Explicit restrictions on foreign adoption, covering criteria from the marital status of the parents to the number of children already in the adoptive family to the ability of the parents to care for a new dependent financially already existed in most countries, so corporate adoptions never got off the ground in most of the developed world. But other countries, mostly underdeveloped and/or those recently devastated by war or natural disaster, were laden with so many orphans they didn’t have the systems in place to take care of them all. A post-earthquake Panama not only permitted corporate adoptions, they rolled out the red carpet for Avillage.
Two weeks after an official memo detailing Avillage’s mission (and its incentive program) had been sent out to all Panamanian orphanages, Carlos Villanueva, a conflicted Rainbow City headmaster, not expecting or even entirely hoping for a reply, had sent a series of digital photos of Annamaria to Avillage, which eventually found their way to the desk of Aaron Bradford. He was instantly mesmerized.
Avillage had had a modicum of success with models in their brief history, but Annamaria was on another plane.
Bradford had forwarded the photos to a talent scout at a major modeling agency, who confirmed Bradford’s suspicion, while dissecting her look more scientifically. Her face was perfectly symmetrical with high cheekbones and large dark eyes accentuated by similarly-toned hair, and her full lips and bronze skin gave her a somewhat nebulous ethnic profile — a major plus in the industry. While the full body shots were more difficult to analyze because of the baggy T-shirts she wore, she was clearly tall and thin with a long feminine neck, broad but delicate shoulders, svelte arms and long, runway-ready legs.
Already the chairman of Annamaria’s board in his mind, Bradford only had one thing left to do; he needed to see her in person. A couple of other longshot inquiries from Panama would justify the trip, including a thirteen-year-old pitcher with a supposed 85 mile-an-hour fastball. But that was probably a fairy tale. Annamaria was the sole reason he opted to make the trip personally.
The city of Colón’s Enrique A. Jimenez Airport was still closed due to runway damage, so after the five-hour flight from New York to Panama City, Bradford and his assistant were forced to endure another hour and a half in the back of an unairconditioned cab.
Wiping the sweat from his brow with an already soaked handkerchief, he finally peeled himself off of the vinyl seat as the cab pulled up to the orphanage and planted his new Salvatore Ferragamo wingtip in an ankle-deep mud puddle. Jaws clenched and eyes closed, he let out a long audible sigh, well past the point of regretting his decision to come to Panama in July. But as his eyes reopened, his scowl vanished, stopped cold by the splendor of Annamaria’s profile. She was even more stunning than she’d appeared in her picture. And taller. She had to be at least 5’9”. But as she turned to face him, Bradford’s expression tightened back up.
“Breasts are too small,” he whispered derisively, leaning in toward his assistant.
“Mr. Bradford!” his shocked assistant huffed back. “She’s a thirteen-year-old girl.”
“Look, I didn’t travel 3000 miles to tiptoe around important attributes,” Bradford shot back unapologetically through gritted teeth. “Make. A. Note.”
“Yes sir,” his assistant acquiesced.
After greeting Mr. Bradford, headmaster Carlos Villanueva called Annamaria over for a brief introduction.
She demurely bowed her head, looking up bashfully toward Bradford with a polite smile, and extended her long slender arm, offering him a dainty hand. She had heard that someone from America would be coming to see her.
“Nice to meet you,” Bradford said, gently shaking her hand, contorting his mouth into a soulless smile.
Lacking confidence in her English, Annamaria just continued to smile and nodded respectfully.
“YOU ARE A VERY PRETTY GIRL,” Bradford shouted, as if her inability to carry on a conversation in English implied that she was also hard of hearing.
“Thank you,” she said softly with a thick Spanish accent.
The headmaster released her back to whatever it was that she’d been doing and invited Bradford and his assistant inside.
Carlos Villanueva’s office was a converted utility closet, furnished with a foldable card table that served as a desk, an overflowing filing cabinet and two metal chairs — enough to push the cramped space close to maximum capacity. The walls were covered floor-to-ceiling with faux wood paneling, except for a tiny window that looked out over the yard, and the floor was unpolished concrete.
The headmaster snaked between the card table and the filing cabinet to reach his chair, where he plopped down and gestured with an open hand over to the other one. Bradford quickly grabbed the remaining seat, leaving his assistant standing in the doorway cradling her legal-sized notepad, pen at the ready.
“I’m sorry,” Bradford sighed, looking back toward his assistant with a manufactured grimace, trying his best to look uncomfortable at the prospect of having to tell his assistant to get lost. “Would you mind waiting outside?”
Without saying a word or changing expression, she took a single step back and pulled the door closed in front of her.
“Thank you for sending me those incredible photos. She is beautiful, isn’t she,” Bradford remarked gazing out the small window at Annamaria, in the middle of a soccer game with a few of the younger kids out in the mud-soaked yard.
“Yes. She is,” the headmaster said, almost remorsefully. Bradford didn’t strike him as the type of person a child should be entrusted to.
“I think she’s got a big future in modeling. I took her pictures to a scout at a major modeling agency in New York who agrees wholeheartedly. Called her a ‘can’t miss.’ I really think this could be a huge opportunity not only for her but for us at Avillage — and of course for you and your orphanage here. I believe you are aware that you and your orphanage would be entitled to a 1.5% ownership stake for the referral?”
The young headmaster nodded hesitantly.
“Carlos, by now I’ve been involved in hundreds of these IPOs, and they’re always difficult to predict, even more so with models, since we’re legally barred from showing their pictures to investors. But with the comments I’ve gotten from the modeling agencies, I’m guessing she would open with a market cap around a million and a half, maybe two.”
Carlos’s eyes bugged involuntarily.
“So your share of the more conservative estimate would be around $25,000 — if you sold right away. Which, of course, I wouldn’t recommend. But I bet that kind of money could go pretty far in a place like this, couldn’t it?” Bradford said with a salesman’s grin, raising one eyebrow.
“It would be a godsend,” the headmaster whispered guiltily, staring vacantly at Annamaria, innocently laughing and bounding after a group of boys half her age.
“After a few minor cosmetic adjustments, we could be talking about significantly more than that. I anticipate you could potentially see upwards of $25,000 a year in dividends for several years.”
“What do you mean by ‘minor cosmetic adjustments,’ Mr. Bradford?” the headmaster asked nervously.
“Oh, nothing that would be dangerous to her. Don’t worry about that. Actually, it would probably help with her confidence. The only thing I could really foresee would be a minor augmentation — she’d need at least a full B cup to…”