Mar. 29, 2005 Loma Linda, California, United States

Richard B. Weismeyer/ANN Staff

Twelve-year-old Asadullah wants what every adolescent dreams of—freedom. Freedom to run and play with his friends without worrying about the warring factions in his native Afghanistan, or whether the nickel-size hole in his heart will let him run more than a few steps at a time.

Thanks in large part to Layne Pace, a chief warrant officer with the Utah National Guard in the United States, Asadullah is getting the chance to live a longer, healthier life. Pace, who used his off-hours to fly sick Afghan villagers to hospitals at Bagram Air Base North of Kabul, found the boy in the village of Jegdalek, 50 miles from Kabul.

“He was blue. He was always hunkered over trying to catch his breath. He would collapse on us,” says Pace.

As an Apache attack helicopter pilot, Pace wanted to remember more than just offensive missions from his time in Afghanistan. The town of Jegdalek, which still bears scars from the Soviet invasion more than 25 years ago, seemed an apt place to fly humanitarian missions. Pace met Asadullah shortly after beginning his flights to the village last fall.

“I didn’t have a clue how we could help,” Pace remembers thinking. Army cardiologist Col. Steven Jones was able to diagnose Asadullah with either a heart valve disorder or a condition in which oxygen-replenished blood in the heart mixes with oxygen-depleted blood returning from the blood stream. Tests confirmed that the boy had a hole in his heart that allows blood going in to mix with blood going out. Asadullah’s heart defect leaves him with about one-third less oxygen in his bloodstream.

This problem requires advanced medical equipment necessary to support delicate heart surgery, equipment not available in Afghanistan.

Pace began e-mailing family and friends back home in Utah. He had no idea how large a ripple his e-mail pebble would make.

Shelby Everett belongs to an e-mail Afghanistan support group and, after seeing Pace’s correspondence, knew the boy needed to be taken to Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital.  The Seventh-day Adventist health care institution has a global reputation for children’s healthcare. Her husband, American television actor Chad Everett, is spokesman for “Gift of Life,” a Rotary International-sponsored program that helps finance medical care for children around the world. The Gift of Life program helped a young boy from the Philippines travel to Loma Linda for open-heart surgery in August of 2004.

The program helped raise awareness for Asadullah’s condition, and soon Jet Blue and Pakistani Airlines agreed to provide the 25-hour flight needed to get to Southern California for no charge. While there, the hospital and other charitable groups provided for the boy’s remaining expenses, and those of his father.

“I want them to fix my heart,” Asadullah says before the surgery through his interpreter, Mohd Ayub, country director for the Afghanistan project at the Loma Linda University Center in Kabul.

“He cannot walk,” says his father, Sarbazkhan. “He would like to play. I hope they can fix my son’s heart. Then he should have a good life.”

On Feb. 4 a medical team led by professor of surgery Leonard L. Bailey, M.D., successfully repaired the hole in Asadullah’s heart. Asadullah returned to his native Afghanistan last week where he rejoined his mother and eight siblings.

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