Posted on Thu, Jan. 01, 2004

Comfort from Afar

IRANIANS' COMPASSION WARMS FAMILY OF BAY AREA QUAKE VICTIM
By Sean Webby and Kim Vo
Mercury News

Tobb Dell'Oro, the Redwood City man killed in the Christmas earthquake in Bam, Iran, reminded his family of Indiana Jones, chasing adventures and new cultures around the world with his fiancee, Adele Freedman.

Now Dell'Oro's sister and parents hope his death, which has sparked remarkable compassion from the Iranian people and government, can foster an understanding between Iran and the United States.

It's what Dell'Oro — who spoke Arabic and even a bit of Farsi, who had grown up in Saudi Arabia and who had marched just months before his death in anti-war protests in San Francisco — would have wanted, his family said.

"There is friction between our countries," said Tam Dell'Oro, Tobb's sister and partner in a Redwood Shores market research firm. "Maybe Tobb's death will be a conduit to help the people of America and the people of Iran see the outstretched hands of compassion."

On Wednesday, as the Bush administration loosened financial restrictions against the Middle-Eastern country that President Bush had listed in his "Axis of Evil," the Dell'Oro family spent the last day of the year telling stories about Tobb Dell'Oro over tea and tearful sighs at his sister's home in Portola Valley.

As they sat in the living room overlooked by a large Moroccan statue of a Bedouin on a camel, flowers of condolence arrived, and calls from Tobb Dell'Oro's friends from all over the world piled up on the answering machine.

But the Dell'Oros were most moved by how Iranians dug with their bare hands to free the two badly wounded Americans from the stone rubble of their hotel. And how their guide and driver made the desperate trek to the nearest standing hospital 200 kilometers away. Freedman survived. Dell'Oro, 41, died less than 30 miles from the hospital.

The Iranians are charging neither Freedman's nor Dell'Oro's family for medical treatment.

"It's an ancient tenet of their culture," said Walter Dell'Oro, 82, Tobb's father. "The visitor is the highest priority."

Katy Motiey, a friend of Freedman's who was born in Iran, agrees. When she heard that Freedman was dug from the rubble and taken to a hospital with crushed limbs, she immediately phoned her friends and family in Iran and asked them to look after her friend and colleague; the two work at GCA Law Partners in Mountain View.

Kindness of strangers

"The Iranian people have been so kind and so generous to her, she keeps telling me that," said Motiey, who has spoken to Freedman by telephone.

When Motiey called her family, no one hesitated to visit the American, though tens of thousands of Iranians also were killed in the 6.6-magnitude earthquake. "She's in a foreign country, she's by herself," said Motiey, explaining why Freedman has attracted sympathy. "That's the spirit of the people there — very generous."

Dell'Oro and his family have spent much of their lives quietly correcting what they see as misperceptions about the Middle East.

They grew up in Dahran, Saudi Arabia, where Walter Dell'Oro was charting for the first time the vast, oil-rich Arabian peninsula.

Tobb Dell'Oro loved both intellectual and geographic adventure. He piled up graduate degrees in engineering and business at Cornell University, went to work in the petrochemical and consulting fields and wandered the world for fun. Tam Dell'Oro recalled him fighting off prisoners on South America's Devil's Island and dodging the rocks of rioters in Morocco.

He and Freedman had planned his latest adventure in Iran for about two years. Dell'Oro told his sister and mother that he planned to ask Freedman to marry him there.

His mother warned him that traveling as an unmarried couple could cause problems in the conservative country, and the two shopped for cubic zirconia rings at the Stanford Shopping Center.

Warned against trip

Motiey, who left Iran in 1978, had advised Freedman not to go, saying it was too dangerous to visit a country the State Department had issued warnings about.

"We talked about the possible risks," Motiey said. "Of course, an earthquake was not one of them."

While the Dell'Oros wished for Tobb's death to become greater than their own heart-breaking loss, it still often struck them as some cruel and almost astronomically remote vagary of fate.

He and Freedman were not even booked at the ancient guest house they were buried in. They were booked at a modern hotel on the outskirts of town but apparently moved to be closer to the stone heart of the old city, the Dell'Oros said. The hotel where they did not stay suffered no damage.

Jerry Dekker, a professor of humanities at New College in San Francisco, said he arranged the couple's tour and paired them with his good friend and guide, Farzaneh Khademi.

It was she who helped dig the couple from under the collapsed stone.

Predicted death

She told Dekker this week that Dell'Oro had cried out that he was dying as they rushed to the hospital. Khademi told him to hold on.

Then Dell'Oro told Freedman he loved her. She said she loved him. And then he died.