Help came in full force when Hernandez, along with Willow Glen residents Linda Mancuso, Nicole Van Vleck and Lori Sexsaur, formed the core group that launched the Angel Race on the Los Gatos Creek Trail. Calling themselves the "Angel Team" after Oprah Winfrey's Angel Network—an organization that gives grants to charitable causes—the four women mobilized neighbors, co-workers, friends and the Los Gatos Rotary Club to sponsor the fundraiser on Sept. 18.

The 10K run and 5K walk raised more than $20,000 in pledges, donations and application fees from approximately 200 participants, Mancuso says. All the proceeds, except for $600 in administrative costs, will go to the House of Hope and Recovery, which provides short-term accommodations and counseling to rape victims, abused children and people infected with HIV/AIDS in Mandini, South Africa.

Hernandez has never organized a philanthropic event before, but the children's situation was a cause that fit her experiences and interests. Like African AIDS orphans who have lost their parents to the deadly disease, Hernandez, who is a hairdresser, has also lost friends and a co-worker.

When one of her hairdressers, Jim Daher, became infected with the AIDS virus in 1983, Hernandez almost lost her hair salon.

"People were canceling appointments because panic went through the community," she says.

She was able to weather those early years, even though she almost lost her business to client fears that Daher was contagious. But watching Daher's health deteriorate from the disease was "devastating," she says.

Not only has Hernandez witnessed the havoc that AIDS causes in people's lives, she has also traveled to Africa five times, where the reality of the disease has become a pandemic, orphaning millions of children.

Yet the AIDS crisis was not the initial reason she journeyed to Africa. Her original interest in the continent began 40 years ago while she was watching a television program, I Search For Adventure. It turned into a personal quest, with her traveling to this faraway continent.

"I refinanced my house to go to Africa the first time," she says.

During those trips, Hernandez witnessed a Masai tribe bloodletting, walked through the bush at night, witnessed the wildebeest migration and kayaked through rivers where hippopotamuses dwelt.

But it wasn't until Oprah Winfrey's Christmas Kindness special program, with Winfrey delivering Christmas gifts to South African orphanages and schools in December 2003, that Hernandez decided to become personally involved.

"My heart was really drawn there," she says. "When kids there are orphaned, they're stuck."

And having traveled to so many countries in Africa, it was easy for her to relate to the problems that the culture was facing.

"Going to Africa is what made it so real," she says. "I've had floods rush through camps and been bumped around on the roads. Africa has been so good to me that I wanted to give back to Africa."

The first person Hernandez called was her friend Linda Mancuso, a cancer survivor, marathon runner and public-relations professional.

"It just touched my heart," 55-year-old Mancuso says. "There are children here who need help, but in Africa they don't have the resources. The money we raise will go four times as far."

Mancuso adds that the plight of young girls who have been raped by HIV-infected men who believe if they sleep with a virgin that they will be cured was particularly troubling.

"What happens to them is beyond their control," she says.

And knowing that health and life are a gift is something Mancuso can relate to. In 1990, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had radiation treatments. She celebrated her 10th anniversary of being cancer-free in 2000 by running a marathon.

"When you've had an illness, you just feel the need to give back," Mancuso says.

Hernandez also knows what it's like to fight her way back to health. On one of her trips to Africa, she was thrown from a river raft into grade-five rapids in the Zambezi River and badly injured a disc in her neck. She was told by doctors she would never run again and for the first three years after the accident was only able to work on and off, but through rehabilitation she has regained her physical strength.

Despite these challenges, Hernandez says that organizing the Angel Race was one of the most difficult things she has ever put together.

"I've owned many businesses, but this is the hardest thing I've ever done as an adult," she says.

Hernandez says that numerous volunteers including herself spent $80,000 to $90,000 in hours of donated labor during the last nine months to create the website and T-shirts and provide food and entertainment with three live bands. Her motto became "Don't think about it, just do it," because otherwise she would have been too overwhelmed by the task, she says.

"I'm amazed at how we pulled it off," Hernandez says. "We have a huge network, and 90 percent of the people who got involved were our clients or other hairdressers."

She says the most emotional part of the experience for her was looking out over the crowd and seeing friends from different parts of her life taking part.

One of those friends who helped raise support was 38-year-old Julia Lane, who unknowingly became infected with HIV by a former boyfriend 17 years ago. With the drugs available in this country, Lane has been able to control the disease.

Lane accompanied the women to various presentations to put a human face on the illness, Mancuso says. "She could express what's she been through and how medicine helped her go through remission. The children in South Africa have none of that opportunity."

Hernandez says it was uplifting to watch Lane walk the first three kilometers of the race, especially because her daily prescription dosages don't go into effect until much later in the day.

For Van Vleck, who was part of the Angel Team, it wasn't a personal experience but her friendship with the other three women that prompted her to lend her expertise in the areas of graphic design and promotions for the project.

But it wasn't until she saw pictures of children at the House of Hope and Recovery eight months ago that it sunk in.

"Wow, I'm actually doing this for another country," she says. "I've never done a fundraiser before. It was kind of scary, but so inspiring."

Hernandez says that she began receiving emails from people in Africa even before the race took place, thanking her for raising money.

"It's the most wonderful, worthwhile, peaceful feeling," she says.

The fact that the money will be used at a shelter caring for a 5-hour-old newborn, who had been abandoned in a community toilet and rescued by a passerby, is what makes the effort worth it, Hernandez says.

She and Mancuso plan to hand deliver some of the money to the House of Hope and Recovery sometime in the next three months when they travel to South Africa.

"People here have been so generous," Mancuso says. "This community should be proud of that."

After this year's success, the women plan to make the race an annual event, once again teaming up with the Los Gatos Rotary clubs, which support service projects in South Africa.

For more information, visit www.theangelsrace.org. To make a donation, write a check payable to the Children of South Africa and send it to Children of South Africa, P.O. Box 7345, San Jose, CA 95150.