Returning the Favor --and More

When missionary Linda Mendez was 10 months old, her grandmother noticed that her legs went out from under her whenever the toddler tried to take her first tentative baby steps. At her grandmother’s urging, Mendez’s parents took her to Orthopaedic Hospital in downtown Los Angeles, where doctors identified a congenital hip problem.

Even though the family could not afford the $10,000 in medical costs, doctors still treated Linda, strapping braces on her legs.

A year later, she was able to walk on her own.

Mendez became a cardiology technician and owned a health food store before she stopped working to begin raising a family in 1977. But Mendez never forgot the care she received at Orthopaedic Hospital.

Now 43, the Pasadena resident is returning the favor. A missionary with Missions of the Lords’ Foundation, a Pasadena-based organization that she founded in 1987, she offers her services as a volunteer, counseling children who are going through experiences similar to her own and giving inspirational speeches at fund-raisers and to other hospital volunteers and staff. She also makes several visits a year to the Mexican town of San Felipe on the Baja Peninsula to help impoverished people there.

“Had I not received treatment [at such an early age] I would have ended up in a full body cast and crippled for life,” Mendez said. “It changed my life. I have been able to help thousands of people here and in Mexico.”

Founded as a children’s clinic in 1911, Orthopaedic Hospital’s mission is to provide medical care to children, regardless of their families’ ability to pay. The hospital logs more than 2,000 pediatric visits each month and treats more than 10,000 children annually, free of charge, through the Los Angeles Hospital Orthopaedic Hospital Foundation.

Mendez said her charity work began 10 years ago, when she volunteered to help at skid row’s Fred Jordan Mission, where family members have been volunteering for 65 years.

A homemaker and mother of two who is devoted to her church, the First Foursquare Church of Pasadena, she helps the mission prepare hundreds of sacks of groceries, boxes of clothes and stacks of Bibles for distribution to the poor. She also serves as a translator for mission president Willie Jordan at speaking engagements.

“The mission was the training ground for me,” Mendez said. “You start with a couple cars and a group of volunteers. People hear about what you do and it grows.”

In 1987, Mendez began volunteer work in San Felipe, a Mexican fishing village two hours south of the border. She and her husband, Fausto, had taken their two children, Rebekah and Nick, for family vacations there because it was one of her grandfather’s favorite fishing spots.

Seeking a way to ease the stark poverty in San Felipe, Mendez organized a program to deliver toys and food to the village for Christmas. That first year, 20 volunteers took a truck filled with donated goods including 2,000 handcrafted wooden toys, 1,000 bags of food, 200 pairs of shoes and 42 bicycles. The contributors came mainly from small and large corporations, community groups and schools throughout Los Angeles County.

The effort was halted after four years because of difficulties taking food and other goods across the border.

Mendez also has aided Mexican children in need of medical care as part of the Orthopaedic Hospital’s International Children’s Program. Once a month, doctors and volunteers screen patients and provide X-rays, braces and casts at the hospital’s satellite clinic in Calexico.

It was while the volunteers were making Christmas deliveries to San Felipe that Mendez came up with another idea. Struck by the substandard housing of those she was trying to help, Mendez organized a volunteer effort to build homes for families in San Felipe.

The Garzas were one such family. Three family members--a mother, father and son--were crammed into a 12-by-12-foot shack, about the size of a horse corral, with a dirt floor and walls made of torn plywood and cardboard.

“It was small and we didn’t have running water,” said son Lenin Fernando Zaracho Garza, 20, who visited Mendez recently at her Pasadena home. “Linda came and helped our family. We live in a three-bedroom house with running water and lights now.”

In the past five years, Mendez estimated, about $30,000 in materials and other donations have been used to build six houses and repair several others in and around San Felipe.

Eventually, Mendez said, she hopes to start an operation similar to the Fred Jordan Mission in San Felipe to offer help and spiritual guidance to residents.

“You start small and your vision gets bigger,” Mendez said. “It’s kind of a spiritual thing. It’s hard to explain. But if you pray a lot it becomes clear to you after a while what you’re supposed to do.”

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Today’s centerpiece focuses on the efforts of Linda Mendez, an Orthopaedic Hospital volunteer and missionary who helps homeless families in Los Angeles and San Felipe, Mexico. For more information, call the Orthopaedic Hospital Foundation at (213) 742-1500.