Juan Manuel Pineda is trying to ease the pain from craniofacial surgery by strumming chords on his guitar, experimenting with ideas for a new song.

The 21-year-old from El Salvador, who has survived a string of tragedies, is sitting in the comfortable living room of Marlene Byrne, owner of a Niles advertising agency.

“Juan is like a son to us,” said Byrne, referring to herself and her husband Brian.

Byrne is one of many Chicago-area people helping Pineda heal in body and soul. The fact he’s getting pro bono medical treatment by specialists in the Chicago area, gave a concert attended by 400 people and released a CD, is a result of lucky breaks and chance meetings he calls “miraculous.”

His early life wasn’t so lucky. The baby who was born with a cleft palate and dental and facial deformities lost his legs at age two, the result of a fire in his home. Since his family didn’t have the money to afford a wheelchair or prostheses for nine years, he could only use his arms to move about.

Pineda never knew his father, and when he turned 8, his mother died, leaving him an orphan. An older brother struggled to care for him for three years. When Juan turned 11, his brother relinquished him to the care of Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos, a charity that cares for orphans. It was founded in 1954 by an American priest, Fr. William Wasson, who expanded it to care for poor and orphaned children in nine Latin American countries.

Pineda’s journey to wholeness and recovery began at Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos, which promises the orphans it cares for that they will always have a loving home there. It cultivates a family-like atmosphere, and tells the children they will never be separated from their “siblings” there.



To raise awareness and funds, Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos occasionally brings groups of its children to the United States to perform folkloric dance and music at Catholic parishes. In 2006, Pineda came from El Salvador with his NPH siblings to one of these “fiestas” at St. Mary of the Woods parish, which serves Chicago’s Edgebrook neighborhood and part of Niles.

That’s when the Byrnes, who attend St. Mary of the Woods, met Pineda.

“I just fell in love with him,” Marlene said. “I called and asked how to help.”

She wasn’t the only one who wanted to help him. Doctors from Shriners Hospital and the University of Illinois Medical Center found out about the orphan whose mouth and lower face were twisted into a grimace that didn’t fit his gentle personality.

Dr. David Reisberg, DDS, who has performed his third surgery on Pineda in mid-October, said he found out about the young man through a circuitous route. A dentist noticed Pineda’s cleft palate at one of the church fiesta performances and asked a colleague if he knew anyone who could take a look. That colleague asked Reisberg, who said he was happy to take a look.

“Once I heard his story, I thought, ‘if anybody deserves a break, it’s him,’” said Reisberg, who is the director of the surgery department at the Craniofacial Center at the University of Illinois Medical Center.

Reisberg said his colleague at UIC’s Craniofacial Center, Dr. Pravin Patel, who is also chief of plastic and maxillofacial surgery service at Shriners Hospital for Children, was able to enroll Pineda for treatment of his palate and dental deformities at Shriners at no cost.

Since Shriners also does orthopedics, he said, this provided the additional benefit of getting Pineda prostheses for his legs.

But Pineda still needed to get from El Salvador to Chicago periodically for the surgeries. Reisberg picked up a business card that had been sitting by his phone for two years, waiting for just such a need. Two years previous, he had met a man from a group called the Mulliganeers, whose charitable work includes providing airline tickets for children who need medical treatment. Reisberg dialed the number, and the Mulliganeers came through with tickets for Pineda.

“I kept thinking, ‘what are the chances all these things would line up,’” said Reisberg. “You can’t say no, because it was all too perfect.”

The three surgeries so far on Pineda’s lower face have improved his appearance markedly. During the last procedure, Dr. Reisberg placed dental implants into grafts, and Dr. Patel revised his lip tissue to make it more even. These improvements will allow Pineda to speak more clearly and chew a wider variety of foods, Dr. Reisberg said.

This week, Dr. Pam Lowe of Professional Eye Care Center in Niles joined the list of professionals donating services when she gave Pineda an eye exam and prescribed glasses for him.

In between having medical treatment and traveling between El Salvador and Chicago, Pineda has been pursuing his academic studies. The tumult of his youth caused him to miss years of school, and at 21, he is preparing to graduate from high school. In addition, he has been studying music and writing songs. Chicago musicians and music industry professionals volunteered their time to coach him through the process of songwriting and performing, and produced his CD, “The Sound of Gratitude.”

Dr. Reisberg attended Pineda’s CD release concert Oct. 15 at the Green Dolphin Street lounge on Chicago’s North side. He was one of 400 people at the fundraising event, where a joyous Pineda performed.

“We had so much fun watching him have fun,” the surgeon recalled.

Pineda will return to El Salvador in November, graduate and spend a year of service at Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos, helping teach and care for the younger siblings. After that, he’d like to go to college and possibly study engineering or veterinary science.

He struggles a little with English, but said he remains amazed and grateful that all these good things have happened in his life, and that so many people in the Chicago area have been kind to him.

“For me, it’s always a big surprise when people ask me, ‘do you want to travel to these cities,’ or ‘do you want to have surgery on your mouth,’” he said.

“I believe it was miraculous. Sometimes I say, ‘God has my future and he gives me these opportunities in my life.’”