Have you ever had a chance encounter with just the right person, at just the right moment in time, or perhaps you made a wrong turn in your journey, but it ended up bringing you right to the place you needed to be? Coincidence or preordained… I tend to believe the latter.

I had just returned to Phnom Penh, exhausted after the long flight and feeling somewhat apprehensive as we entered the city limits. Traffic was terrible, as usual around noontime, and I was both hungry and in need of a restroom. There was a small Khmer restaurant just ahead of us, and Dara recommended we stop there to eat and freshen up.

As we took our seats at a table, a police officer walked in and gave me a curious look as he passed by. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but a few minutes later he returned and struck up a conversation in Khmer with Dara. He was actually the owner of the restaurant and was interested in knowing my relationship to the group. Dara gave him a brief history of the SAHAKA FOUNDATION and its work with children and young people, explaining that I was an advisor to the organization.

The officer acknowledged me with a nod and shared that when he was a child, he had lived in one of the slum areas of Phnom Penh. One of his vivid memories was bringing water up from the river every day. He recalled that there was a foreigner who would come around with medicine and would buy school books and uniforms for many of the children. He remembered that man fondly and had promised himself that if he ever became successful, he would try to help children as well. Introducing one of his staff members, he informed us that the young man was an orphan, as were all of his other employees.

It just so happened that I had a picture on my phone of one of the slum areas I had worked in nearly 30 years before, when I first came to Cambodia. When I showed it to him, he immediately recognized that I was the very man he had been talking about.