ARTICLES

Labor of Love

Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers Hoping for Grants to Ultrasound Machines

BY STANFORD ESPEDAL

An image of Our Lady of Guadalupe now graces the outdoor wall of La Casa Exodo, a Tijuana rescue mission. San Diego artist Laura Caufeld, with help from her husband Cecil and partner Robin D’Anunzio recently, completed the mural as a labor of love for Our Lady. “We need her presence today more than ever,” Caufield says. “Give us a wall and we’ll put her up there!”

The artists chose this particular wall to honor a remarkable nun and the work she does for destitute men, women and children. Sister Dori, a five-foot-three-inch woman wearing the navy-blue habit of a Eudist nun, was an 11th-hour vocation. She was born in 1934 on the island of Madeira, a Portuguese possession off the northwest coast of Africa. Her birth took place in a Dominican convent where her mother was convalescing due to tuberculosis. After her mother recovered, Dorothy — her baptismal name — was sent to school. She completed high school in Portugal at age 11. At that point her family, which includes one brother and two sisters, moved to San Diego and settled among the large Portuguese community centered around St. Agnes church in Point Loma.

In the American school system she entered junior high school and began improving her English. She is now fluent in Portuguese and English, and in the Spanish she uses daily in her work.

After graduating from high school she married a ship captain. He provided very well materially for Dori and their two adopted children, Andraya and Mark, but did not remain faithful. After 26 years he left her for another woman, and Dori went full time into her already successful career in residential and commercial real estate.

During the years of her marriage and after, she was always involved in the church. She served as a catechist for children and taught adult bible classes. On Saturdays she ministered in convalescent hospitals. She also taught English as a second language to Portuguese seniors. Occasionally she brought her business and church interests together, as when she bought the former Saint Agnes convent across the street from the church and turned it into the Catholic retirement home it is today.

On June 24, 1992 she received what she believes to be the call of Jesus through Mary to become a missionary nun. As she relays it, “I was in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament at Saint Agnes church, when I had a vision of [Tijuana nun] Mother Antonia whom I recognized because we’d met once. Then I heard a female voice which said, ‘My child, go to her. I have work for you to do.’ I did what I had been taught as a girl to do under such circumstances; I blessed myself with holy water and told the thing to go away. But the voice returned. ‘Do not be afraid; it is I, your mother. Go to her without delay.’”

Mother Antonia lived — as she does today — in her cell at La Mesa penitentiary. The order she founded, Servants of the 11th Hour, lived at Campos de San Miguel three blocks from the prison.

After receiving the call to forsake business and enter religious life, Sister Dori proceeded to sell her apartment buildings in the midst of the 1992 recession. It was a major real estate disaster for her. She got back about ten cents on the dollar from 27 investment properties. She sold her own home, which she had bought for $750,000.00, for $460,000.00. Yet this reversal of fortune did not dampen her conviction that Our Lady had called her.

Nor did the stern reception she got from Mother Antonia. “I presented myself to Mother Antonia and told her what Our Lady had said to me. ‘She hasn’t said anything about you to me!’ she retorted. ‘I don’t believe in things like that!’

Dori responded, “‘Okay, I’ll leave.’ Then Mother Antonia said ‘Didn’t you say she sent you? If you want to work, find yourself something to do!’”

Mother Antonia lived — as she does today — in her cell at La Mesa penitentiary. The order she founded, Servants of the 11th Hour, lived at Campos de San Miguel three blocks from the prison. This was Sister Dori’s residence for the next three years. Dori worked with women released from prison. Some responded to counseling and turned their lives around by God’s grace. Others slid back into drugs and prostitution, the only life they knew.

The time came when Mother Antonia felt that Sister Dori should be on her own. “She told me, ‘I’m giving you three months off to go find your own work to do!’”

At first, she was devastated that Mother Antonia was sending her away. But Dori had a deep devotion to Saint John Eudes, the 17th century founder of the Congregations of Jesus and Mary, and of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge. The latter congregation worked for the salvation of prostitutes, establishing homes for their restoration. “I wanted to do that here. But I didn’t know where to go. In God’s providence three Our Lady of Lapa sisters from Portugal whom I’d met at Saint Agnes found me and let me stay with them for three months in Tijuana. Then I began the women and children’s home.”

The women and children’s shelter is called Casa Santa Ines — House of Saint Agnes — located in the Colonia Ruiz Cortines neighborhood. In 1995 the diocese of Tijuana, approving of her plans, loaned her a four-bedroom house, which was empty at the time. The chancellor told her the house was unlivable. On the second day at dusk there was a short circuit, and an electrical fire broke out. The fire destroyed the kitchen, the ceiling of the living room, the trim, and much of the roof. Smoke damage took its toll throughout the house. Sister Dori began renovation work with her own money. Although she lost much in the down market, she held onto a profitable San Marcos shopping center. So she installed a new roof, a new electrical system, tile flooring, and had the foundation reinforced. Altogether she spent $8000 in improvements.

Currently 27 children ranging from age two to 16 live at the rose-colored home, with four adult women. Boys and girls occupy separate sides of the dwelling.

All the women who come to live here are reclaimed from a life of prostitution. Sister Dori goes out onto the streets where they ply their trade and gets right in their face. “Honey, why do you do this? Don’t you know your body is Christ’s? Don’t you know one day you’ll have to answer to him for how you lived? Do you want your children to follow your example? If you want to get out of it I can help you find a place to stay and a job. If you want to return to the home you left I can help you. Through the love of Jesus and Mary you can have a new life!”

She begins to cry as she continues, “I have never met one girl out there who has not been violated by a father, a brother, an uncle, a boyfriend, or some man in her life. Many know of no other option but prostitution. They see themselves as damaged goods; no decent man would have them. Most are lured to Tijuana by men who promise to make them models, or even wives. The pimps sleep with them and care for them just long enough to gain control of the women through fear of violence, and turn them out as prostitutes in this terrifying city.”

In the last three years, her work has turned also to men. After getting Casa Santa Ines on a solid footing she began La Casa Exodo. This mission sits in the middle of Tijuana’s Coahuila District — sometimes known as the “Zone without shame,” — where prostitutes and pushers operate in broad daylight. Many men in the area, Sister Dori says, come from the interior of Mexico seeking work, and find nothing but drugs, alcohol, and the women. The life of vice becomes too easy. Wandering the streets, filthy and reeking, they make what they can by selling drugs. The police frequently round them up only to beat them and steal their cash. Sister saw the need for a place that they could get clean, get a meal, and have a chance to turn their lives around. So she purchased a lot on Calle Baja California next door to a bordello called Hotel Buena Noche. She asked a Mexican Army general to help, and “as if by a miracle” he agreed to send troops to build part of her complex. The existing structure on the property contained two shower stalls. Carrying out Sister’s plans, the Army excavated and laid the foundation, adding on a unit some 75 feet long and one story high, with five more shower stalls, a storeroom, and a laundry facility. Once during construction all four of the generals in Tijuana visited. The chief of police figured this was an important place and sent in his own men to cooperate in cleaning out the drug trade for a two-block radius. That was in 2002. The area remains relatively drug free today!

Then Dori chipped in her own funds to complete the mission facility. Today you’ll find a two-story building, 240 feet long, housing a kitchen, counseling rooms, chapel, classrooms, a dental office, and apartments for children and staff. Friends have donated furniture, dental equipment and computers. Sister Dori lives here along with her helpers and their children.

Every Saturday morning, men in the seedy Coahuila district of Tijuana get spiritual and bodily sustenance at Sister Dori’s mission. They begin lining up outside hours before the gate opens. Around 9:00 the green-painted gate is unlocked and up to 120 men pour in. Sister Dori keeps a sharp eye out for anyone who might be carrying drugs to sell. She won’t be an enabler for anyone. In the long driveway a makeshift chapel is set up with chairs, a lectern and altar. A priest comes from Mother Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity, to say Mass. Though the diocese approves of Sister Dori as a non-order nun, and the bishop has visited twice, diocesan priests do not serve here. Usually Father Cyril, the Missionaries of Charity priest-superior, comes. Confession is available before and after Mass. The preaching always concerns repentance, conversion and Christ’s power to transform the men’s lives. Father’s voice, electronically magnified, carries out to those in the streets. At Communion time the men do not receive unless confessed before.

A meal of simple nourishing fare follows the Mass. When they’ve eaten their fill, the men exchange their dirty clothes for clean ones and take showers, seven at a time. If any wish, they can write home or have a letter written and mailed for them.

Concerning the future, Sister Dori says, “I want to move the women and children to a bigger home in the country with at least five acres of land, possibly a ranch. I want them to live and play as children should; to get an education, and learn trades.” Will she do it? It would be surprising, given Sister’s determination, if she doesn’t accomplish more than she thinks possible now.

Those wishing to contact or help Sister Dori may reach her at: Casa Exodo, 7580 Calle Baja California, Zona Norte, Tijuana, BCN, Mexico. Phone 011-52-664-685-0994.

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