Prizewinning archer Yadira Perdomo has a heart trained on forgiveness. Given her experience, it would be a hard target for some of us to hit. When she was 16 and living in Bogotá, bullying classmates lured her to the third floor at school and pushed her out a window. She shattered her back and lost all sensation and control in her lower body.
Thanks to the Rev. Otto Vasquez, I first met Yadira, her mother, Angela, and sister, Hanna, in 2019 at All Saints Episcopal Church / Iglesia Episcopal de Todos los Santos in Highland Park, where Otto had invited the family to stay. After a series of miraculous surgeries performed by UCLA doctors in Colombia and Los Angeles, she got significant feeling and function back and was learning to walk with leg braces.
They’re now living in Hollywood and came to see me this afternoon at St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park. The sisters are completing their undergraduate degrees remotely. Hanna offers translation services, to the public and her sister. She’s halfway through translating Yadira’s 240-page medical file into English.
Yadira is also perfecting her archery (she just won a tournament and is eyeing the Paralympics) as well as the art of forgiveness. As minors, her attackers avoided jail. She never got an apology. But she exhibits no rancor, only kindness and love. She and Hanna say that the ringleader had no parental oversight most of the time. His parents left him alone at home for weekends at a time with $500. But money couldn’t buy him love. He and his buddies had been making fun of what they considered Yadira’s rural accent and bad taste in music.
She said she was angry for a while but not anymore. She says bullies are often mistreated themselves. “So we are both victims,” she said. She preaches to large, rapt crowds, from churches to Colombian prisons, about anger management, the power of friendship, the evils of bullying, and the healing power of Christ.
Angela beams with pride at her daughters and gives thanks for the miracles of healing and wholeness the family have experienced. Our immigration system keeps their father, Angela’s husband of 33 years, across the border in Mexico. U.S. authorities fear that if the family is united, they’ll never go home. I hope they never do, because they make us a lot better.