India, Feb. 2 -- She came home thinking her nursing days were over. Instead, Maria Jacinta Dias found her true calling in Sangolda-where, for nearly two decades, she has quietly served as the village's most trusted healer and guardian angel When Maria Jacinta Dias returned to Goa in the year 2000 after resigning from her government nursing post in Dubai, she believed she was closing a chapter of service. Family called her home, and with that decision, she thought her years of tending to the sick had come to a gentle end.

She could not have been more wrong.

What awaited her in Sangolda was not retirement, but a calling-one that would earn her the enduring title of "The Florence Nightingale of Sangolda."

Come rain or shine, day or night,...