Journey of Hope : Thousand Oaks: A volunteer group has arranged free open-heart surgery at Los Robles hospital for an ailing teen-ager from Nicaragua.

Flanked by a large brown teddy bear that was given to her as a gift, young Sara Maria Sanchez gazed through the sun-lit window of her hospital room Wednesday and pondered the future.

Hours before, the petite, bedridden 16-year-old girl was with her family in a small, impoverished village outside of Rivas, Nicaragua.

Now, after an eight-hour flight to Los Angeles, a car trip to Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks and a million miles away from her loved ones, Sara awaited a miracle she has desperately needed for nearly two years.

Sara will undergo a two-hour open-heart surgery early today in a risky effort to repair or replace two faulty valves leading to and from her heart, a procedure that is not available in her country.

Sara has rheumatic heart disease. It developed nearly two years ago after she failed to receive adequate treatment for strep throat and rheumatic fever, said Dr. Mohammad Gharavi, leader of the team of doctors who will perform the surgery.

Normally, the open-heart surgery would cost between $35,000 and $50,000.

But thanks to Cris Embleton, director of the California chapter of Healing the Children, a nonprofit volunteer group that discovers and assists thousands of children around the world in need of medical care, Sara and her family have one less problem to worry about.

Embleton persuaded the medical center and the open-heart team of five doctors performing the surgery to donate the cost of the heart valves, if needed, as well as their time and use of the facilities. She also cajoled a major airline to provide Sara with a free plane ride from Nicaragua.

Meanwhile, Sara, who only speaks Spanish, said Wednesday through an interpreter that she remains amazingly optimistic about her surgery.

“She’s very happy to know that she’s going to have the surgery,” said Sara’s interpreter, Petrize Garcia. “She’s ready for whatever comes and she’s not afraid.”

“Sara is a miracle in herself,” said Embleton, who first met Sara and found out about her problem in February while visiting Nicaragua. “Having a child live in pain or misery is what we’re trying to prevent. If we can prevent that, we will.”

Volunteer doctors who traveled with Embleton to Nicaragua for Healing the Children examined Sara and immediately decided that she was long overdue for open-heart surgery, Embleton said.

Embleton then proceeded to contact several doctors and hospitals in California and stumbled across Los Robles Regional Medical Center in the yellow pages. She contacted Gharavi, director of the California Center for Cardiothoracic Surgery at Los Robles, and he agreed to perform the surgery at no cost.

“It’s been the effort of a lot of people to pull this thing together,” Embleton said. “They (doctors) have done everything possible to make this work for us.”

After her surgery, Sara will live with a foster family in Valencia for six to eight weeks while she recuperates. Then Sara will return to her family in Nicaragua, Embleton said.

Gharavi said the rheumatic fever has caused at least two of the teen-ager’s heart valves to close improperly, enlarging and overworking her heart and lungs. He said Sara’s aortic, mitral and tricuspid valves are affected, but he won’t know whether they need replacing until he begins surgery.

Healing the Children, which was founded in Spokane, Wash., in 1981 by Embleton and her husband, has branch offices in 13 states. Embleton said she started the organization after her adopted Korean daughter died before reaching age 1.

Embleton said she is also working to bring three more young children from Nicaragua and Russia to the U.S. for needed surgery in the next few months.