"It would have been too much for her to go through again. But because I was certain this would work, and she is a child with her whole life ahead of her, it was impossible for me to refuse."

Just how this dirt-poor girl from deep in Sonora, where she lives without electricity or running water, linked up with one of Tucson's most skilled brain surgeons is yet another "milagro" - miracle - in this story.

Much of the credit goes to an unheralded clinic in Nogales, Ariz. - St. Andrew's Children's Clinic - that provides vitalmedical care to seriously ill children from Mexico who have run out of options.

Funded only by private donations, St. Andrew's rescues, without fanfare, hundreds of youngsters every year with free medical care in this country, then returns them home to Mexico.

"I remember the call," said Coca Romero, the clinic's patient coordinator and one of its "miracle workers," according to the Rev. Ed Gustafson, the clinic's executive director.

"Luz's stepmother called the clinic, and when I told her we didn't usually take this kind of case - it was so complex - she started crying and crying and crying," Romero said. "So I told her to bring Luz to Nogales, but I couldn't promise anything. I wasn't sure who we could get to do this."

For the Ramirez family - farm workers in Navajoa, Sonora - St. Andrew's was the last chance for Luz, they knew. The two surgeries in Guadalajara had failed to excise all of the tumor, and it rapidly grew back. They had been unable to pay for follow-up chemotherapy that might have controlled it.

"At that time, they had to go home and back to work in the fields, because they had no money for food," said Romero, interpreting for the family members, who do not speak English.

"Their little house is in the middle of nowhere out there," she said, describing the family's long struggle against poverty and tragedy, including the death of Luz's real mother - of a broken heart over her daughter's illness - when Luz was only 7.

But once the Ramirezes got to St. Andrew's, their luck began to change dramatically. Aware of Sanan's specialty in complex intracranial neurosurgery, a volunteer physician at St. Andrew's, Dr. Maria Pi�a, asked him if he would do it without charge.

Armed with Sanan's immediate consent, St. Andrew's then lined up St. Mary's Hospital for the surgery, and Tucson's Ronald McDonald House to shelter the family during its stay here. The donation of medical services alone totaled more than $50,000, St. Mary's officials estimated.

"This family was a favorite at Ronald McDonald's," Romero said. "They helped out so much - they cooked dinner, made tortillas, washed the dishes, took the trash out. Not every family that stays there does that."

Finally, on July 12, a very frightened Luz underwent the extremely complex, eight-hour surgery in the skilled hands of her volunteer doctors, Sanan and anesthesiologist Dr. Mark Ramirez.

Several of the first hours were spent cutting carefully through old scar tissue from the previous surgeries before the tumor itself - pressing hard on the child's brain stem - could even be exposed.

Then began the painstaking effort to cut out the entire mass without hitting vital large veins and other parts of the brain that, if injured, would put Luz in a permanent coma.

"I knew this was her final chance, so I decided to be as radical as possible, to remove it all," Sanan said. "It was a very extensive exposure of the brain, but that was the only way to do it. I think perhaps her previous surgeons were not willing to take that risk, and that made it very hard to get all of the tumor."

Sanan also credited St. Mary's state-of the-art equipment, which allowed him to navigate very precisely through Luz's brain using a three-dimensional electronic picture of the entire organ, scanned onto a computer.

So total was the success of this surgery that Luz walked out of St. Mary's on her own and pain-free just two days later. Scans of her brain showed no trace of tumor anywhere in her head, and she has not had one headache since.

Because this is the type of brain tumor that will not return once it is completely excised, she will need no radiation or chemotherapy. She will have a full life span.

And so, on Friday, Luz stood straight and strong before Sanan, then - at his request - walked briskly across the room, hopped on one foot, touched her finger to his, without missing a beat.

He smiled with delight.

"What's so remarkable is the speed of her recovery," he said. "We really expected she would need some rehabilitation - that she would have trouble walking for a while. But she has made an outstanding recovery, and we're very happy about that."

"Estoy muy contenta," Luz said to Sanan, indicating her own joy.

Shaking her little hand, Sanan said to her, "I consider it my honor to be able to help you."

Sensing her chance, Romero, the St. Andrew's miracle worker, pounced.

"Doctor, I have this 14-year- old boy, in Nogales. He has a tumor in his head," she said.

"You got it," Sanan said.

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* Contact Carla McClain at 806-7754 or at cmcclain@azstarnet.com