Phalen Lim, the director of youth programs for Santa Ana's Cambodian Family organization, is being honored with a $25,000 Peace Prize from California Wellness. Lim escaped the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge with her family when she was very young and moved to Santa Ana. (JEBB HARRIS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER)By DOUG IRVING
The Orange County Register
She escaped the brutal Khmer Rouge and now works to inspire children.
SANTA ANA – A community leader who has made it her life's work to inspire young people in one of this city's most desperate neighborhoods has won a $25,000 California Peace Prize.
Phalen Lim speaks from experience when she tells the kids at The Cambodian Family that they can make a better future for themselves. She escaped with her family from the killing fields of Cambodia and came to Santa Ana as a refugee with almost nothing.
She's 36 years old now, with a master's degree in counseling, and on Wednesday she will become one of three Californians to be recognized with the peace prize this year. But she spent her childhood on a work commune in Cambodia, under the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge, and her earliest memory is of hunger.
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