Hernando firefighter brings gifts of heart, hope to Chinese orphans

[BILL BYRNE Special to the Times]
Hernando County Fire Rescue worker Pete Paolillo made a trip to China recently to help with orphans at a summer camp there. “The trip is over, but the journey will continue,” he says.

Hernando firefighter brings gifts of heart, hope to Chinese orphans
By Gail Hollenbeck, Times Correspondent
In print: Saturday, August 16, 2008

SPRING HILL — While thousands of people were traveling to Beijing to see the 2008 Summer Olympics, Pete Paolillo was just passing through. His destination was Xinzheng City in Henan Province, almost 500 miles farther south.

The games he would witness would not involve the world's greatest athletes. They would be games played by 73 orphans during a week of summer camp as part of an orphan outreach program.

Paolillo, a 36-year-old firefighter/paramedic with Hernando County Fire Rescue, decided to spend 10 days of his summer — July 24 to Aug. 2 — volunteering in a program sponsored by Bring Me Hope, a nonprofit Christian organization based in California that is dedicated to bringing love and hope to orphans in China.

Paolillo's China adventure actually began several years ago, in 2005, when he and his wife, Kim, an elementary school teacher, adopted an infant girl from an orphanage in Nan Chang.

"I believe it was God that directed us to adopt Hannah Joy," Paolillo said. "She was a week shy of her first birthday when my wife and I went to China and adopted her. It was an amazing experience."
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