Volunteers Find a Whole Different World on the Other Side of the Border

Not only are there lots of wonderful places to visit in the world, but there are also many ways to visit them. You can take a cruise or go on a tour. Or you can do something more useful--and maybe more gratifying--by joining the Flying Samaritans. This loosely knit organization, with 1,300 members and 16 chapters in California and Arizona, provides medical assistance in rural Mexico, chiefly Baja California.

Many Flying Samaritans members are women who, like Aileen Saunders Mellott, one of the group's founders, have come to love the people and landscape of the 800-mile-long Baja peninsula.

The story of the organization's beginnings sounds like something out of an adventure travel book. In the fall of 1961, Mellott (whose last name then was Saunders) was flying her six-seat Beech Twin Bonanza home to San Diego from Cabo San Lucas when she ran into a dust storm. An intrepid traveler and pilot who had worked with the Coast Guard Auxiliary Search and Rescue team, Mellott made a forced landing on a lonely mesa near the hamlet of El Rosario.

The Baja outback is a wild, unwelcoming place, and it looked as if she and her five passengers were in for a hard night. But a rattletrap truck appeared out of nowhere, dispatched by the doyenne of El Rosario, Don~a Anita Espinoza (who had seen the plane come down). The group was fed and sheltered that night, and extra fuel was found so they could take off the next morning.

To thank the good Samaritans who rescued her, Mellott gathered food, clothing and toys and flew them to El Rosario for Christmas, accompanied by a group of volunteers who included Dale Hoyt, a physician who lived near San Diego. He had brought his doctor's bag, and he performed the first Flying Sams examination of a villager on Don~a Anita's kitchen table. Seeing the unmet needs of the townspeople, Hoyt vowed to return with doctors, nurses and medical supplies, which is what the Flying Sams have been doing for nearly 40 years.

The story is moving to me, especially because my brother John and I ran into trouble in Baja and were likewise rescued. John's four-wheel-drive got stuck on a deserted dirt road in the Parque Nacional Sierra de San Pedro Martir, and no matter what we did, we couldn't get the vehicle out of the sand trap. After spending a long, cold night in a tent, we were rescued by two Mexican men, who hooked our vehicle to their Land Rover and pulled us out. They wouldn't accept money for the good deed. Helping people in distress was second nature to them--something I keep in mind when I read reports about the dangers of traveling in rural Mexico.