Sonia Valdez has a habit, and to support it she works two jobs and spends half her income. "I have to admit," she says, "that it consumes every area of my life." Most Saturday mornings, the Anaheim, Calif., nurse and single mom stuffs her 1989 Ford Bronco with sacks of rice, pinto beans, vitamins and candies and drives 1½ hours south to Tijuana, Mexico. In the city's desperately poor shantytowns, Valdez—often accompanied by her son Michael, 9, a couple of medical colleagues and a relative or two—distributes the goods to needy families. Her team also performs checkups and minor procedures on residents who otherwise lack even basic medical care. "Sonia gives 100 percent," says Abner Sanchez, 41, a Tijuana volunteer. "She is full of heart."
Valdez discovered her calling in 1990, when she joined her then-colleague, Dr. Tomio Hirota, on one of his monthly visits to Tijuana with a volunteer medical team. "It was the first time I saw so many needy people," she says. She soon began returning solo, even while nine months pregnant with Michael. After Hirota's death five years ago, Valdez, 36, agreed to run the project, and now spends some $500 a week and much of her free time on it.
Valdez's compassionate spirit is rooted in her own hardscrabble early years in Santa Ana, Calif., as the second of six children of a hard-drinking and abusive father (now in recovery). "I promised God that if He would get me out of that situation," Valdez says, "I would devote my life to helping others." That devotion was a factor, she admits, in the '99 breakup of her marriage to fellow nurse Anthony Valdez, 34. Her son has proven more understanding. "I realize," says Michael, "she has important work to do."
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