As seen in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on January 13, 2012.

It was a life-changing, chance encounter. In 2003, a nine-year-old Honduran girl with severely deformed legs met an orthopedic surgeon with a generous heart when he and his family went on a mission to the orphanage she called home. Once destined for a wheelchair, 18-year-old Angela today can dance and play soccer, thanks to Dr. Peter Daly of St. Paul.

Dr. Daly and Angela at the medical clinic

Called Rancho Santa Fe, the Honduran orphanage where they met is home to more than 500 orphans. On the 2,000 acre farm, located an hour from the capital of Tegucigalpa, children are nurtured, crops are tended and dreams sometimes come true.

Rancho Santa Fe is one of nine homes in the Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos organization. Started by the Rev. William Wasson in the 1950s, NPH now has facilities in Mexico, Haiti and Latin America.

Its mission is to provide a permanent home for abandoned, abused or orphaned children where they can be educated and taught a trade in a loving, Christian-based environment where they are part of a family.

The farm also includes a primary care medical clinic. During their first visit to Rancho Santa Fe, Peter Daly, a surgeon at Summit Orthopedics, and his wife, LuLu, a pediatric nurse, volunteered in the clinic.

After visiting with Angela, Peter Daly agreed to operate on her legs. While he originally planned to perform surgery in a semi-truck trailer that was converted into an operating theater, he ultimately took Angela to St. Paul, where she lived with the Dalys for a year while undergoing multiple surgeries that straightened her legs.

The experience got them hooked, Peter Daly said. Recognizing the need for a more suitable outpatient surgical facility than a tractor-trailer, the Dalys reached out to friends and family for financial support and established the Holy Family Surgery Center next to the primary care clinic at Rancho Santa Fe (holyfamilysurgerycenter.org). The goal is to provide same-day surgical procedures for both residents and local indigents who would otherwise not have access to health care.

Since its inception, the center has run entirely on donations. Physicians and nurses, local companies and hospitals have donated time, supplies and equipment to build what is now a three-room state-of-the-art surgical suite.

Donations are made through a non-profit, Friends of the Orphans (friendsof theorphans.org). With no salaried employees, 100 percent of donated funds is directed to medical care provided by volunteers, Peter Daly said.

Four times a year, the Dalys coordinate medical brigades to Rancho Santa Fe.

They spent this past week at the ranch with 70 volunteers, 40 of them medical personnel, including orthopedic and urology surgeons, anesthesiologists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and nurses. General surgeons, dermatologists and ear, nose and throat specialists have participated in the past.

“Three years ago we started off with two surgeries,” LuLu Daly said. This week they performed 65 surgeries and tended to more than 300 non-surgical patients.

Most volunteers hailed from the Twin Cities but LuLu Daly’s Chicago relatives helped in the kitchen, serving gourmet Italian meals. Volunteers also included 15 college students, 10 from the University of Notre Dame, which offered college credit through a global health seminar. By day the Notre Dame students assisted with sterile processing, admitted patients or observed surgeries. At night they attended lectures on topics such as the disparity between U.S. and Honduran medical care and malaria prevention.

Volunteers pay airfare and make a donation, which covers food and expenses of surgery, such as anesthesia gasses and medications.

Medical and non-medical personnel serve vital roles. Nurse director Beckie Hines took her electrician husband, Keith, on one trip. He wired the surgery center and hooked up the generator a California Rotary club donated. “We always have other people who bring skills that I don’t have so it’s a great orchestra of different talents that pull it together,” said Peter Daly.

The facility generally sits idle except when outside surgeons visit, which doesn’t enable the infrastructure of Honduran health care to be improved, the Dalys said. They are working to change that. Dr. Merlin Antunez, who grew up at the orphanage, hopes to run the surgery center once he completes his orthopedic surgical training. He not only will give back to the place that gave him a home, but will show other children it is possible to better their lives, LuLu Daly said.

While they always need additional medical volunteers, what they need most to grow and sustain the program is an endowment. In 2012 they will raise funds to build a conference center with additional sleeping quarters to accommodate more volunteers and an overnight observation unit for those who require longer immediate post-operative care.

Many NGOs (non-governmental organizations) provide medical care to developing countries. “What makes this experience different,” Peter Daly said, “is it’s a 2,000-acre property with all kinds of children and activities so there is a great variety of things for people to participate in.” A family can volunteer together and the parent who provides medical care can still spend time with them in a loving and magical place, he explained. “Plus they get to experience a developing country setting and see what life is like for people who don’t have what we have.”