GENEVA – On a bright fall morning in 2004, Shelley Kupetis was running errands with her 4-year-old daughter, Julia Benway.

“I have a headache,” the then-Geneva preschooler complained to her mother. “It’s too bright. The sun hurts my eyes.”

“I said, ‘We’ll go into this one store and go home. I’ll be quick,’ ” Kupetis recalled. “She tells me she wanted me to carry her into the store. I picked her up and we were just walking in and she threw up all over me. Clearly, she has the flu. And we went home. And it started from there.”