Staff photo by Fritz Busch Shannon Duffy Peterson and her son Nicholas, six, in their rural Sleepy Eye home.

BROWN COUNTY —Just a couple weeks from her sixth birthday in early 2001, Abby Peterson seemed to be recovering from the chicken pox. She fell violently ill and died on the way to the hospital, just 10 hours after showing symptoms. Abby Peterson never received a chicken pox (varicella) or pneumococcal vaccine after a pediatrician convinced her mother, Shannon Duffy Peterson of rural Sleepy Eye, that she didn’t need them. The child got a severe case of chicken pox that made her so weak, she got a second infection, a form of pneumonia that the pneumococcal vaccine protects against. The child’s autopsy showed she never had a spleen, which was not known until after she died, Peterson said. After that experience, Peterson became a vaccination advocate. Her quests have included testifying for a law requiring both vaccinations before the Minnesota state legislature in 2003, which led to them being added to the vaccination schedule, Peterson adde.