Edgar
Amadeo, a 57-year-old truck driver with a third grade education, traveled from his home in Sucre, Bolivia, to the Cochabamba office of Puente de Solidaridad to plead for help with his newborn son, Edgar. Amadeo explained to the social worker that he had not intended to have kids at his age; he has three adult children from his marriage with his first wife who passed away 18 years ago. But his new partner, 38-year-old Santusa, was determined to have a child. Santusa has a fifth-grade education, and does not hold a job.
Edgar needed open heart surgery to repair a defective aortic valve. The surgery is unavailable in Sucre, so the baby was transferred by ambulance hours away to Cochabamba, where the family knows no one. Santusa was still recovering from the cesarean birth, so Amadeo traveled alone, struggling to navigate such a stressful and unknown situation.
Social worker Marizol Mamani rallied a specialized team to perform the open heart intervention at the Los Angeles clinic when Edgar was just 15 days old.