- [James] Lily Nie really transformed the face of international adoption.

- [Lily] All these orphans and abandoned children deserve to have their own parents and their own home.

- [Joshua] We have impacted more than 100,000 orphans in seven countries.

- [Sarah] Lily's legacy is love.

If you look around at the pictures on these walls, if you look the lives touched, it all comes down to love.

[bright calm piano music] - [Reynelda] As strong and enduring as the Rocky Mountains they stood beside.

As visionary as the views of the Grand Plains they looked across.

The women inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame are trailblazers whose work has improved and enriched our lives.

They are teachers, scientists, ranchers, leaders in business, education, religion, and the arts.

Women who have been recognized for their many contributions to our state, our country, and the world.

I'm Reynelda Muse and these are the stories of "Great Colorado Women."

[calm bright piano music ends] [calm bright oriental music] - Deciding to adopt a child is one of the most difficult and important decision of your life, and the most beautiful dream.

It's about life and family.

- Lily stepped into this space of creating families.

- When China changed its policy to allow for foreign adoption, Lily leaned into that, and she started something that's had a worldwide impact.

- They understand China, and they have a great compassion for the children.

- She has dedicated every moment of their lives to impact the lives of thousands of children, thousands of families.

- And she truly is the one who lived the vision of this organization, that is to find loving home for as many orphans possible, to reach out to the children left behind, and to provide emotional culture support to the children adopted already.

- I was born in China in 1963.

My parents met in the army.

My sister was a firstborn.

My father is really kind of a traditional Chinese man, and the tradition is men's world.

And when I was born a girl, my father had no choice, but to gimme a girl's name, Li Li.

My name means independent and stand straight like a man.

So that's how he raised me up.

"Try your best to be independent and do everything yourself," and I think I only benefit from it, you know?

And that just who I am.

My mom really did a great job in parenting me and be the role model for me.

I'm always a good student.

I enjoy learning.

Her father was a supreme court judge, so she was saying, "If you want to pursue social science, of course, he was a famous judge, so you may want to pursue law."

And that just stuck in my mind, so I got into law school.

[calm bright music] - I met Lily in December, 1984.

- We started to date around the time I was ready to graduate.

After I graduate, I got a job from economic and business law attorneys.

- After the cultural evolution, she became the first group of Chinese to be accepted into the Chinese Bar Association.

It was a huge deal.

Also, it was a time China just opened up.

I remember many, many tourists came into China through cruises.

- At that time, there is no tour guide or tourism in China, so he was picked to show those tourists around.

He met a American family.

This lady show him a card.

"Do you know Jesus Christ?

Do you want to be born again?"

Before that point, he found a Bible in his college, and he write about it, so he know what it's saying.

- And I just start to share with her my story.

She was so happy to hear that.

- She invite him to come to Columbia Bible College to continue to learn about Bible.

- And I decide I want to go to USA because it was impossible at that time.

Nobody ever gone to USA to study.

So I shared with Lily and she was nervous, she was excited.

- I support him to go overseas, but I had a very good job.

I enjoy what I do.

- I think she would have incredible, bright future in China.

- My dad immediately went to South Carolina.

That was where the host family was, the sponsors, and he studied at Columbia Bible College.

- Well, after six months, I came to visit him.

The second month, we had a wedding.

At beginning, I kind of enjoyed to see what the western world look like, but without understanding the language and the people, after six months, I was ready to go back.

- When Lily came here, her mom and dad gave her some money for the ticket, but we didn't have any other money.

We did everything we could and just try to survive.

- They were working as janitors and maids, and cashiers, and for my parents, that was a very hard transition.

- And then I ran out of money because my sponsor want to send me back to China to be evangelist, but I didn't think I was ready.

I said, "I wanna continue my education.

I wanna graduate school.

I might even wanna get a PhD."

And God provide another sponsor, that is Dr. Lehman and Mrs. Lehman.

- And they introduced the word, adoption to us.

They had four biological girls and then they adopted four other children.

- They loved the children like their own.

And I was so touched because as someone coming from Chinese culture who doesn't believe that you can love someone who are not born out of you, it's just very, very touching.

- This family really took such good care of them, and I think it left a huge imprint on their hearts.

- Joshua was going to transfer from Columbia Bible College to Denver.

- My parents drove from South Carolina to Denver, and I borrowed a little, old Buick, and it broke down in the blizzard of 1987, right as they hit Denver, Colorado.

My dad was studying at Denver Seminary, and my mom was working various jobs.

I think at one point, she was holding seven different jobs.

- She went from being an attorney to a housekeeper.

I mean she had to start all over.

- The end of February, 1989, I got home, exhausted, and my whole mouth was swollen.

And so, Josh took me to Porter Hospital, and they did a blood test, and they told Josh I was pregnant.

- I was so scared because we were not prepared for that, and we had no idea what to do.

- The 10th week, we got the first ultrasound, - I came back with another surprise news, "You have twins."

Oh, my God.

That was just absolutely crazy.

- I was crying.

I said, "No, I'm not ready for one, not two."

[chuckles] So that was the miracle.

That was a double blessing, starting my life in the US.

[calm poignant music] 1989, that's a very eventful year, Tiananmen Square, and that's not the country I could picture living in.

We made a hard decision to stay.

[calm poignant music continues] When China had the One-Child Policy, 60% of population working on farm, and male power is very, very important, and only men can carry out their family's last name.

To deal with government policy, Chinese people choose to abandon their girls if their first born was girl, second born was girl, until they have a boy.

- There was an article a few years after we were born that said, "China had opened its doors to international adoption."

And in reflecting on it, I think my mom really thought back to working as an attorney in China and remembering that she was in a bathroom once witnessing a woman who was struggling with what to do with her child.

It seemed to Lily that she had quite a few little nudges about this.

So when this article showed up, and they were talking about it, and she said, "Well, I'm an attorney or I have attorney background."

The article said that all you needed was a law degree and some understanding of China, and I think that really fit with them.

- We just realized there's so much love here and also, we knew there was so much need in China.

- And so, I started to fill out the applications and before you know it, we got our first license as a child placing agency.

We call it Chinese Children Adoption International, and that's our CCAI.

- Then we started to share with people in our neighborhood, on campus, in our church.

Almost everybody responded with incredible enthusiasm, and said, "Josh, oh my gosh, my wife and I wanna have baby for many years now.

Tell me how to do that."

- Joshua traveled back to China to visit those orphanages.

It was heartbreaking to see the reality of the orphanage conditions.

- Many, many, many girl was cramped in the tiny, little, cold room, and some of them screaming to the top of their lung.

[babies crying] I think many kids already gave up.

At that time, we just become parent of twin.

We just loved children so much, and I just came back crying and share with Lily about what we find out.

We just felt so inspired, wanna do something quickly.

- All these orphans and abandoned children deserve to have their own parents and their own home.

And that's how we started single vision, single mission, adoption.

We came back and start to get word out and prepare our families.

- And then I took the first group of American couples back to China, and we pick up a six, beautiful, but very malnourished girls.

And we came back on Easter Sunday at the Stapleton International Airport.

We were welcomed by hundreds of people, relatives and television crew and it was incredible because I realized for the first time, six girl live was changed forever.

[bright inspiring music] A newspaper published a story.

Right after that, people started to call us from all over the country, nonstop for several days.

Suddenly we realized, this is going pretty big.

- The first few years of CCAI was, I'm sure, breathtaking and also wild, and I think my mom just kind of held on for dear life trying to figure out what she had done and what she had started.

And with each new child finding a home, I think she pushed that mile marker a little further and a little further, and they quickly grew into the largest China adoption agency.

- With all the differences and struggles between the US and China, there is one place where politics are not an issue.

The Chinese Children Adoption International in Englewood is the fastest growing adoption agency in the world.

- The Chinese adoption process was very regulated, and it involved many steps.

There was a lot of sort of well-founded scrutiny of the adoptive families, assessing them for their fitness to be good parents.

- At any given time, we have hundreds of families in the adoption process.

It involves a family preparing an initial application to their adoption service provider like CCAI and baring their lives to make sure that they meet the country's qualifications, and they put together a stack of paperwork.

We call that a dossier.

When a group of families dossiers had been sent to the Chinese government, and they were reviewed and approved, and carefully scrutinized, and the Chinese government had identified a particular child to match to each family.

The best part came when we got to call those families and say, you have been matched, and you would have the incredible honor to sit down with them and say, this is your child.

[calm piano music] - On our match date, we got a call from a staffer at CCAI who shared with us the good news that we'd been matched to a little girl.

The staffer explained that she was a little girl with a heart defect, and I'm a pediatrician.

[chuckles] It's an emotional moment, you know, it's kinda like a birth.

We were very excited.

- I learned my daughter's name, her age, where she was found, and of course, that melts your heart.

I got a call from CCAI saying, "The pictures came in."

That was a pretty wonderful day.

I immediately began to look for childcare and gear up, and get ready, and it hit me one day, how can I as a single parent, take that child from an institution in China, travel halfway around the world, bring her here, only to put her in another institutional care here?

And I was really struggling with it, and I had tears streaming down my face.

I drove straight to CCAI, I asked to speak to Lily, and I sat down in front of her and I said, "How can I do that?

You know, it feels like the most selfish thing I'm doing."

And Lily sat back and she said, "Susan," she said, "You are growing in the heart of a mother."

But I thought, "Is that what that feels like?"

- Everything that Lily does has involved her passion on getting as many children a home as she possibly can.

- Because she said, "If family decide to take a leap of faith to invest their trust, time, and money in CCAI, then they deserve the dedication, not only all the entire organization, but also me, personally, because the option is not buying a car, not buying a house.

It is about human life."

- Not everybody who goes to China has traveled internationally before, and so, there's some subtle design to how they bring in these soon-to-be, adoptive families.

You typically come in through one of the major cities.

You go out to say at the provincial city with your travel group where your baby's gonna come and they're, someone's gonna handle your baby, and you're gonna see 'em for the first time.

- The gift of life is so incredibly precious.

It's still tears me up to this day.

[calm poignant music] - After I traveled six times and visit 40 orphanages to bring 140 children home, I realized I can't bring all of them home.

- There was this little girl, I'll never forget her face, I'll never forget her.

She was so excited when she saw us.

She just started, had this bright, happy face.

She was so excited and then the workers were telling her that her family was not here.

She melted into the arms of a worker that was there, and she just broke into tears.

[calm poignant music continues] - In the early years, if not all the baby, 90% of babies are malnourished.

30 or 40% have rickets.

Mortality rate was 30%.

I personally saw girls just die.

[calm poignant music continues] - And it wasn't that people in China weren't trying to do their best.

It just was a stressed system without enough resources.

And Lily saw that and realized that not all these children were going to be adopted.

- So before we empty those orphanage, we better improve their living conditions, provide better care, provide better nutrition.

That's how we started our second program is called Formula Fund.

We basically provide formulas and food, and nutritions, and medicines, and medical treatments, and exercise, equipments, and toys.

- After all, we realized, it is still not enough.

It seemed the whole standard is not rising as quick as we want.

- We had this idea to have a training center, so all the orphanages can have the first class services, and that's how we start to build our first Lily Orphan Care Center.

We provide personalized feeding and bathing to all the children.

They take a bath every day.

They have their own personal clothes, not like a uniform.

In orphanage, they all have the same clothes, you know?

It's all personalized care.

- The goal was to build a place that would not only introduce a new childcare idea, but also attract people from other orphanages to come, to learn, or to be trained, and that happened.

- All the orphanage directors, caretakers, coming to our Lily Orphan Care Center, and so they can learn the way they can go back to take care of their children.

[calm bright music] - As a result of that effort, you start to see the dramatic improvement of childcare condition in China.

So we were very thankful for that opportunity.

- Well, when I first started at CCAI, I remember being incredibly impressed at the scale of the organization, the professionalism, the passion with which every single individual in this organization approached their work and our mission.

We were just gearing up to celebrate our 10-year anniversary.

The celebratory event that we had that year, featured children coming down the aisles of this big auditorium carrying flags that named their province where they had been adopted from.

I was so moved by the sheer number of lives changed by CCAI and and what was being done here.

- You can't help but see all of these families bringing home their children and imagining that that was the correct move for your family as well.

- Beginning of 2004, we had received a new set of 30 children and our waiting child team just doing the reviewing of the 30 children.

And Joshua just came into the room and then he would just comment on the child on the top of the pile and he would just say, "Oh, she's cute."

And our waiting time manager said, "You think so, huh?

I think she's beautiful.

Maybe she's right for your home."

- At that time, very few people were looking to adopt older children, and she spent nine and a half years really fending for herself in a foster family that did not care for her, in an environment that did not care for her.

So she was a survivor.

- So we announced to our staff, "Yes, we want to pursue this adoption.

- Lily and Josh, they, too, cared and wanted to add to the family.

- They had built this agency that had fulfilled the dreams of so many families and children over the years.

It was a really joyful day to see their personal journey come to fruition like that, and they brought home this beautiful little girl.

- I think that adoption experience is so important to us, gave us much better, deeper, understanding about the stress, struggle, nervousness, that the anxiety, every adoptive family goes through.

- We thought we know how adoption works and how parents feel, until we adopt our Anna.

She's our blessing.

She's our teacher.

We can truly say to our parents, we have been there and done that.

We know what you are struggling for, and we know we need to provide ongoing parent training and parent skill-building because love is not enough.

- CCAI is really unique in that it does provide post-adoption support, so that the adoptee, the family, the parents, non-adopted siblings, can continue to thrive and feel supported, and feel a sense of belonging.

- We wanna serve as a support to those children and their families throughout their lives as they grow and develop as a family, and especially as these children seek to find pride in their own identity and where they came from.

- For me, it was important that my children knew about their heritage, knew about their culture, knew other kids that were in the same situation as them and felt like they were a community and not isolated.

- So Lily had the idea create a cultural center that they called a Joyous Chinese Cultural School.

It was very small at the very beginning, only a dozen kids.

But from there, as adoption grow, the school started to grow.

At one time, it had more than 500 kids.

[calm oriental music] - [Lily] It was the only kind in this country or in the world that a culture center built for adoptees.

This is the only place my classmates look like me, and their parents look like you.

- Just to see other people that are like you that have the same understanding of your background, who don't have to assume what your family looks like, don't have to assume that you know your birth language or your birth culture, but just know that you're who you are and can meet you at that level, for me, it was very normalizing.

It was very validating.

It really creates a community and again, that common understanding that you're not alone in this experience.

- Then China programs start to shrinking when people stop abandoning and start to adopt which is a good problem.

We had this big machine, we call it Assembly Line of Love.

So one family reached out to us and said, "Can you consider Haiti?"

CCAI started as very biased and focused, and I'm a Chinese, but later on, you just realize children are children.

It doesn't matter where they come from.

[calm music continues] And I want to bring as many children home as possible if there's a way.

- [Sarah] CCAI has placed children from China, Ukraine, Columbia, Bulgaria, Taiwan, Latvia, and Haiti.

- She reminded all of us that this is about more than just one child going to one family.

It's about connecting cultures.

- [Amy] Lily's greatest accomplishment is being a mother and not just a mother to her three children, but a mother to over 13,000 adopted children.

[calm oriental music continues] - She was able to connect thousands of children with their forever families.

- If you look around at the pictures on these walls, if you look at the lives touched by CCAI services over the years, it all comes down to love.

- Family trees will forever reflect thousands and thousands of kids in this little 30-year period that were connected through this one woman that would've never been connected if it weren't for her.

- I feel so blessed by these 13,250 children.

I'm very still passionate about what I do.

- Lily is someone who celebrate mother day every day.

- Children change your life.

[calm bright piano music] I'm ready for another 30 years if God allow me to do that.