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Not many campus cops attract as much affection as Tilahun (Michael) Belay.
At Chapman University, a typical assessment of the Ethiopian immigrant, a security officer here since 1981, goes like this: "I have never seen anyone give out tickets in such a genteel way, with such panache. It's almost a joy to get a ticket from him."
But what makes Mr. Belay something of a folk hero here at Chapman, in the southern reaches of Los Angeles, is not just his gentle amiability, but also his generous spirit. Over the last eight years, the unassuming Mr. Belay has gone to extraordinary lengths to build a school for hundreds of orphans in his tiny home village, Arusi, in the Tembien region in the northern highlands of Ethiopia.
He has raised money to construct a school, recruit volunteer teachers, and identify orphans in the villages of Tembien who could take advantage of the school.
Mr. Belay was inspired to build the orphanage in 2000, when he made his first trip back to Tembien since he left as a teenage refugee, in 1975. "For the first time, I saw it with my open eyes," he says. "I couldn't sleep at all, when I saw all the people dying in the street." The region had recently been bombed and devastated, as it has often been as one of the flashpoints in a country often troubled by ethnic, religious, and interregional strife. Mr. Belay saw the effects of bacterial diseases caused by dirty water that sicken and kill many adults and even more children. He recalls finding orphans living in dire poverty and dangerous circumstances, often in the open. He found some living in trees; some slept in rivers and streams that were slightly warmer than the chill night air.
He decided he must do something.
The visit was doubly painful for Mr. Belay because his mother was his only family member to survive a civil insurgency in the region in 1976. His father, who had served for a time as a judge...