Welcome to the project

Welcome to my new blog.  I hope this will be interesting to you and that by reading this you will find something you can relate to.  I'm not sure how to start this but I think maybe the beginning would be a good place.  My name is Anthony Sok-Heng Tessandori.  I grew up in a town named Arcadia, just north and east of Los Angeles.  I had a fairly normal upbringing, with my brother and two sisters.  My father was a doctor and my mother was at home for most of my childhood.  All things considered I had a good life.  You might be asking now, what is so interesting about this...the answer is nothing.  There is nothing about this that is out of the norm and in a lot of ways was maybe like your life.  This is actually the ending of my story...that got dark.  Let's say the end of my origin first story. 

My true beginning is a mystery. I was born sometime in the early 70's in Cambodia.  No one knows the year...it was before 1975, probably much earlier.  The reason I know it was before 1975 is because that was the year I was adopted by Bill and Laura Tessandori, when I was relocated to Southern California and started the life I'm living now.

My first documented appearance on this planet was at the World Vision Nutrition Center in Phnom Penh.  Where I was before that, is anyone's guess.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I heard that I was at an orphanage for six months or more.  I don't know if this is speculation or actually based on something.  Eventually, I was brought to the Nutrition Center for medical care because I was not well.  Based on something from somewhere I was around a year and a half and I weighed less than ten pounds.  Malnutrition was the first of my personal battles that I had to fight.  I was also sick with salmonella, which contributed to my downward spiral.  Coupled with the trauma of whatever I'd lived through, things did not look good for me.

At this point Cambodia was being torn apart by civil war.  The Communist Khmer Rouge were fighting for control of the country and the installed government was faltering.  As the Khmer Rouge gained territory, it became clear that the country would fall, and the decision was made by Stan Mooneyham (the president of World Vision) to get the orphans in the Nutrition Center out.  I have yet to get much detail about these stressful last days in Cambodia, but I know we got out with very little time to spare, only a handful of days.  One report I read talks about how we, (the 20 or so orphans who came out with me) were in three vans driving across the tarmac to the airplane. Each was spaced 100 feet apart so if one of the missiles being shot at the airport hit a van, the other vans would survive.

By the grace of God and the sacrifice of the people risking everything for us, we made it out.  Eventually arriving in Los Angeles, where we would start a new story.  The picture below is the first known picture of me.  I feel my eyes tell the whole story. This was after I had been in treatment for a while and was no longer under the threat of war.

This blog is about my story as I uncover it and my story as I return to Cambodia.  This Spring my wife and I are going on a bike tour of Cambodia and you will be there with me.  I am expecting this to be very difficult.  As I have been hiding from demons my entire life and expect that I will be facing them throughout.   We will be riding bikes across the country, visiting large cities like Phnom Penh and small villages.  We will see the beauty of the Cambodian countryside as well as the horrors of some of the Killing Fields.  It is possible that I will be in the presence of my family, and I will not know it.  For me the question marks will always be bigger than the answers I will get.

If you are wondering about the name of this blog...Project Red Pin.  It comes from something my mother did for me when I was too young to read but old enough to understand that I was not from where I was living.   We had an old cardboard globe that I love looking at.  My favorite thing to do was to have my mother point out Cambodia so I could see where I was from.  She would encourage me to find it on my own, and after several failed attempts, I had a meltdown.  So, my mother took a red push pin and stuck it into Cambodia, so I would always have an anchor.  As I return to Cambodia, I want to reset my anchor.  I am drawn to the history I hope to discover and past I will never know.  This will be a journey of discovery and healing.  But...I don't leave for a week so you’re going to be stuck hearing about my training for the bike ride, and my quest to find the other 20 kids I came over with...