At an age when most people are burrowing into their careers, the Anaheim woman is building an international aid group from scratch. In just four years, she has turned her quixotic project to help Guatemala's native poor into what may be the largest privately funded aid program in the country. Xela Aid has delivered about $5 million in donated medical supplies since 1993 and has built a school high in the Tojalic mountains. Volunteer doctors have treated more than 2,500 villagers, people received prosthetic arms and legs, and optometrists examined 1,300 people in four days in the village of San Martin Chiquito.

Baer's goal is to establish a year-round humanitarian assistance program in a country where a 35-year civil war has left most of the rural populations destitute, cut off from basic medical care, and without vaccines that for a few pennies could save a child's life.
"She really is an incredible girl," said Rafael A. Salazar, Guatemala's consul general in Los Angeles who honored her at a 1994 black-tie dinner at which she received a standing ovation from hundreds of Guatemalans. "I say 'girl' because she is a girl playing with her dreams."

Photography by Gail Fisher | Los Angeles Times

Story by Tracy Weber, Times Staff Writer