By the time Avy Taylor arrived at Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima, the world was already beginning to close. It was March 2020, and she was one of the last Americans trying to get out before Peru sealed its borders. Masked federal officers checked her documents. An impromptu news interview ensued on her way out. The air was thick with panic.
For Taylor, now Miss Fort Worth 2025 and a current candidate for Miss Texas, the panic wasn’t new. What was new was the clarity. She had spent the past few months in Picapiedra, a remote village of fewer than 100 people, living and working at a children’s shelter called Fundación Santa Martha. Her days were long and repetitive — hand-washing clothes, tutoring lessons, cooking meals over a fire — but they gave her a sense of purpose she hadn’t felt in years.
“I remember being on the roof of the Santa Martha shelter with a young girl named Milagros,” she told me. “We were hanging clothes, and I asked her what she was looking forward to that weekend. She was so quiet — she barely spoke. But she looked at me and said she hoped I’d stay there forever.”…