<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Elegant yet casual, dressed in a brown blouse and a necklace the color of a sunset, Angela Diaz, M.D., walks me briskly through her domain, the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center just blocks from New York City&amp;amp;#8217;s Harlem neighborhood. As we pass the gray-walled examination rooms, Diaz lightly brushes the cheek of a bored teenage boy listening to his MP3 while he awaits his turn. She teasingly squeezes one secretary&amp;amp;#8217;s shoulder and stops to praise the work of another. No wonder people see Diaz as a kind of surrogate mother, one with an ever-expandable heart capable of caring for the 10,000 impoverished young people who visit the center each year seeking treatment for everything from HIV to depression to the effects of incest. As down-to-earth as she seems, Diaz is already a living legend, and all the kids here know the story that makes her so special: Their world-class pediatrician, the woman who turned this clinic into the country&amp;amp;#8217;s largest free adolescent health-care facility, was once a confused and directionless teen who got help at the very center she now runs. Just like the kids at her clinic, Diaz, 52, started life at the bottom of the social ladder. She grew up in poverty in the Dominican Republic and lived there with her grandmother after her parents immigrated to the United States. At age 12 Diaz arrived in New York for a temporary stay, landing in one of the city&amp;amp;#8217;s toughest neighborhoods, the South Bronx. &amp;amp;#8220;Me no English,&amp;amp;#8221; were the only words she knew, says Diaz, laughing at the memory. She was lonely, though, because her mother had to work two factory jobs and never took a day off. &amp;amp;#8220;I felt trapped within the walls,&amp;amp;#8221; Diaz remembers. After she permanently moved to New York as a teen, Diaz shouldered an overwhelming load. A good student with dreams of becoming a doctor, she stayed up late studying and found part-time work to help her family. In high school she was juggling three jobs: tutoring other students, working in a luncheonette and helping out at a beauty parlor. &amp;amp;#8220;Life was really hard,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;I had no outlet, no intimate conversations.&amp;amp;#8221; Overwhelmed, she dropped out of school just months before graduation. She seemed to be heading nowhere until she did something that changed her life: She paid a visit to a social worker at Mount Sinai Hospital&amp;amp;#8217;s adolescent health center, which was no more than &amp;amp;#8220;a trailer in a parking lot,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. The social worker urged her to open up about things she&amp;amp;#8217;d never shared before. &amp;amp;#8220;I even talked for the first time about a sexual assault by a schoolmate when I was in ninth grade.&amp;amp;#8221; The healing that began there put her on a path that would take her not only back to high school, but on to college, then to medical school at Columbia University and to Harvard&amp;amp;#8217;s school of public health. And she never forgot what had turned her around. &amp;amp;#8220;Because of my own experience,&amp;amp;#8221; she tells me, &amp;amp;#8220;I know for sure that one person can make all the difference.&amp;amp;#8221; I wanted to meet Diaz in my journey around the world for Glamour because I too lived in the Bronx as a teen, among young people who wrestled with the same traumas that Diaz is dedicated to repairing. At 17 I needed to get away from my hometown of Paris. I had recently discovered my father&amp;amp;#8217;s suicide note, which explained why he&amp;amp;#8217;d killed himself when I was little. Until I saw that note, I&amp;amp;#8217;d believed he had died of natural causes, and with the shock came an overpowering urge to force a dramatic change in my life. I made a snap decision to move in with an uncle in New York, and I set an unrealistic goal of becoming a dancer. All I knew were a few salsa moves I&amp;amp;#8217;d learned from my mom, but in my imagination there was little doubt I could make it. The New York I fancied was all glittery lights and endless opportunities. My illusions quickly faded when my uncle picked me up at the airport in a surprisingly long and beat-up Dodge and we drove to his tiny, one-bedroom apartment off Fordham Road in the Bronx. I watched as the majestic Manhattan skyline gradually turned to rows of charmless, graffiti-covered four-story buildings. Out the car windows I heard the language switch from English to Spanish, and the skin tones changed from white to brown. &amp;amp;#8220;Welcome to New York,&amp;amp;#8221; my uncle said cheerfully. &amp;amp;#8220;Welcome to reality,&amp;amp;#8221; I thought to myself. Indeed, during the two years I lived there, I met kids similar to those who visit Diaz&amp;amp;#8217;s center today, economically deprived teens whose parents didn&amp;amp;#8217;t speak English (my uncle didn&amp;amp;#8217;t either) or whose families had imploded due to crime and drugs. Because these kids didn&amp;amp;#8217;t fit the image of what New York was supposed to be, society ignored them. As for me, I never made it as a dancer. I left the city and went on with my life&amp;amp;#8212;but I never forgot my friends in the Bronx and always wondered who would be there to help them when they got into trouble. At the Mount Sinai center, I share my Bronx experiences with a shy and serious African American teenager waiting in an examination room. The girl thinks it&amp;amp;#8217;s hilarious that I was so naive. She comes to the center to combat the urge to mutilate herself with razor blades. A family member raped her from age 10 to 12, she tells me, and she started cutting herself two years later. &amp;amp;#8220;When I cut myself,&amp;amp;#8221; she says, &amp;amp;#8220;I get to control the intensity of my pain.&amp;amp;#8221; The teen tells me that most of her friends swallow their anger rather than talk about their problems. Once, she says, &amp;amp;#8220;I met up with my girlfriends and learned that four of the five had been sexually molested for years but had never discussed it until that day.&amp;amp;#8221; It was helping teens like this, who need to heal both their minds and their bodies, that Diaz saw as her mission when she became acting director of the center in 1989. (She took over as director in 1991.) At first she didn&amp;amp;#8217;t feel up to the challenge. &amp;amp;#8220;I had just finished my pediatric residency and I had no experience in running anything. My initial reaction was: I cannot do this.&amp;amp;#8221; But she quickly got to work. &amp;amp;#8220;It was a much smaller program then, less than half the staff, patients and budget,&amp;amp;#8221; says Diaz, who soon began adding programs, including services for the learning disabled and an upgraded drug abuse program. She also hired a psychologist. &amp;amp;#8220;Basically, whatever the teens brought us, we tried to find a way to serve them.&amp;amp;#8221; All the additions fit in with her philosophy: &amp;amp;#8220;The thing is, most of these adolescents don&amp;amp;#8217;t have insurance and don&amp;amp;#8217;t have money, but I want them to get the same kind of care other kids get. I want them to feel we treat them with respect.&amp;amp;#8221; Her patients&amp;amp;#8212;mostly African American and Hispanic kids between the ages of 10 and 21&amp;amp;#8212;get the message. Says Diaz, &amp;amp;#8220;It&amp;amp;#8217;s amazing how many come back later and thank us for saving their lives.&amp;amp;#8221; Despite the fact that she works constantly&amp;amp;#8212;&amp;amp;#8220;Friday, Saturday, Sunday&amp;amp;#8230;endless hours, because I love it&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;amp;#8212;Diaz has somehow found time to help design adolescent health programs for hospitals from Nigeria to Mongolia, win a slew of awards and raise three children of her own. But her greatest talent is for understanding how desperately teenagers need someone to believe in their future. Diaz tells me that for all the suffering she witnesses, she sees many kids emerging talented and strong. &amp;amp;#8220;That&amp;amp;#8217;s what makes me happy,&amp;amp;#8221; she says softly, her satisfaction visible in the way she glows. One of her social workers, Adam Melaney, 35, agrees. &amp;amp;#8220;We&amp;amp;#8217;re energized by the kids,&amp;amp;#8221; he says. With his cool look&amp;amp;#8212;he wears a baseball cap and a funky earring&amp;amp;#8212;Adam works at reassuring kids that there is hope even if they seem to have lost it. A brochure published by the center sums up the staff&amp;amp;#8217;s attitude: &amp;amp;#8220;Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.&amp;amp;#8221; On a chilly afternoon, I walk with another of the center&amp;amp;#8217;s patients, Latoya, 23, and her three-year-old daughter, Ja-Naya, to a playground near the center. (Latoya began coming to Mount Sinai as a teen; in some cases the center can treat patients up to age 24.) Latoya describes her life as a struggling single mom of two girls. She, too, was sexually assaulted in childhood. &amp;amp;#8220;As a kid, I felt my mom disliked me. I even thought she wanted to put me in a group home.&amp;amp;#8221; Latoya has never seen a photo of herself as a child. &amp;amp;#8220;Now,&amp;amp;#8221; she says, &amp;amp;#8220;I can&amp;amp;#8217;t stop taking snapshots of my kids.&amp;amp;#8221; When Latoya was assigned to Adam, who is her social worker, she barely spoke to him for six months. Her biggest fear, she says, was that she&amp;amp;#8217;d start crying. But eventually she did weep, and hence began to heal. &amp;amp;#8220;Adam is the first person I have ever trusted,&amp;amp;#8221; says Latoya. Although Latoya has never been treated directly by Diaz, she knows all about her. &amp;amp;#8220;Angela is my role model,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. Latoya&amp;amp;#8217;s resilience and courage humble me. Thanks to the help she gets and the tears she shed, I know that she will protect her kids from a fate like hers. She and I walk back to the center, each of us holding the little girl&amp;amp;#8217;s hands. &amp;amp;#8220;Let&amp;amp;#8217;s face it,&amp;amp;#8221; Latoya says with a smile. &amp;amp;#8220;Family is right here at Mount Sinai.&amp;amp;#8221; And in that shy smile, I see the ripple effect of human empathy. I think of the person who helped Diaz become who she is today, and I see what Diaz is doing for Latoya and her daughters. All along, it took only one individual who was able to look at the caterpillar and see the butterfly."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2007/01/global-diary-new-york/3>