A Close-Up Look At People Who Matter : Going Around the Globe to Aid Needy Kids

Deep in the remote Guatamalan wilderness, Cris Embleton and other members of Healing the Children watched in dumbfounded silence as a mother climbed hill after hill, ending a miles-long journey to reach them with her polio-stricken son.

“We couldn’t even talk, (while watching) to see how far a person would go with a child on her back,” said Embleton of Valencia, recalling atrip to Guatemala a few years ago.

Embleton and the others understood the driving need of a parent to save a child. That is what created Healing the Children in 1981 in Spokane, Wash., where Embleton and her husband, Gary, used to live.

In the late 1970s, the Embletons adopted Lori Jo, an ailing blind girl from Korea who died just shy of her first birthday. Lori Jo made a major impact on the Embletons’ lives during her short time on Earth.

“She taught us the joy of loving someone,” Embleton said. “I feel like Lori Jo did more with her short life than many people do with 80 years. The only way we could ever do justice to her short life was to help others.”

Embleton got her chance to help in a phone call from Guatamala. A baby girl needed heart surgery.

“It never occurred to me that it wasn’t possible,” said Embleton who was able to organize a the surgery at Children’s Hospital in Spokane. “I said to myself, ‘This child needs help and there has to be a way.’ ”

On that basic principle, Healing the Children was founded by the Embletons and some friends. Healing the Children uses contacts around the world--doctors, missionaries, embassies and relief workers--to find children with operable medical conditions and bring them to the United States.

The all-volunteer organization--now with 13 chapters across the country--works with few resources, relying on donations to pay for airline flights and telephone bills.

Volunteer airline employees escort the children on the flight; foster families house the visitors during their stay; medical professionals and hospitals donate space, time and equipment, and service groups such as Rotary, Kiwanis or Lions clubs help pay expenses.

“No one in this program is a hero,” said Embleton, who has had nine children, both biological and adopted. “Everybody does a little piece of it. If any one piece was gone, it wouldn’t work.”

The group has helped about 4,000 children from around the world, from places such as Russia, Croatia, Asia, South and Central America and Africa.

One of the more common needs the children have is heart surgery, since pediatric heart specialists are rare in many other countries.

The organization also has helped children with polio, those who needed limbs amputated and others who were born with cleft palates.

When her husband was transferred to Southern California three years ago, Embleton started a California chapter that helped more than 40 children last year, creating what she describes as goodwill ambassadors to small, isolated villages around the globe where parents and children remember the kindness of the Americans who helped them.

For example, there is Martha, a polio victim helped by Healing the Children who is now teaching villagers in her native Colombia how to read.

And Embleton gets her rewards for the work, in memories such as that of a young Korean woman who was brought to Spokane to correct a life-threatening heart ailment. The surgery, performed on a New Year’s Eve, eliminated the child’s spells and dizziness and allowed her to walk for the first time.

Nevertheless, one day Embleton found her crying.

The girl was overcome at being able to do something as fundamental as walking, an act that caused her to pass out before the surgery.

“That has always stuck with me,” Embleton said.

To reach Embleton and Heal the Children call (805) 288-1957.

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