Postwar Adoptee Spends Final Days Helping Orphans
PASADENA (AP) — Sam Han has one last mission before he succumbs to cancer -- help overseas orphans get a fair shake in life.
The 65-year-old cancer patient in suburban Los Angeles was orphaned himself during the Korean War but was adopted and brought to the United States by a Minnesota professor.
Han went on to head a multimillion-dollar chemical company but adopted a new cause when he was diagnosed with terminal bone marrow cancer in 2002.
After doctors told him he would live only a few more years, Han sold his house and car and started a nonprofit in his sister's Pasadena home dedicated to aiding orphans in North Korea, Cambodia and Tanzania.
Eight years later he's still fighting the cancer, and he credits more than medicine for his longevity. Finally, he says, his life has real purpose.
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