April 22 at 7:16PM — Rajan Kaur and her husband, Sukdev Saini, and daughters Daisy, 12, and Rosy 7, arrived in San Francisco for the beautiful event on Sunday when Rajan will be given the award as Unsung Hero of Compassion by the Dalai Lama at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in San Francisco. The family's radient faces told us they survived and even enjoyed their first plane flight and their first trip to the US. None of the family has ever traveled outside of India. Their excitement and happiness at being here is complete. I asked Rajan, a teacher in her very soul, what she felt about her first plane ride. "I was a little dizzy as we lifted off from Varanasi. Then Rosy had many questions for me about what we were seeing out the windows, about the clouds and so forth, so I turned the flight into a science lesson for her."
Peter Lemieux, Rajan's host until Saturday, met us at the airport and took Rajan and her family home with him to San Francisco. Rachel Davies, from Ohio, and a long time Buddha's Smile volunteer and friend of the Saini family, flew in at the same time so was there also to welcome Rajan and her family. Thursday, April 23, Peter and his wife Karen took Rajan and family on a tour of San Francisco, the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate bridge. And in the evening, Margaret Cullen in Berkeley hosted Rajan and family and the Lemieuxs for a dinner at her home.
began in 1980 when Karen Hanson Kotoske raised enough money from family and friends to provide food and medical care for several Huichol villages in Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental. Since then Amistad has expanded around the globe, to India, Africa, and Asia.