Dr. Linath Lim鈥檚 life was shaped by starvation.
She was not yet 13 when the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia and ripped her family apart. The totalitarian regime sent her and four siblings to work camps, where they planted rice and dug irrigation canals from sunrise to sunset 鈥 each surviving on two ladles of rice gruel a day. One disappeared, never to be found.
Just a few months before the Khmer Rouge fell in January 1979, Lim鈥檚 father starved to death, among the nearly of Cambodians who perished from execution, forced labor, starvation or disease in less than four years.
For Lim, the indelible stamp of childhood anguish drove two of her life鈥檚 passions: serving people as a physician and cooking lavish feasts for friends and family 鈥 both of which she did until she died of covid-19 in January.
Within the week before her death at age 58, she treated dozens of patients who flooded the hospital during the deadly winter covid surge, while bringing home-cooked meals to the hospital for her fellow health care workers to enjoy during breaks.
鈥淭hese experiences during the war made her humble and empathetic toward the people around her,鈥 said Dr. Vidushi Sharma, who worked with Lim at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, California. 鈥淪he always wanted to help them.鈥
Lim鈥檚 story is one of suffering and triumph.
During the Khmer Rouge鈥檚 brutal reign and the Cambodian civil war before it, Lim and her nine siblings attended school sporadically. The ravages of war forced the family first from its small town to the capital, Phnom Penh, and then into the countryside when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. As part of its vision to create a , the communist group split families and relocated residents to rural labor camps.
Lim survived the work camps because she was smart and resourceful, said her youngest brother, Rithy Lim, who also lives in Fresno. She dug ditches, hauled clay-like dirt on her back, built earthen dams in the middle of a river during monsoons 鈥 all with little food or rest, he said.
She also became a skillful hunter and fisher, and learned to identify plants that were safe to eat.
鈥淵ou cannot imagine the horrible conditions,鈥 he said. 鈥淭hink of it as a place that you live like wild animals, and people tell you to work. There鈥檚 no paper, no pens. You sleep on the ground. We witnessed death of all sorts.鈥
Vietnamese troops liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Later that year, Lim, her mother and siblings sneaked into Thailand. 鈥淭he whole family walked through minefields,鈥 Rithy Lim recalled. There, they waited and worked in refugee camps. At one camp, they met a dentist from California鈥檚 Central Valley who was on a medical mission.
When Lim and her family arrived in the U.S. in 1982, they landed in Georgia. But she and an older brother soon moved to the small town of Taft, California, about 45 minutes west of Bakersfield, at the invitation of the dentist they鈥檇 befriended at the Thai refugee camp.
When she hit the ground, the 4-foot-11 dynamo, then 19, was driven by 鈥減ure determination,鈥 Rithy Lim said.
Within two years, Linath Lim learned English, earned her GED and graduated from Taft College 鈥 鈥渂oom, boom, boom,鈥 her brother recalled. (She learned to make traditional, middle-America Thanksgiving dinners when she worked at the community college鈥檚 cafeteria, which she would later cook for scores of friends and family.)
She went on to attend Fresno State and then the Medical College of Pennsylvania, sleeping on friends鈥 couches, borrowing money from other Cambodian refugees and scraping by.
鈥淚magine not having any money, studying alone, sleeping in someone else鈥檚 living room,鈥 Rithy Lim said.
Lim became an internal medicine doctor 鈥渂ecause she always wanted to be really involved with a lot of patients,鈥 Rithy Lim said. After her residency, she returned to the Central Valley to practice in hospitals and clinics in underserved communities, including Porterville and Stockton, where some of her patients were farmworkers and Cambodian refugees.
California has the largest Cambodian population in the country, with roughly 89,000 people of Cambodian descent in 2019, according to a Public Policy Institute of California analysis of data.
Twice, Lim joined the on weeklong volunteer trips to Cambodia, where she and other doctors treated hundreds of patients a day, said Dr. Song Tan, a Long Beach, California, pediatrician and founder of CHPAA.
鈥淪he was a kindhearted, very gentle person,鈥 recalled Tan, who said he was the only member of his family to survive the Khmer Rouge. 鈥淪he went beyond the call of duty to do special things for patients.鈥
Most recently, Lim worked the swing shift, 1 p.m. to 1 a.m., at Community Regional Medical Center. She admitted patients through the emergency room, where she was exposed to countless people with covid. She worked extra shifts during the pandemic, volunteering when the hospital was short-staffed, said Dr. Nahlla Dolle, an internist who also worked with Lim.
鈥淪he told me there were so many patients every day, and that they didn鈥檛 have enough beds and the patients had to wait in the hallway,鈥 Tan said.
Colleagues said she was aware of the risks but loved her job. Lim, who was single and didn鈥檛 have kids, drew happiness from celebrating others鈥 joys. After getting home from work in the small hours, she slept for a bit, then got up to cook. Her specialties were Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese and Italian food. She sometimes ordered a whole roasted pig that she transported to the hospital. Her memorable Thanksgiving dinners served 70 or more people.
鈥淔or any occasion that comes up 鈥 if it鈥檚 a birthday, if it鈥檚 a baby shower, if it鈥檚 Thanksgiving 鈥 she would cook, she would order food and bring everybody together,鈥 Dolle said. 鈥淪he loved to feed people because she experienced famine and lack of food.鈥
The week before she died, Lim cooked for her colleagues almost every day, and threw a baby shower for Sharma, complete with chicken calzones and blueberry cake.
鈥淓very day, we were having lunch together,鈥 Sharma said. 鈥淪he did the shower, and then she鈥檚 gone.鈥
Lim, who had health problems including diabetes, had not been vaccinated. Family and friends had urged her to take care of herself, and to check her blood sugar and take her medications. 鈥淪he would care about everyone but herself,鈥 Sharma said.
On Jan. 15, Lim told friends by phone that she was exhausted, achy and having trouble breathing. But she said that she would be fine, that she just needed to rest. Then she stopped responding to calls and texts.
When she didn鈥檛 show up for work a few days later, her brother went to check on her at home and found her on the couch, where she had died.
Now her brother and colleagues are haunted by what-ifs over the loss of a remarkable woman and doctor: What if I had checked on her sooner? What if she had been vaccinated? What if she had gotten care when she started feeling ill?
鈥淭o have someone who has been through all that in her childhood and then flourish as a physician, a human being, coming to a new country, learning English, going to school and college without having much financial support, it鈥檚 phenomenal,鈥 Sharma said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 unbelievable.鈥
This story is part of 鈥Lost on the Frontline,鈥 a project from and Kaiser Health News that aims to document the lives of health care workers in the U.S. who die from COVID-19, and to investigate why so many are victims of the disease.
This story was produced by , which publishes , an editorially independent service of the .
