South Jordan » A.J. Walker barely spoke more than a few halting sentences months after surviving a shotgun blast to the head in the 2007 shooting spree at Trolley Square. Now, three years later, the 19-year-old shushes his mother and speaks with wide eyes and animated hands about his "rebirth."

His adolescent mind was so childlike after the attack that he had to relearn kindergarten concepts and might have believed Santa Claus was real if someone had suggested it. Now, he's a high-school grad and working almost full time at a credit union.

He once spent countless hours in counseling to overcome images of Sulejman Talovic turning him into a crime victim with the squeeze of a trigger. He's now helping to form a foundation to support victims of violence and worked behind the scenes on today's art show at Trolley Square to raise money for earthquake survivors in Haiti.

"I'm not going to live my life feeling sorry for myself," A.J. says. "Out of every negative, there is a positive."

That's not to say that A.J. has recovered from his Feb. 12, 2007, encounter with Talovic, the troubled teen who gunned down A.J. and his father, Jeffrey Walker, outside Trolley Square in an attack that killed five shoppers and wounded four others.

Besides leaving A.J. without a dad, it left lasting scars beneath the youth's dark tousled hair, where 25 shotgun pellets remain embedded in his head.

A.J. still suffers seizures -- he dropped to the floor of his workplace at Mountain America Credit Union last November in a grand mal seizure -- and he finds himself so drained after work that he routinely lumbers upstairs in "Frankenstein" fashion to take a before-supper nap.

His short-term memory doesn't work quite right. The peripheral vision in his right eye has vanished. He's good at counting money (a concrete task that suits his credit union job well) but cannot wrap his mind around abstractions taught in school.

And he spent only a single semester at Salt Lake Community College after learning that his brain wasn't quite ready for academics.

"When I went to school, I could feel it in my bones -- 'I shouldn't be here right now,' " he says. "It was too much. It was too overwhelming."

But the young man -- who for months after the rampage struggled to learn, to focus, to speak -- has healed dramatically, though he concedes his brain "still has a lot of healing to do."

He now speaks vividly about his dreams: He would love to travel to Africa or a Third World country elsewhere to provide some kind of humanitarian aid, perhaps building an orphanage.

"This is stuff I want to be doing," he says. "When I know that it is going to make a difference in people's lives, I'm all for it."

He speaks about faith: He found himself closer to God after crouching in that Trolley Square parking garage and offering the simple prayer, "Give me peace." The teen doesn't believe it was coincidence that a passer-by stopped and rescued him.

"Since that day," he says, "I feel like God has really blessed me."

He speaks about change: He is much more observant since high school, where he said people took advantage of the almost-childlike vulnerability that accompanied his brain injury. While he chooses not to dive into details, he says he is more keenly aware of people's motives and more determined to set his own path.

"I have been put in positions where I have been a follower," he says. "But that is not the person I am. I am a leader."

And he speaks about his future: He's starting a foundation with his mother to help victims of violent crimes -- a prospect that makes his eyes widen and his words rattle a tad faster.

"It is going to be," A.J. pauses, "big."

What A.J. doesn't talk about is hate or anger or self-pity.

He's more likely to talk about, well, batteries. Those little firecrackers of energy wouldn't have much power, he notes, without positive and negative ends.

"I know that there is something big out there for me," A.J. says. "I know that I can help a lot of people. I know that time is going to come."

His mother, Vickie, doesn't say much as she watches her now 6-foot-1 son talk about the thrill of rock climbing, his conviction that he someday will see his father again and his absence of anger toward the shooter who turned his life upside down. She doesn't need to.

He's confident. He's eloquent. He's undeniably optimistic.

Vickie smiles.

"The old A.J. is emerging," she says. "It certainly has been a joy."

jstettler@sltrib.com