It still bothers Ann that she didn’t recognize her attacker.

She had met Toby Schwartz once before, in the turn-of-the-century barn on her farm in southern Allen County.

She hired his father to restore the building. It was intended to be a tribute to her grandparents, who took such good care of it when she was a child.

The work was nearly finished, and Ann was surveying the progress when the older Schwartz called his son to take notes. He seemed polite and attentive, she recalls.

“You know, I didn’t even pay that much attention to what he looked like. It wasn’t for more than like a minute, at the most,” she said. “I had no reason to think anything – think anything of it.”

She pauses a second then laughs nervously.

Nine months after he worked on her barn, Toby – Theodore Tobias Schwartz – swept through Wells County on a drug-addled crime spree, prosecutors say, breaking into two houses, stealing a van, robbing a grocery and ramming the sheriff’s squad car, all in a matter of hours.

But before any of that, he came to see Ann.

This is the story of a woman left in the wake of his destructive rampage and how she is working to put her life back together.

Prosecutors say Schwartz waited for Ann to come home from work, ambushed her in the garage, robbed her, beat her, choked her and then held her captive in her house for an hour while he raped her.

Her 84-year-old mother came to her rescue when she sneaked into Ann’s house during the attack, heard commotion and called the police.

The day after his arrest, detectives confronted Schwartz with Ann’s account of the Aug. 19 assault, and he replied, “Everything that woman said up there is true.”

For Ann, a 51-year-old computer systems analyst who lives alone, it took away her sense of security.

The rape also changed her relationship with her beloved farm, replacing a host of childhood memories with something sinister.

Ann, who asked that only her middle name be used, is warm and upbeat. She talks matter-of-factly about the attack and its aftermath. She’s never slow to crack a smile, even if it’s a rueful one sometimes.

Sometimes she feels like a Hurricane Katrina house, she said, the kind that doesn’t look so bad on the outside.

“You think, ‘Well, that looks like somebody could just move back in there,’ ” she said. “And then they’d show the inside and it was all just a moldy mess. Maybe the house would even be 10 feet off the foundation.”

This is Ann’s account of the attack supplemented by court documents from Adams, Allen and Wells counties.

The assault

She returned home from work about 6:15 p.m. and was in her garage when Schwartz grabbed her from behind, yelling that he wanted money.

He had escaped from Berne police eight days earlier after an officer left him unattended.

He was shirtless and extremely agitated, high on meth and morphine.

When Schwartz tried to lead her into her house, Ann struggled. She tried kicking him in the groin, but it had no effect.

He hit her in the face, choked her and smashed her head through the glass in a garage door.

He walked her to the second floor of her house and tore off some of her clothes. The rest he cut off with a paring knife from her kitchen.

He raped her for an hour, first putting a pillow over her head then covering her mouth with a bandanna to keep her from screaming.

She thought she was going to die.

Throughout the attack, Ann’s biggest priority was to keep Schwartz calm. She thought that the more time she could buy for herself, the more likely a neighbor would notice something was amiss and call police.

As it happened, Ann’s 84-year-old mother, who lives down the road, came to check on her daughter. When she crept into the home, she heard voices upstairs and left for a neighbor’s house.

Schwartz had shut Ann in her closet when a voice came from downstairs.

“Allen County police, we have a dog,” she recalls hearing. “And I thought, ‘Thank you, dear Jesus.’ ”

But instead of surrendering, Schwartz dived out the second-floor bathroom window. Unable to reach the stolen car he had parked behind her barn, he swiped Ann’s Pontiac and fled south into Wells County.

There, he broke into two houses, stole a van, robbed a grocery store and rammed the sheriff’s squad car – all in a few hours – before police captured him.

Life afterward

In the days that followed, Ann ate little – almost starving herself. She’s sure it was a subconscious reaction, one way she could feel as if she had control of her body, control that Schwartz took from her.

Her productivity at work dropped off. She continues to search the Internet for updated accounts of the Aug. 19 assault.

“I spent a lot of time being really angry. I replay it over and think, ‘If I could have just done this, … or if I could have gotten to the shovel in the garage, I could have caved his head in,’ ” she said.

Another nervous laugh.

She isn’t sure why out of all the farms Schwartz worked on he chose hers.

She has lived in her rural Allen County farmhouse for 14 years. It has been in her family since 1956, when her grandparents bought it.

She grew up just down the road and spent much of her childhood in the house.

She remembers the living room had nice wool carpet that she wasn’t allowed to walk on without supervision.

The kitchen still has the original 1956 electric stove with a double oven, which her grandmother used to make Thanksgiving dinner and hot dogs on Sundays after church.

Now, with both her grandparents gone, she tries to take care of the house and farmstead.

“Just the idea that you can be in a place where history happened,” Ann said. “An old building gives you a connection to people in the past.”

The rape has formed some unwanted connections. Three months after the attack, she sleeps down the street at her mother’s home.

For a long time, she would not allow dusk to fall while she was in her house. As the light waned, she remembers grabbing some clothes and anything else she could take with her.

“I always felt like I was rescuing stuff. It’s almost like you’re abandoning your house for the last time,” she said.

Road to recovery

With the help of a psychologist and a web of close friends, she has found the support to begin moving past the attack.

She doesn’t have the sick feeling in her stomach anymore, and she’s eating regularly again.

And she is slowly regaining her relationship with her house.

She installed a security system and put a better lock on the door where she suspects Schwartz broke in.

Ann still hasn’t spent the night at her home, but being there after nightfall doesn’t bother her anymore.

She has also found a new perspective as a result of the attack. The small things seldom worry her.

Stacked next to what she endured for more than an hour in August, a rough day at work is truly insignificant, she says.

“I was normally a crier. I would just get frustrated and just start bawling,” she said. “I have not shed one tear about this. It’s almost like a matter of pride. He’s not worth my tears, … damn it.”

mzennie@jg.net