Allah

Sent Me
an Angel
Todd Shea is an unlikely savior.
But the people he helps dont
care that he was once a crack
addictor know that theyve
also been saviors to him.
By Salma Hasan Ali
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SHAHIDUL ALAM

At a holiday celebration, Todd Shea hands out teddy bears and toys to the
kids of Chikar, an isolated Kashmiri village.

44 | WASHINGTONIAN JULY 2010

Todd Sheas clinics in the earthquake-ravaged region of Kashmir are often the only source of health care. His main hospital is near Zalzala Lake,
created when a mountain split apart after a 2005 quake that killed 79,000 people.

JULY 2010 WASHINGTONIAN | 45

46 | WASHINGTONIAN JULY 2010

Family photographs courtesy of John H. DeFord-Williams

unaid sits on a bed, his legs stretched out under a gray blanket
in his familys two-room house in Chikar, a mountainside village in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Even inside the house,
a black wool cap and layers of donated clothes are the childs
chief defense against the winter cold. As Uncle Todd walks
in, Junaids face breaks into a bright smile.
Howre you doin, buddy? Todd Shea
says, giving Junaid a hug. Shea turns to the
boys father: Is he doing the exercises the
physical therapist taught him? Are you putting the leg braces on that we got for him?
Is the tutor coming regularly?
Junaid was five when an earthquake devastated Kashmir on October 8, 2005. His legs
were injured when the walls of his house collapsed. Doctors said hed never walk.
Some 79,000 people died that day; hundreds of thousands were injured. More
than 3 million were displaced. Children
were the most affected. They had just
arrived at school when the earth shook at
8:50 AM. Thousands were buried in their
classrooms; 9,000 schools
were destroyed.
Three years later, in
2008, Junaids father took
him to the only healthcare facility in this village
tucked into the foothills of
the Himalayas. There they
met Todd Shea.
Allah sent me an angel,
says Junaids father.
At five-eleven and 260
pounds, with a beard and
red hair, the 43-year-old
Shea looks more like a lumberjack than someone youd
find managing health-care
centers in Pakistan.
At top, little Todd with his parents; the family lived in Laurel. After his mothers death, he found solace in the guitar and
Raised in Laurel, he is
eventually played with popular bands. Now the hub of his life is his office at the hospital he started in Kashmir.
the founder and executive
and I visited Junaid and his family. His mother made us tea and served
director of Comprehensive Disaster Response Services, an organizabiscuits and berries. Junaid was eager to show us what hed learned.
tion that provides medical and humanitarian relief in disaster-affected
areas. CDRS is headquartered in Chikar, where it employs 45 people He wrote the alphabet and numbers in a notebook, writing each line
with precision. Zabardast, Junaidzabardast, buddy, Shea said in
and manages 12 health-care centers, some near the line of control with
Urdu. Zabardast means awesome.
India. The centers are mainly government facilities. CDRS manages
Junaids father strapped on the boys leg braces. I held Junaids
six of them entirely, hiring and paying staff, providing medicines and
hands as he walked across the room, looking down to situate each
supplies, and running day-to-day operations; it provides logistical supstep, then looking up, beaming with pride. Before we left, he sang a
port for the other six.
song he had made up for Uncle Todd.
If someone had told me when I was growing up that Id be living
Since the earthquake in 2005, CDRS centers have seen more than
in Kashmir doing this, Id have told em they were crazy, says Shea.
400,000 patients. Each visit costs the organization about $1.80. As
I should have been dead years ago of a cocaine overdose.
the only source of health care in these isolated areas, the clinics are
often the difference between life and death.
For Junaid, CDRS means a chance to walk again. Rizwan Shabir, Todd Sheas journey to Pakistan began in Howard County, where he
one of the two doctors at the Chikar clinic, figured out that Junaid in was born in 1966. His mother worked at a lighting-fixture company; his
fact wasnt paralyzed and that with physical therapy he might regain father was an intelligence analyst with the National Security Agency.
One evening, as Todd Shea and I drove around Laurel and Columbia,
the ability to walk. Shea arranged for Junaid to go to school and for
where he went to high school, he showed me the house he grew up in,
transportation to the clinic for therapy several afternoons a week.
When I traveled to Chikar in late November to see Sheas work, he the schools he never went to, and the places he used to hang out.

I wasnt planned, he says. I was a real bastardin more ways

than one, Ive heard.
Shea was an overweight, quiet kid who got picked on at school. He
liked monster movies, playing with dinosaurs, and making model ships.
At age ten, he became passionate about music. His favorite band was
Kiss, and he would sing their songs, using a broomstick as a guitar. One
of his favorite childhood memories is of his mother taking him to a Kiss
concert at the Capital Centre in Largo.
But when Shea was 12, his mother took an overdose of Valium and
ended up in the hospital, where she died two weeks later from complications. She never meant to kill herself, Shea says.
He skipped school, started taking drugs, got into fights, was
arrested. There wasnt any kid more troubled than me, he says. I
was not a nice persona little bit angry and ready to fight anyone.
His guitar brought him solace. His mother had bought it for him
just before she died. He taught himself to play, strumming Van Halen
and AC/DC songs until he figured out the notes.
Music saved me from depression and suicide, he says. Its how
I used to keep close to my mom.
At 16, about to fail ninth grade for the third time, Shea was sent to
Glaydin, an alternative school outside Leesburg, on the recommenda-

tion of two teachers. There he met kids with similar issues. He went into
therapy and got into better physical shape. In the 11 months he was
there, he made up grades 9, 10, and 11. When he returned to Hammond High School in Columbia, he made the honor roll, joined the
football team, dated a cheerleader, and graduated with his class.
But I wasnt ready to go back to the same life so soon, he says.
Same friends, same drugs so close by. He started doing drugs again
and hanging out with the wrong crowd. By the time he was 18, he
was addicted to crack cocaine. I knew I was going to die. I didnt
want to end this way.
Shea joined the Marine Corps and was headed to Parris Island to
clean up his act. The night before he left, friends threw him a goingaway party.
There was a Mount Everest of coke on the table, he recalls. It
took a month and a half before the Marines got the results of his urine
test and kicked him out. In the meantime, he had detoxed.
Says Shea: Can you imagine going through drug withdrawal and
boot camp at the same time?
Back in Laurel, he stayed with a friends foster parents. They knew of a
country-rock band looking for a guitar player. He tried out, joined the
JULY 2010 WASHINGTONIAN | 47

band, and spent several years playing at clubs and bars across the country, even a few times at the White House and the Kennedy Center.
At 23, Shea married Robin Bledsoe, who was pregnant with their
child. They had met at Fattys nightclub in Rockville, where he was
performing. They separated two years later but have remained married because her job provides Shea with health-care benefits. They
share custody of their son, Justin, now 19 and a junior honors student
at St. Marys College of Maryland.
By his early thirties, having played in bands and on his own in Nashville and Panama City, Shea wanted a record deal. He moved to New
York and started a group called Broken Glass. At a Long Island restaurant, he met Dan Panitz, a songwriterand CEO of a substanceabuse-counseling business. They hit it off. Panitz introduced Shea to
Al Sirowitz, who became his producer, and Sid Bernstein, the promoter
who had brought the Beatles to America. Bernstein liked Sheas music,
and a showcase was scheduled at CBGBs Gallery in Manhattan on
September 12, 2001.
On September 11, Shea was staying at a hotel in Queens. Sirowitz
called early that morningthey had planned to spend the day at the
recording studioand told him the news. I stood watching the Twin
Towers burn from my hotel window, Shea says.
I didnt want to go to Ground Zero, he adds. I just felt I had
to.
Shea began working with a disaster-relief center at Chelsea Piers.
He loaded his bands van with Gatorade and fruit, assuming that his
clearance for Ground Zero had been called ahead by someone at the
center.
Picture this long-haired dude driving a beat-up 1985 conversion
van trying to explain to a police officer why he was trying to get into
a highly restricted area without a pass, he says.
Police eventually cleared him, and Shea made several trips delivering
drinks to firefighters and police officers throughout lower Manhattan.
He set up a makeshift dispensary on a street corner to distribute dust
masks, medicine, and snacks donated by area pharmacies and stores.
September 11 marked a turning point. Shea found himself addicted
to a new kind of high: disaster relief.
For the next three years, Shea worked with Panitzs counseling company, which was in financial trouble. Dealing with creditors to cut
costs and stave off lawsuits, he helped stabilize the business, but the
company ultimately was destroyed in a Medicaid investigation initiated by New Yorks thenattorney general, Eliot Spitzer.
Shea was devastatedand still is incensed. I love my country, he
says, but the way this company was maliciously attacked showed me
an ugly side of our justice system. The Constitution was trampled on.
My friends due process was violated.
Says Sheas uncle, John H. DeFord-Williams: Todds very protective of people he cares about; hes like a mother cat to kittens.
Shea is less sentimental: Im like a pit bull. If I latch onto something I believe in, I will never give up.
He slid into depression. I was heartbroken, exhausted, pissed off,
ruined, he says. I didnt even have enough money to buy my son
a meal. He left for Florida, where his girlfriend, Michele Richburg,
lived. One day he found himself sitting at the edge of a bridge, trying
to time his fall so a train would hit him before he fell to the tracks. A
call from Michele to his cell phone saved his life.
When the Asian tsunami struck in 2004, Shea again found a purpose. He joined a group hed found online that was headed to Sri
Lanka to rebuild homes. Panitz paid for his airline ticket and some
living expenses. In Sri Lanka he met Alison Thompson, a documentary filmmaker who had arrived from New York to help. Shea was
48 | WASHINGTONIAN JULY 2010

inspired by Thompsons tenacity in setting up a relief organization; he

attributes much of his confidence in starting CDRS to her example.
Shea was planning a benefit concert for tsunami relief in New York when
Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005. The Battery Park City Community Emergency Response Team, with which he had worked at Ground
Zero, contacted Shea to help find some boats. Shea got the Zodiac boat
company in Eastern Maryland to donate 26 inflatable rubber rafts. He
drove them to Louisiana in a truck donated by the Maryland Emergency Management Agency. He worked in New Orleans helping the
Armys 82nd Airborne Division and other search-and-rescue teams.
When the waters receded, he rescued pets trapped in the homes of
evacuees and helped animal-rescue teams set up shelters.
I dont have any business going into collapsed or burning buildings, Shea says. I dont know how to save lives. Im no doctor. But
what I do know is how to make arrangements and get supplies to
people so they can focus on saving lives.
In October 2005, after a month in Louisiana, he returned to Maryland to visit his son. He and Justin were sitting down to a pizza at Justins mothers Rockville apartment when Shea turned on the TV and
saw news of the earthquake in Kashmir. He said, I have to go.
Shea describes the feeling as a compulsion: I knew if I said no to
this voice inside me, I would never forgive myself.
He found the number of the Pakistan Embassy in Washington and
left a message volunteering to help. The embassy put him in touch
with Operation Heartbeat, a group of doctors from George Washington University Hospital headed to Kashmir.
When Shea arrived in Pakistana country he knew nothing about
Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent lawyer and a friend of Operation Heartbeats coordinators, arranged for him to fly on a US Army Chinook
helicopter to Kashmir.
Operation Heartbeat had set up a triage center on a cricket field
in a small town called Garhi Dupatta. A second field hospital with a
few tents was set up 18 miles away in Chikar, a village nearly leveled
by the earthquake. In both places, volunteer doctors from around
the world were treating the injured, working without sophisticated
diagnostic equipment.
Shea again proved he could get things done. Soon he was procuring supplies, meeting with the Pakistani army, managing local Kashmiris and Operation Heartbeat volunteers, and coordinating with
other relief organizations.
Several months after the earthquake, as international aid and government support started to dissipate and relief agencies got ready to leave,
Shea decided to stay in Pakistan, knowing that the real work remained
unfinished. Hundreds of doctors offices and clinics had been destroyed.
Tens of thousands of people were without access to health care.
Ive never seen children so beat up, he recalls. I didnt have
any plan to stay in Kashmir. I just saw incredible need. And people
asked me to stay.
I heard about Shea last summer from cousins who had met him at
a Washington event. As I was telling them about a trip Id made to
Pakistan with Greg Mortensonauthor of the bestseller Three Cups of
Tea, about the authors efforts to build schools in that countrythey
told me about another American
doing remarkable work in the
Government health centers
in prefab structures are part
region. The following week, a
of the health-care effort. They
story about Shea appeared in the
sit next to the main building,
New York Times. A month later, I
where Shea convenes the
was attending a conference about
staff of all 12 clinics.

JULY 2010 WASHINGTONIAN | 49

Kashmir on Capitol Hill where Shea was a speaker.

He and I talked for almost two hours between sessions in the Rayburn Building. We were interrupted often as people stopped to greet
and hug him. It was clear Shea was a larger-than-life character
strong-willed, passionate, fearless, reckless, impolitic. His voice is loud
and he can hardly get his words out fast enough.
With Shea, what you see is what you get. And what you get is noholds-barred bluntness. Consider what he said at the Kashmir conference that afternoon: India has over 600,000 troops in Kashmir,
a place one-sixth the size of Iraq, where the US has 140,000 troops.
I think that makes the worlds largest democracy the worlds largest
hypocrite. . . . I love the Indian people. If there was an earthquake,
Ill go there in a minute. But what the Indian government is doing
in Kashmir is sorry and outrageous.
I asked Shea if he had read Three Cups of Tea. He said hed read the
book on a flight to Pakistan two years ago. Shea and Mortenson met
briefly last summer at an event in California. Hes an inspiring guy;
hes the real deal, Shea says of Mortenson. Hes shown Americans
the true way to embrace that part of the world.
Shea is thinking about writing his own book. His working title: From
Crackistan to Pakistan. Given his sense of humor, he might be serious.
At the end of our conversation, he sang a song he had written, Little
Feet, which he wants to make available as a download from his Web site
to raise money for CDRS. So there in the Rayburn Building, with bells
ringing and congressional aides rushing to meetings, was a former crack
addict turned humanitarian singing about the pitter-patter of children.
I decided I had to get back to Pakistan to see Shea in action.

kitchen, a dining room, and a few rooms for staff. Shea sleeps on a
mattress on the floor in one of the rooms with three roommates; a
bathroom is across the hall.
Theres no heat or hot water, and the electricity goes out for at least
half of every day. A generator runs medical equipment and Sheas
laptop in emergencies. For five months, the temperature inside the
house is as cold as it is outside, hovering near freezing in January and
February. Most of the 20 staffers live here. Two doctors and several
medical assistants are on call 24/7.
I arrive during Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice, a Muslim holiday commemorating the story of Abrahams willingness to sacrifice his
son Ishmael (Isaac in the Bible) to fulfill Gods command. The government health facility is closed for official holidays. For the next few
days, patients stream into CDRS, which is open 365 days a year.
Begum Jaan, perhaps 60 years old, covered in blankets and with a
shawl over her head, is lying in one of the patient wards three beds
looking fragile and scared. She is recovering from a heart attack. On
the next bed is a young girl with shortness of breath. She has seen
several goats slaughtereda custom during Eid al-Adhaand feels
dizzy. That evening, a father brings in a baby who has been suffering
a high fever for several days.
Whenever Shea hears a baby cry, he makes his way to the ward.
Whats wrong with this little one? he asks, holding the child in his
arms. Its okayyoure going to be okay.
The next day, a young man of about 20 is rushed in. He has almost
severed his hand while chopping trees. If we hadnt bandaged his
hand, he would have bled to death by the time he reached the nearest hospital, says Saad, a medical technician. Later, a woman in her
mid-thirties who has been beaten arrives with her mother. Her uncle,
who struck her with a broom, comes, too. He claims she threw a rock
at him and chipped his tooth.
Three out of four CDRS patients are women and children; one
in ten is an emergency case. There are no x-ray facilities, blood-testing labs, or sophisticated instrumentsdiagnoses generally are made

Four months later, were driven in a beat-up Jeep around switchback

roads up and down mountains for about six hours, from Islamabad
to Chikar, located in the mountains at about 6,000 feet. Kashmir is
disputed territory. Pakistan and India have fought two wars over it.
The nuclear neighbors continue to agitate, making the region one of
the most volatile in the world.
Kashmir is also one of the worlds most beautiful places. Mountains
reach to the sky. Forests brim with pine and fir
trees. Waterfalls cascade down tree-lined slopes
to cobalt rivers in the valley. But the drive is
treacherous. The earthquake sliced many mountains, and roads still havent been rebuilt.
Mammu (Uncle), as CDRS staffers call
him, is a skilled driver. He is also devout, a
trait that brings a measure of comfort to hairpin turns with only inches between the Jeep
and the River Jhelum thousands of feet below.
But sometimes Mammu takes his hands off the
wheel and cups them in supplicationand then
I begin to pray.
CDRS headquarters is a three-story building
with a wraparound balcony on a hilltop with
spectacular views of the Himalayas. It was one
of the few buildings left standing after the earthquake because of its solid concrete construction with steel reinforcements. CDRS rents it
for about $200 a month. Last year, when one
of the landlords tried to triple the rent, Shea
got so mad that he smashed his head through a
window. His scalp now has a three-inch scar.
On the main floor are a general ward, a minor
operation theater, a dental unit, and a dispenThere are no x-ray facilities or blood labs, but the health centers have treated more than
400,000 patients since 2005. Most of the patients are women and children.
sary. The lower level houses Sheas office, a
50 | WASHINGTONIAN JULY 2010

enough to run the clinics. In return, all citizens will receive primary
and emergency care, vaccinations, medicine, ambulance service, and
other benefits. He estimates that two-thirds of the villages in the
area can afford to pay, and he hopes government and private donors
will make up the difference. Since October 2009, more than 10,000
people have signed up.

At the Chikar clinic, a woman whos been beaten by her uncle seeks a
medical exam required for a police report.

through clinical evaluations. More-serious cases are referred to the

nearest hospitaldepending on the emergency, either in Muzaffarabad two hours away or Rawalpindi six hours away.
Shea started CDRS with two grants totaling $116,000 from Direct
Relief International, a nonprofit medical-relief organization that was
familiar with Sheas earthquake-relief work. He raises about $200,000
a year to keep the clinics going, mainly through fundraisers, particularly in Orange County, California, where the CDRS board is based.
More than half of the money comes from the Pakistani-American
community, mostly from doctors.
Half of the budget covers employee salaries; a medical technician
makes about $1,700 a year. The remaining funds cover rent, supplies,
medicine, food, fuel, car rental, Sheas travel, and other expenses.
Shea keeps costs low by not spending money on security, as other
NGOs in the region do. He feeds his staff for about $6,000 a year.
Plus, he says, whenever I travel there are at least ten Pakistani
families willing to feed me.
In the past 4 years, Shea has taken less than $36,000 in total
salary.
Sheas goal is not to create a parallel health-care system but to
enhance the effectiveness of what is already in place. He is setting up
a community insurance program to empower villagers to take charge
of their own health-care needs. He calls it SHINE Pakistan: Sustainable Health Care Initiatives Now Empowering Pakistan. He figures
if each person in a 40-square-mile area who can afford it pays 25
rupees a month (about 30 cents), it will generate $20,000 a month,

Shea attributes his skills in disaster relief to his life experiences. Losing
his mother at a young age made him self-reliant, he says: You have
no one to count on but yourself. Managing a band and being on the
road taught him how to run a business, and his work with Panitzs
company taught him about crisis management.
Im so good at disaster relief because my life has been such a disaster, he says.
Shea attributes his sense of commitment to his mother. She would
give her last dime to someone she felt needed it more, he says. Just
before she died, he recalls, they were on a busy highway at night,
barely moving in traffic, when she asked her son to look around at all
the headlights and taillights. There are people in these cars, she said,
each one with their own lives, each with their own hurts. There are
so many people out there suffering; we need to all help each other.
Mammu says of Shea: There are some people in this world in whose
heart God has put this passion; they were born to help other people.
Tim Murray, a buddy from Sheas youth, says Shea always had compassion: Hes the type of person who wouldnt harm a bug. Hes
always there to please somebody. Hes simply a kind person.
Sheas view is more matter-of-fact: Youve got to start somewhere.
And this is where Ive started.
Ayesha Mian, a psychiatrist who was with Shea after the Kashmir
earthquake as well as more recently in Haiti, says Shea has an unconventional working style: He has little time for protocol. Hes not
going to chase red tape. The hotness in his character can be both
positive and negative. He gets the job done, but sometimes his
style doesnt help in building relationships. But his heart is in the
right place.
Shea admits he has a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde personality. Once, a doctor
was late getting to the clinic and a child needed attention. Shea located
the doctor, ordered him out of his car, backed him to the edge of the
mountain, and berated him. If someone wants to be a dishonest idiot,
thats one thing, Shea says, but if people are going to suffer because
of it, then thats going to get me every time.
Dr. Jekyll surfaces more often, as is evident when we meet a young
girl, Nadira, outside her home, not far from the clinic. She tells me she
had to drop out of school after fifth grade so her younger siblings had a
chance to learn. Shea talked to her mother and arranged to pay for her
tuition and books so she could start school again the next day. When
I ask Nadira what she wants to be when she grows up, she says, I will
be a doctor. Shea makes a deal with her: Hell arrange for her education through medical school if she agrees to come back to her village
to practice medicine.
Once, when Shea was performing at a school for special-needs
children, a young girl in a wheelchair was singing along to his Urdu
song. Struck by her beautiful voice, Shea asked her mother if he could
arrange for a singing coach. He now pays for her transportation and
voice lessons.
If Shea didnt have the security of a loving family growing up, he
seems to have found it in Pakistan. Mothers there embrace him as a
son. They call him Raja Todd (Prince Todd). They pray for him. His
team, working long hours, some months without salary, is devoted
to him. The sentiment voiced by many is that if Shea can come from
( C O N T I N U E D O N PAG E 9 5 )
JULY 2010 WASHINGTONIAN | 51

Allah Sent Me an Angel

continued from page51

so far away to help them, they can at least do

their part.
Shea spends most of his time in Chikar and
visits his son in Maryland several times a year
when he comes for fundraising and speaking trips. Two years ago, Justin celebrated
his 18th birthday in Chikar and plans to go
again. Justin is thinking about going to law
school after college and is also interested in
humanitarian relief. He, too, plays guitar.
Says Sheas longtime friend Norman
Kerner, a songwriter turned conventions
manager whom Shea stays with in Gaithersburg: From the moment his wife gave
birth, Todds been a tremendous father. Hes
raised his son beautifully, maybe to make up
for what happened to him. Justin knows his
fathers looking out for him.
My dad may be a little rough around the
edges, says Justin, but hes always been
about helping people. I respect him more
than anybody else in the world.
Sheas relationship with his girlfriend,
Michele, is on again, off again. Its not fair
to her for me to be gone all the time, he says,
and she doesnt want to live in the mountains
of Pakistan. He doesnt hold out much hope
of finding someone who does: Im not much
of a catch for somebody. I have my moods,
you knowand Im no spring chicken. Even
I wouldnt recommend being with me.
Shea ultimately wants to bridge the divide
between Pakistan and the United States. Hes
vocal about what he sees as US foreign-policy
mistakes in the region and Americas responsibility toward Pakistan.
After Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Pakistan last October, Shea wrote in a
public letter to her:
Pakistani citizens are dying in their own
streets and the army is going after the extremists that America planted and then abandoned
in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan
after the Soviet Union was defeated in the
80s, leaving a poor nation to deal alone with
the brutal and destructive aftermath of three
million refugees and a severe shortage of
schools, hospitals, rehabilitation, and hope.
Its not Pakistans fault that America didnt
live up to its lofty principles and instead made
horrible decisions that helped steer the world
towards a collision course with disaster.
Shea also wants to correct some of Americans misconceptions about Pakistan and
Islam. People probably imagine Im dodging bullets and rocks and hiding behind buildings from Osama bin Laden, he says. Many
of my friends thought Id be dead by now.
JULY 2010 WASHINGTONIAN | 95

Everyone keeps asking me if I feel any threats.

Yeahtheyre going to feed me to death.
Shea has learned about Islam from his staff
and from reading passages of the Koran, discovering that in Islam, if you save one life, its
like saving all humanity; and if you take one
life, its like killing all humanity. That convinced me right off the bat that these extremist guys have it all wrong, he says. Whenever
people use the term Islamic extremists, I get
really mad. Its a contradiction in terms. They
should call them un-Islamic extremists.
When hes in the United States, Shea speaks
at schools and universities to tell students
about the Pakistan hes come to know. He
also wants to inspire young people to volunteer. Hey, I was smoking crack cocaine when
I was your age, he tells them. You guys are
lucky. You shouldnt waste your blessings on
iPods and your own fun. Give back. Get your
hands dirty. One of the greatest gifts you can
give yourself is to give to others.
Shea is an unofficial ambassador for America in Pakistan. Afzal Makhdoom, his righthand man and translator in Chikar, says that
when he first met Shea after the earthquake, he
wouldnt talk to the American. When I saw the
chopper land in Kashmir, I thought: Theyre
never going to leave, Makhdoom says. I had
never met an American and believed what I
had heard in the media that Americans just
want to kill Muslims. Now I defend Americans, because I know Americans.
The day of the earthquake in Haiti, Shea was in
Washington. Two days later, he was on a flight
to the Dominican Republic. On the plane he
spoke to as many people as he could, collecting
information, making contacts, learning the situation on the ground, finding a local partner
to work with. After landing, he set up a medical facility in an abandoned amusement park
outside Port-au-Prince and partnered with the
Islamic Medical Association of North America, which sent several teams to Haiti.
Haiti was his hardest deployment, Shea
says. Dealing with the devastation and displacement, the slow flow of supplies, the distrust of some locals, the heat, mosquitoes, and
lack of sleep, he coordinated the comings and
goings of more than 200 doctors, who treated
15,000 patients in the first two months. After
seven weeks, ill with cerebral malaria, Shea was
hospitalized for seven days in Florida. When
he recovered, he returned to Pakistan.
If this didnt kill me, something else will,
he says. The only reason I can think of why
Im still around is that God had another plan
7
for me.
Washington writer Salma Hasan Ali (salmahasanali@yahoo.com) last wrote for The
Washingtonian about weaving together her
American family life and her Pakistani heritage.
To help Todd Sheas efforts, visit shinehumanity.org.
96 | WASHINGTONIAN JULY 2010