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Katie Quinn loves watching her video.

She’ll curl her legs underneath her, sit in a big, cushy chair and say every few seconds: “This is my favorite part! This right here! Right here!’’

She’s only seen it three times. She just got it last week. But she knows the terrain from the other side of the world. Mostly, she knows the faces.

She saw them in June. It’s her Vietnamese family: her mother, her father, her grandmother, her siblings. She hadn’t seen them in six years.

That’s an eternity for Katie. She’s just 11, and she left her family when she was no more than 5. Her parents gave her up for adoption.

They chose her because they saw her as the brave one.

This tiny slip of a girl, the middle of seven, went alone. She couldn’t speak any English and suffered from asthma and allergies, and her parents thought she needed an American family to give her what they couldn’t.

Katie’s family had no running water and no electricity. No education was free in their country. They lived in a 15-by-20-foot house, survived on less than $2,200 a year and, if the land they farmed didn’t yield rice and vegetables, the family didn’t eat.

Enter the Quinns: husband Dan and wife Judy, a classically American couple from Jamestown busy with careers.

The two children from Judy’s first marriage were grown, and Dan and Judy were enjoying their carefree life as empty-nesters.

Then came 9/11, the day the American psyche changed. That started them thinking. Then came 10/11 — that’s 10/11/2001 — the day Dan wrecked his motorcycle.

Dan broke his thumb when a car pulled out in front of him on Randleman Road. Later, at their second house at Belews Creek, Judy raised a question they’ll both always remember.

“If that had been your last day, what would you have regretted?’’ she asked Dan.

“I would have regretted not having adopted after all these years,’’ he replied.

That’s when their journey started. They admired Asian culture, and they wanted a girl. So, after months of paperwork and frustration, they brought home in August 2002 an asthmatic little girl from a tiny Vietnamese village near the Chinese border.

On the way back to Hanoi, Katie crawled into Dan’s lap. She clutched one of the Quinns’ gifts: a beige blanket. She didn’t move.

“That was the only time in my life where I felt overwhelmed with the enormity of the situation,’’ said Dan, now 44. “Someone entrusted me with their child.’’

Today, it’s easy to see what Katie gained. She’s a fifth-grader at Greensboro’s Lincoln Academy, a girl with size 4 feet whose long, black hair reaches her waist. She loves pink and smiles quick.

She has a horse named Dreamer, a wall of honor-roll certificates and shelves and shelves and shelves of books. She plays the violin, the piano and the guitar, and she hunts deer and turkey with her Grandpa Ray.

Yet, in her room, filled with fairies, she keeps a tattered beige blanket on her bed. It’s the one from Vietnam. Every night, she sleeps with it wrapped around her pillow. She always wants it to touch her face.

But when you hear the Quinns talk around their kitchen table, the picture comes more complete.

The Quinns work with the Children of Vietnam, a nonprofit in Winston-Salem that in 10 years has helped more than 50,000 children. Meanwhile, they have helped build Katie’s family a bigger house — with indoor plumbing and electricity.

Dan still owns his own communications and cable company. But Judy left her managerial job at AT&T Wireless, which kept her jumping all over the country. Now she jumps all over the Triad with Katie.

That, she said, is important. That and helping Vietnam.

“The spirit of Vietnam lives in my house,’’ said Judy, 54. “It gave my daughter her heart and soul. So, I have a strong responsibility to give back.’’

Next Saturday in Jamestown, the Quinns will host the annual fundraiser for Children of Vietnam. They’ll raise money to help children as old as 18 get a new leg, a new home, a new wheelchair or a new life.

Every day, they see their purpose in their pink-loving little girl they call “Doodle.’’ They also see it in their video, the shaky-camera travelogue Dan filmed when they took Katie to see her family.

There, they realized their two families were one.

Katie really doesn’t really remember why they went back. The Quinns do. The decision dates to three months after Katie arrived in America. She was 5, struggling with English. Yet, through Katie’s sobs, the Quinns quickly understood.

“I can’t remember their faces,’’ Katie said, over and over.

That night, they all slept on the living-room floor, side by side by side. Back then, Dan and Judy promised their daughter they’d return. And they did. In June. Katie saw the faces and the smiles. And yes, she remembers.

Or better yet, she doesn’t forget.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com