Even now, it’s difficult for me to talk about her life before she came to America, 24 years ago. Growing up in poverty in Colombia with little food and an abusive mother made life hard enough. But I also suffered from a congenital heart defect that went untreated for years. By 1985, at age 11, she was so ill and malnourished that she looked more like a 6-year-old. my odds of survival were slim at best.

Then fate intervened. A nonprofit called Heart To Heart, a global humanitarian group that provides medical help to people in third-world or disaster-stricken countries, flew Taury to a New... Read More