Vero Beach’s Miracle Worker

Amor, Naomi and Hayley share a joyful moment.

Naomi Hamilton was seven years old when she had a vision. As a child in rural North Carolina, medical missioners visited her church, presenting pictures of sutured wounds that to her looked only like healing. While she had yet to travel out of state and lived in a typical Southern town, she began to have dreams in which she was bandaging skin of all colors. She told her parents God was calling her to be a missionary.

Now 34 and the founder of Safe Refuge International, a nonprofit to help women and girls devastated by poverty, abuse and the sex trafficking industry, Naomi has looked into unfathomable darkness and focused on potential. In the eight years since she started the organization in the Philippines, Naomi and her staff have helped more than 300 girls – some as young as five years old.

When you meet Naomi, there is something ethereal about her. She’s applied a little sparkle to her eyelids, which makes her look almost innocent. When she speaks, she talks quickly and eagerly but the tone of her voice is soothing. As she presses a glittery fingertip – her nails shimmer, too – to her phone and opens her photos of downtown Manila where Safe Refuge is based, it becomes clear that all this brightness is a reflection of an extraordinary inner light.