Baja Family Sees 1 Hope to Save Baby : Medicine: Volunteer groups and county congressman rally to help girl with a failing heart who needs to live near Loma Linda hospital for treatment.

For the parents of 1-year-old Carolina Cortez, moving more than 600 miles from their Baja California home is the last hope for treating her life-threatening heart condition.

To be able to make the move, the Cortez family is counting on the same volunteers who helped bring them to Southern California last week from Vizcaino, Baja California. The nonprofit groups Baja Wings of Mercy and the Tustin-based Pointes of Light, with some government aid from Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), arranged for the arrival of the Cortezes and are helping them pursue medical treatment.

The Cortezes’ journey to save their daughter began in mid-July when the child’s father, Ernesto Cortez, went to the dirt airstrip outside Vizcaino where the Baja Wings of Mercy group regularly lands its plane. The Ontario missionary group has been bringing medical and dental aid down the peninsula monthly since 1986.

Cortez said he approached the pilot as a “last resort” after several Mexican doctors reached the same conclusion: Carolina’s restrictive heart valve is not pumping enough blood out, and her condition is inoperable.

“But we hoped that by coming to the United States,” Cortez said, “the doctors here could save our daughter.”

Baja Wings of Mercy joined forces with Pointes of Light, which has a network of about 400 businesses, hospitals and community members who donate services, time and medical care for county residents and for nine foreign children from countries including Latvia, Poland and the Philippines.

Cox assisted in arranging visitor visas for the family, said Nancy Fontaine, Pointes of Light director.

After arriving last week, Carolina was taken to the Loma Linda University Medical Center in San Bernardino County to undergo medical tests. Doctors there agreed with the diagnosis of the child’s Mexican physicians.

Her progressive heart disease can be temporarily eased through surgery, but doctors at the hospital determined that Carolina’s condition does not now warrant such a risky procedure.

“Loma Linda believes it is in the best interest not to proceed with surgery but to manage her on special cardiac medication,” said Susan Krider, clinical director of the Loma Linda International Heart Institute. “The kinds of medication she would need are not available in Baja.”

She added that the only option would be to fly Carolina on a bimonthly basis to the hospital for treatment.

A permanent cure for Carolina would be a heart transplant. However, Loma Linda officials are not optimistic about that because of a long waiting list.

The Cortezes had hoped that her condition would be operable and require long-term care so Carolina could enter the Open Hearts for Children program at Loma Linda. The program, funded by private donations, offers free services to children from Third World nations who have surgically correctable heart defects but do not have the procedure available in their countries.

However, the Open Hearts program is available only if the country has the medical support to manage children after they return home after surgery. Without such support in Mexico, the Cortezes decided Thursday that their only option to save Carolina is to move.

The Cortezes have two other daughters, ages 6 and 9, who will have to leave behind family and friends. And Ernesto Cortez will have to leave his job as technician at the water department, as well as interrupt work on his master’s thesis in agronomy.

Volunteers from Baja Wings of Mercy and Pointes of Light are trying to gain the approval of U.S. immigration officials so the family can move.

Cox will also be helping, but he predicted that it will be “an undertaking to get them moved here. . . . It’s certainly clear that (the move) will be a challenge, but I like to be optimistic.”