give me a sign

STATS

Name: Lillian Westerlund

Age & DOB: 28, July 21st 1971

Ethnicity: Samoan

Occupation: Health Education Volunteer with the Peace Corps

Gender, Pronouns, and Sexuality: Cis Woman, She/Her, Bisexual

Marital Status: Single

Religion: Agnostic (raised Methodist)

Languages: English (fluent - her first language), Samoan (fluent)

Height: 5 ft, 11 in

Hometown: Sacramento, California, USA

Location (before crash): Apia, Samoa (technically Sacramento, California, USA, but had been living in Apia)

Faceclaim: Frankie Adams

BIO

Lillian Westerlund was born on July 21st, 1971 as the youngest of three children in Sacramento, California. Her mother, Susana Westerlund (née Brown), worked as a medical laboratory scientist, and had moved to California from Tāfuna, American Samoa at the age of 18 to go to college. Her father, Daniel Westerlund, worked as a cardiologist and had moved to California from Siumu, Samoa at the age of 22 for medical school. The two met in 1960, and got married in 1962 before having their first child, Lillian’s older brother Peter in 1963. They later had Lillian’s older sister, Jana, in 1968, before having Lillian in 1971. It would be no wonder that Lillian would eventually go into the health field herself, having two parents in the medical field, though she was the only one of her siblings to do so.

She always grew up interested in health, and what her parents did, though more so what her mother did than her father did. There was a point of time, as a child, where she was interested in becoming a doctor, but it was at that time and age where all of the children were interested in being doctors or lawyers or teachers or even the president. As she matured in life, she found that she was never actually interested in becoming a doctor and living that life, having that MD or DO by her name didn’t attract her at all. Still, the general field of health interested her, it’s just that she wanted to do something more behind the scenes. But she definitely didn’t want to go into accounting like her brother did, or agriculture like her sister did. She just wasn’t sure where in the “behind the scenes” work was best for her.

So, as the curious person that Lillian is, she talked to as many people as she could. Her parents obviously had many co-workers and friends in all fields of health work, and she wanted to know their jobs, and what they studied. That is when she discovered Public Health, and also understood the job of a community health worker. She continued to talk to other people, learn about their jobs and their education, but that was the field that stuck with her, and the one she eventually chose to go down. She wanted to mostly stay in California, but applied to some universities out of state as well, and for all of the schools she applied to, she applied as a Public Health major. Ever the intelligent student she was, she got into most of the schools she applied to, and chose to go to the University of California, Berkeley to study for her Bachelor’s degree in Public Health.

She truly thrived at Berkeley, and after she graduated in 1993, she easily landed a job as a community health worker in Oakland, California, only a short 13 minute drive from Berkeley. Getting to work on the frontlines, helping to improve health outcomes in the community by working with members of the community to break down cultural barriers to treatment, then working with health care agencies and the state government to make appropriate changes was so fulfilling to her. The rest of her job, including just educating the community about health issues and promoting outreach into the community to build better health outcomes, was also so fulfilling to her. To know that, because of her, someone might actually feel empowered enough to seek out the healthcare they need, and therefore live a longer life, filled her with so much glee. That’s why it hurt, in August 1997, when she was laid off. She then shortly after had to leave Oakland, and move back in with her parents in Sacramento, because she couldn’t afford to live there anymore.

Jobs as a community health worker were getting harder to come by, especially as she spent a longer time unemployed. Even the connections her parents had couldn’t help her much, times were tough and there weren’t any openings for her. That was when she turned to the Peace Corps. They had tabled when she was in college and spoke to some of her classes, trying to recruit college students to apply after they graduated. And hell, if she couldn’t get anything else, why not? It would definitely be something that would look on her resume. When she saw there were specifically openings for health education volunteers in Samoa, that’s especially when she decided to apply. What a health education volunteer did fit her perfectly. She spoke Samoan, something that wasn’t even listed as a requirement. And her father was even from Samoa! So why not? The application was due by early January, and she made sure to get it in. She heard in mid-February that she was accepted, thank God, and she had to go through their training first, but she was able to leave for Samoa, with some other volunteers, in early June 1998.

Lillian had only been to Samoa a few select times in her life, and always went immediately to her father’s hometown of Siumu, not Apia, so there was a bit of culture shock when she first arrived. However, she seemed to acclimate herself to life in Apia faster than some of the other, mostly non-Samoan, volunteers, which was nice. It was also nice to have the other volunteers, though, as a reminder of home and as people to talk to about the experiences of being a volunteer. She overall enjoyed things, and as time went on, it was sad to remember that she would leave in June 2000, when her time as a volunteer expired. 

As time went on, though, she also remembered that she hadn’t used her vacation days, and by December 1999, she had already added up to 36 days. So, she decided to use some of those to visit her family for Christmas. It wasn’t something super important to her, but she knew it would be important to her family, and on December 15th, she flew from Apia back to Sacramento, technically arriving in San Francisco after a layover in Sydney, but driving the 2 hours from San Francisco to Sacramento. It was nice to see her family, to open gifts, and have some true American meals. Getting an actual hug from her mom after a year and a half also felt so comforting. New Years didn’t feel as important to her, or her family, as much as Christmas did, though. So there was no real reason to continue her time off into January, she would get on a flight to head back to Samoa on December 31st, 1999. Specifically, she would take Amtransa Airways Flight 78 from San Francisco to Sydney, as a connecting flight, before boarding a flight from Sydney to Apia on a Virgin Australia Airlines flight.

It was a simple enough flight plan. Connecting flights are annoying, sure, but there weren't any non-stop flights from California to Samoa, so it was what the plan had to be. She had also just gone through the opposite way, from Apia to Sydney to San Francisco, as her way to get to California. She didn’t expect crashing on an island, though, but she does feel lucky she survived. Now that it’s been a couple of months, though, she’s getting a bit fed up, and hopes they get saved soon. But at least she does have some survival skills that have been helpful to the group, given her health knowledge. And she has been living on a South Pacific island for the past year and a half, so some of the tropical aspects of the island aren’t anything new to her.