*** 2 p.m. ***
She came to the airport as a lawyer. She soon became a ringmaster, a one-stop welcome committee, legal representative and menu-planner.
Chanpone Sinlapasai ushered the TV news crews to one side, volunteer greeters to another. She lined bags of donations against a partition outside the arrivals gate. She tapped out messages on her cell phone, her fingernails the same shade of pale pink as her iPhone.
She looked up from her phone and waved her arms. Five Iraqi refugees had arrived.
"This family has nobody," Sinlapasai told a crowd of 30 people waiting to greet the newcomers. "We are their family now."
The Iraqis had spent the past three years in a Turkish refugee camp. Their flight had been delayed by President Donald Trump's executive order barring citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries and all refugees.
Refugees have settled in the United States since the end of World War II. Most came silently, rebuilding their war-torn lives with the help of a few religious nonprofits. Trump's executive order changed that.
And it changed Sinlapasai.
"Welcome," Sinlapasai told the bleary-eyed travelers. "We'll take care of you from now on, OK?"
The Iraqi boys looked like other Portland middle schoolers in faded haircuts, tapered pants and plastic frame glasses. The father wore a white button down tucked into jeans. The mother's maroon headscarf was the only hint of the lives they led before.
Volunteers handed over chocolate, new Nike tennis shoes and bags of food. Two news crews stepped forward at the arrivals gate, microphones pointed.
"What were his concerns after President Trump put the travel ban into effect?" one anchor asked the Iraqis' interpreter. "Can you ask him what he wants to do in the U.S.?"
The boys dropped their bags and blinked in disbelief. America, after all.
"OK," Sinlapasai said. "It's been a long day for them. We're going to take them downstairs."
As a Catholic Charities van drove the Iraqis toward their new home, Sinlapasai reached into an oversized purse and dug out two zip-top plastic bags. Inside each was a wallet-sized, black-and-white portrait.
Sinlapasai was 4 when her family fled the Communist takeover of Lao. They crossed the Mekong River into Thailand and spent 18 months in a camp with open sewers and little food. Immigration officials shot the photographs just before Sinlapasai's family left Thailand.
For decades, the 41-year-old had kept the pictures hidden. After the executive order, she decided she needed to show them.
She held the photographs up for the volunteers to see.
"This is me," she said. "And this is my mother. This is why I do what I do."