May 20, 2015—Today I said goodbye to someone who had a huge impact on my family’s life. A remembrance service took place for Paul Pinkerton of Manheim, Pennsylvania, who earlier this month lost his lengthy battle with cancer.

In the late 1960s, Paul was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. In the 1980s he was drawn back to Vietnam, first to look for soldiers missing in action and then to help that country’s children. For a number of years, Paul and his wife Sandy facilitated adoptions for more than 300 families, including mine, helping children from Vietnamese orphanages find permanent homes.

Paul and Sandy came into my life in 2002 when, after many years of toying with the idea of an international adoption, I decided to finally pursue it. In July of that year I was assigned a newborn baby girl who had just come to Tam Binh Orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City. At that time foreign families adopting children were required to make two trips to Vietnam. My first trip came in September. I boarded a flight from Dulles International Airport to Seoul, South Korea, where I first met Paul and Sandy and the other families in my adoption group. From there we flew to Ho Chi Minh City where we briefly met “our” babies and filed the required paperwork to initiate our adoptions. The five families in our group returned to Vietnam November 4, 2002, to finalize our adoptions.

Many times a well-meaning person has commented on how lucky my daughter is because I adopted her. But really, I am the lucky one. Thanks to this Vietnam veteran who took on a new mission of helping children in that country, my life is enriched with the presence of a beautiful, kind-hearted girl who loves to dance, cook, ride the largest roller coasters in the amusement park, and explore the world with great energy, excitement, and enthusiasm.

But Paul’s mission did not end when adoptions from Vietnam were stopped for six years beginning in 2008, or with his death. In 2004 he, Sandy, and some of their friends founded a charity, Paul’s Kids Vietnam Children’s Charity, that helps Vietnamese children by providing money to pay for much needed things like school tuition, medical care, and physical therapy equipment for those with handicaps who remain in orphanages there. His legacy continues through this organization, and through the 300 plus families, including mine, who can’t imagine what life would be like if we had never met Paul and Sandy Pinkerton.