Heroes: Orange County residents from lifeguards to nurses gave hope and touched others’ lives in 1989. : TUSTIN : Woman’s Journeys to India Are Missions of Help, Hope

For Jean Sudbeck, a trip to India is not a vacation, it’s a mission.

When she leaves Tuesday for her one-month trip, she will take with her medicine, clothes, rosaries, toys and balloons to distribute to those she will visit.

The journey to India will be Sudbeck’s sixth. While there, she visits schools, hospitals and leprosariums, stopping to talk to people wherever she goes.

Sudbeck, 53, first traveled to India in 1982 with a Brea-based evangelist group. Three years ago, she founded Wings of Glory International, a nonprofit Catholic group with 12 members.

Traveling along with Sudbeck this year will be Father Tom Seidel from St. Cecelia Catholic Church in Tustin, Jenny Castillon of Garden Grove and Iris Ruiz of Cerritos.

Each person raises his or her own fare, about $3,000.

The group is usually kept small because it is difficult to get around India with more people, Sudbeck said. Those in the group stay in Catholic institutions or hotels and hire drivers to take them to outlying villages, where they distribute the medicine, toys and rosaries donated by community members.

Through Wings of Glory, Sudbeck has been trying to raise money to help educate 10 illiterate girls in Nellore, a village south of Madras. Next is the Year of the Girl Child in India, Sudbeck said.

“We tend to single out education. If we find a child who is educable, it’s wise to leave the money for his education because then he can go on to help others,” Sudbeck said.

She has helped pay for the education of an Indian boy who wanted to be a priest. She met the boy’s mother for the first time in 1987, after sending money to help him for several years.

“His mother broke down and sobbed and sobbed” because she was so grateful, Sudbeck said. This trip she will finally meet the boy, now 24 and a priest in Nellore.

Along with the medicine and other supplies, Sudbeck and her companions take letters and checks to Mother Theresa in Calcutta, where they spend the day at her home for destitute children.

Sudbeck has seen and worked with Mother Teresa on every trip but one.

“When she speaks, the sisters jump. But they don’t really jump. It’s just such a wonderful, awesome, pleasant duty to be able to follow up on her suggestions,” Sudbeck said. “She invites you to go be with the sick and dying, to sit with them and pray with them.”

Ursula Kennedy, a Tustin councilwoman and a friend of Sudbeck, said: “She’s seen things that you and I haven’t seen. The danger to her is incredible.”

Sudbeck said little things taken for granted in the United States are uncommon in India and make a big difference.

On one trip, she gave Tylenol to a boy with an ulcer.

“He was able to take it and feel good for the first time in his life,” Sudbeck said. “It’s such a little thing, but it’s so rewarding.”

Before coming home, members of the group give away their shoes and clothes, leaving the country with only what they are wearing.

Sudbeck, who runs a day-care center from her Tustin Meadows home and sells costume jewelry to raise money for her trips, said her husband, Bud, and three children thought she had lost her mind when she first decided to travel to India. They are supportive now, she said.

“I encourage her,” Bud Sudbeck said. “She reaches out to a lot of people.”