, brave fighter from Gawler – is about more than surgery.

It’s the tremendous, warm and human side of one of our state’s best surgeons.

Prof David has helped thousands of children from all over the world and given them the chance at life they otherwise might not have had.