First time I met Laura was at work around 2007 when we had moved to Atlanta.

Then Sharmila and I paid her a visit in her house in Chile around 2011.

In 2017, Laura moved to Atlanta and I got a chance to meet her in a coffee shop in Alpharetta. And then, although all these years we have lived within a few miles of each other, we never managed to meet.

Till today, of course! We met in another coffee shop in Alpharetta literally a few steps from that old spot. It was a great reminder how much downtown Alpharetta has changed in these few years!

It was one dark morning I had run with Natasha with the rest of the Windward Road Runners group. And that started a friendship that has lasted for two decades – although we have run together only a few times after that day.

Sharmila and I met her in Qatar in few years back and even before that I met Natasha and her mother outside Doha airport while switching flights. And for the last few summers, I have enjoyed meeting her and her younger son Matteo when they visit Atlanta. I learn every time from both of them.

Today was that evening for this summer!

While vacationing in Belize three years back, I got a message from an old colleague Patrick Butler – who at that moment was in Nepal that I should go meet his old friend Giovanni – who was a bar owner there and ask him to make his special cocktail. So, Sharmila and I took a 50 minute golf cart ride to reach this much-advertised beach – ironically called Secret Beach.

While minding our own business in the waters there, we noticed an young couple nearby. To give them some space, we started moving away. We did not go far. The gentleman called us and asked if we could take a video of them dancing. To which we readily obliged.

Of course, a call to take a photo or video in Rajib-speak translates to a life time of friendship! We got to know Sara Marie and Lee and their fascinating journey that evening. And ever since, we have kept up thru birthdays.

Lee’s is an incredible life story of pain and ultimate triumph of happiness. I am a big follower of his writings in Facebook and Linkedin. I have never – literally never – seen anybody that matches his gracious attitude and magnanimity!

I got an interesting request from Sara Marie today (it is Lee’s birthday today). Apparently Lee is a very difficult person to find a gift for. So, she did something very personal. She wrote up about him in her own words.

And reached out to me to see if I could publish it in my blog!!

If you go to the Guest Writer section of my blog, you will see this heartfelt piece from her… https://www.rajibroy.com/2025/08/04/from-orphaned-in-korea-to-lighting-up-the-world/

It is Lee’s birthday!

And Sara Marie’s gift!!

But I was asked to put it in my blog!!

I assert I am the happiest of them all today!!!

Sara Marie and Lee, we are incredibly lucky that such a chance meeting happened to us. We got to know two very special people!!

The interaction started fairly innocuously. I was entering the Skyclub in SFO a bit tired and a bit worried about the red eye flight that I had to take to go home. The lady at the front asked her usual “How are you doing”. And without any second thought, I came up with my usual “If I did any better….”. She laughed her head off and we chatted a bit.

It was late at night and there was only one flight for Delta left that night. There were a couple of us in the club. She came up to me at the bar where I posting some blogs from my trp to Tonga and introduced herself. America is her name.

“America iss your name?”, I asked incredulously.

“Yes. It is not that uncommon in Mexico!”

I did not know that!! Found out that America Juarez Ruiz (her full name) is from outside Mexico City and had a fascinating story of how she came to the USA as a tourist and eventually mmet her husband while struggling to find the right tram route in SFO!!

“So, if I were to visit Mexico, where should I go?” I asked.

She gave me two names of places that I had never heard of – but the pictures looked gorgeous – Grutas de Tolantongo and Teotihuacan.

Later Sharmila mentioned she might have seen those pictures in Conde Nast!

I know where to go soon!!

It was 1980. The exact part of the year escapes me but I was in eighth grade. We had moved to our new place the year before. Mom needed some test papers to be sent to her school (she was a school teacher) but she was going to skip school that day. She sent me to a colleague of hers who lived the next street over to drop the papers. Which I duly did.

I remember meeting that teacher (I call her “Masi“) and her husband (I called him “Kaku“) for the first time. I answered all their questions – but refused to come inside the house. Not that the “mishtis” (sweetmeats) were not inviting… it was just that my friends were waiting on the playfield for me to join them.

That day, if you had told me that forty five years later I will be driving a boat to take “Masi” around to spend a day on a lake, I would have told you that you were smoking the wrong stuff!!!

But that day did come around!!

Wish mom was alive to hear the whole story…