Nadia McCaffrey resides in Tracy, California and is the founder of Angelstaff.org, a group of volunteers who bring a caring presence to terminally ill patients and their families. When her son, Sergeant Patrick McCaffrey, died on June 22, 2004 in Iraq, Nadia began to focus much of her work on promoting peace and justice and reaching out to parents that have lost loved ones in the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Nadia McCaffrey went on Global Exchange's trip to the Jordan and Iraq border at the start of 2005 with the Families for Peace delegation which delivered over $650,000 of medical and humanitarian aid for the thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, made homeless by the U.S. attack on Falluja. Nadia received international attention as the "mother who defied the Bush Administration" when she asked the media to be present at the airport to photograph her son's flag-draped coffin.

Sergeant Patrick McCaffrey was 34 years old. He was the proud father of 2 young children: Janessa, 3, and Patrick Jr. 9. Patrick enlisted on September 12, 2004 to help out in case of another national emergency. He became a weekend soldier with the National Guard, and never thought that he would be deployed to combat. He became death No. 848 and the first combat death in the 58 years history of the California National Guard's 579th Engineer Battalion, based in Petaluma, CA.

Topics covered

• Military Families Against the War