FORT WORTH — At the Fort Worth stock show, Rikki Buckalew signs autographs like an "American Idol" winner. She's the new grand champion of a contest she didn’t think she had a chance to win.
In 10 years of showing steers, Rikki has never come close to winning. This year, one of her cows died and another came up lame, leaving only the big one she calls her baby.
She gave him a name he could live up to: War Admiral.
But raising him wasn't easy. "You have to feed him twice daily, you have to water him every day," Rikki explained. "We don't have electricity in our barns; we don’t have a cooling room, like most steer people do."
At Graham High School, she was working to be in the top 10 percent of her class, hoping for a scholarship to Texas A&M.
But then, the headaches started.
"It was scary," recalled her mom, Leaann Buckalew. "It was extremely scary not knowing what was going on, why she was in so much pain."
After a week at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Rikki said she was diagnosed with a rare disease.
"It’s where my brain thinks I have a tumor, so it makes a bunch of spinal fluid," she said.
Rikki missed so much school, she almost failed. She was accepted at TCU — she just couldn't afford it.
And as for the Stock Show, her expectations were low. "Seventh place, maybe," she said.
So as Rikki Buckalew led War Admiral into the show ring, she wasn't exactly confident.
"I was like, 'Oh, he's not picking mine. These other steers are better, I'm sure.'"
But she was wrong.
To her surprise, War Admiral won the grand prize at the 2010 Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo.
Her father, Mitch Buckalew, couldn’t help but cry as he enjoyed the happy ending to a very tough year.
"Back in October, when we were in Cook's, we didn’t care about calves — it was just the girl," he said.
And now that girl is a winner.
War Admiral and the other championship animals were auctioned off on Saturday morning, with all proceeds going directly to the children who raised them.
War Admiral sold for a Stock Show record $210,000.
E-mail greaves@wfaa.com
