Maj. Scott Southworth Adopts Disabled Iraqi Orphan

By Daniel Hamon

While deployed in Iraq in 2003, then Captain Southworth met Ala'a, a 9 year old boy who had cerebral palsy. The police had found him abandoned on a street in Baghdad six years earlier. Southworth and Ala'a met at an orphanage run by the Mother Theresa organization.

Southworth was part of the Wisconsin National Guard's 32nd Military Police Company, a unit responsible for professionalizing the Baghdad Police in northeastern Baghdad. They also visited the Mother Theresa orphanage regularly during the following 10 months. During this time, Southworth and Ala’a grew close.