In 1999 I decided to enter a LIFE Magazine contest entitled "If you could meet anyone in the US who would it be, and why?". In under 100 words I had to persuade the magazine that my meeting Betty Tisdale, a woman I had never met but about whom I had heard so much, was worth winning the award. I didn't hear back from the magazine for months, so I assumed I wasn't one of the winners. Then I received an email from an editor of the magazine saying she had been trying to contact me for weeks (I had moved from FL to MA) and that I was one of three winners of the contest. LIFE quickly arranged for me to fly to Betty in Seattle, WA so I could meet the woman who helped save my life. Dateline NBC was at our reunion and Betty and I were featured in a segment in 2000.

Clearly, my life would be very different had I not been flown out of Vietnam and adopted. As Betty has told me, children over the age of 10 were not permitted to leave the country because the boys were needed to be trained as solidiers and the girls needed to produce children. Since I was only two at the time of OB, I was fortunate and was able to board one of the planes.

We can play the "what if..." game until we are blue in the face. I am not a religious person, but I am thankful and grateful that I was adopted by a loving and caring couple who gave me every opportunity available, the results of which have helped shape who I am today.

I do not know any other life. Of course my life would be different had I stayed in Vietnam. I could be a prostitute. I could have had my first child when I was 13. My life would also be different had I been adopted by another family in another state or other country.

When I met Betty for the first time back in 1999, she told me that I have had four mothers in my life: my birth mother, Madame Ngai (the woman who founded and ran An Lac orphanage), Betty herself (since she helped save my life by getting me out of Vietnam), and my adoptive mother. So I feel like a cat who has several lives. I have been so lucky in my life and I just try to enjoy it with my loved ones and am ever-grateful to Betty, the Babylift and my adoptive parents.

Vicki Sloviter
Yardley, PA
Email: sloviter@gmail.com