Army’s military child of the year finds new life after tragedy

WASHINGTON - On a warm June night in 2021, 14-year-old Amani Ambay lay on her bed inside her family's one-story home when she felt the floor of her bedroom shake. At 11:30 p.m., the noise jolted Amani out of her deep sleep.

Then she heard a loud boom.

In the upper-middle-class suburb of Lutz, Florida, 20 minutes north of Tampa, the impact inside the Ambay house broke the stillness of the humid spring evening in a city known for its sprawling golf courses and cypress swamps. The Ambay home sat on a narrow suburban street between two lakes in Florida's Gulf Coast lowlands.

Amani heard her parents' voices screaming in the next room. They burst through her door and grabbed Amani out of bed.

Amani's father then opened the door to the family's garage and saw that 10-foot flames had risen to the ceiling, shattering glass. The blazing fire had engulfed the space and charred the back of the door.

To slow the fire's spread, the Ambay family quickly placed towels on the garage door and then ran out onto the street.

Still in their pajamas and barefoot, they stood and watched everything they had built in their life burn. The flames engulfed the entire home, leaving nothing behind except for a lockbox containing some of the family's important documents. Amani clutched her Havanese dog, Bolt, while her mom, Aparna, dialed 911.

The Ambays didn't inherit wealth. Amani's father, Raj, emigrated to the U.S. from England, eventually joining the Army Reserve and graduating from medical school. Aparna moved to the U.S. from India and built a career as a successful dermatologist. Both became the first doctors in their respective families.

The Ambays made the house in Lutz their first permanent home.

"They have gone through so much, and it's so incredibly inspiring," said Amani, the 2026 Operation Homefront Military Child of the Year for the Army. "And so, in that moment, I looked at the house, and I was like, man, my parents put everything into this house."

Amani checked on her dad, Dr. Raj Ambay, an Army trauma surgeon and civilian plastic surgeon. The family escaped the flames that night in June 2021 without serious injury or illness, but Raj had some difficulties breathing.

Raj, a colonel in the Army Reserve, still suffered from shrapnel and spine injuries after being struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in 2014, while deployed to Afghanistan. Raj said his daughter, who Operation Homefront honored in a ceremony in Washington on April 23, possesses an innate compassion for others. She spent a year caring for him and mending his wounds for weeks after he returned home.

The year before, while in middle school, Amani encountered a female classmate who had been cutting herself in a bathroom stall. Amani calmly encouraged her classmate to stop harming herself and eventually convinced her to walk with her to the school nurse to get the student proper care. She accumulated more than 2,550 hours of community service connecting with children in need in Florida and other nations.

That drive eventually led her to George Washington University in the District of Columbia, where she studies international affairs and finance. The 19-year-old plans to learn how finance and political decisions impact the distribution of resources to local populations. She speaks five languages, is learning two more and was recently accepted into GW's honors program.

Last month, Operation Homefront named Amani its 2026 Military Child of the Year for the Army.

Amani didn't know it then, but the June 2021 housefire would change her life's trajectory. As their house continued to burn that spring night, Aparna huddled the family together.

"We will rise from the ashes like the phoenix," Aparna said, referring to an old Egyptian proverb.

In the months that followed, the Ambays began the slow, difficult process of rebuilding their lives. Amani hitched rides to swim practice with her swim coach. Raj sifted through the costs of the damage to their property. The family later learned that their electric vehicle caught on fire while charging in the garage.

"I remember talking to a friend of mine who was of Chinese descent," Raj said. "And he said to me, in China, when a fire comes, it's a cleansing force; it's not a bad omen. It actually cleanses the forest; it provides for new growth."

World traveler

In the months that followed, the Ambays scrambled to rebuild their life. They rented a small house and borrowed neighbors' cars. Amani was scheduled to begin summer school a week following the fire, but didn't have a laptop, pens or shoes. The nearby military community at MacDill Air Force Base rallied to provide the family with the needed supplies.

Instead of wallowing in their losses, the family decided to spend more time traveling. Their trips included visits to Turkey, Peru, Jordan, Greece and Egypt to broaden their world views and expose Amani to different cultures over the next two years.

"It was just a very hard time for all of us. And so, we decided to travel," Amani said. "And through traveling, my eyes completely opened."

She said she witnessed how different cultures see the world. On one summer trip to the Mediterranean, she learned basic Turkish in only two weeks by interacting with locals and watching video tutorials. The trip deepened her empathy toward others, a trait she learned from both of her parents. When Amani returned home, she formed her own nonprofit organization.

In June 2022, the family went deep into the tribal lands of the Andes in Cusco and Iquitos, Peru. There, Amani made meals for 250 orphaned children and learned the indigenous language of Quechua, native to Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Chile. At 15, Amani once surprised her parents in a Turkish airport after seeing an elderly woman grieving over the passing of her husband. Without a second thought, Amani hugged the woman, bringing her to tears.

"I'm always grateful that we raised a child that has humility, that has respect, that's dedicated and focused on when they're asked to do something, they do it," Raj said.

Amani met an Afghan girl at GW, from whom she learned about the mistreatment and discrimination toward Afghan women. Through an internship with the Zahra Insight Academy in Afghanistan, Amani advocated for the rights of Afghan women, who, under Taliban rule, have limited employment and education opportunities. She wrote an article and produced a podcast.

Healing on the front lines

During 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, Raj saw the worst field injuries on the front lines.

His job: to rebuild and stabilize U.S. troops and allies who suffered traumatizing injuries.

As a trauma field surgeon, he traveled through several of the most dangerous locations. In some cases, troops had parts of their bodies ripped off. One Soldier lost his eyes from a combat injury. Raj, through quick thinking, managed to successfully drain fluid from the Soldier's brain through his missing eye so that he could be stable enough to be transported to the nearest combat support hospital.

Raj saw the worst injuries of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Soldiers rarely saw the nameless healer who performed lifesaving miracles. It was a thankless job, and few would ever know the critical work he did, but Raj does not mind.

"To me, it was very fulfilling," he said. "As a surgeon, the fact that you can save an American life is amazing; there's no medals."

"It's not like the accolades a sniper gets for kills. There's no accolades for the number of lives saved."

Over the course of 18 intensive months throughout his career, he deployed with Special Operations troops, Special Forces units and forward surgical teams, often embedding with troops during missions outside the wire.

In one deployment to Afghanistan in 2014, Raj saved 157 U.S. troops and allies. He said the experience and the horrors he encountered on the battlefield made him a better civilian surgeon.

"You are prepared to see a lot of blood. You are prepared to see death," Raj said. "But if you're an 18-year-old or a 20-year-old, you're not prepared to see death. And they're shaking.

"The first time they get fired at, the first time they watch someone die, they are profoundly affected forever."

Meanwhile, at their West Central Florida home, the months of separation from her father hit Amani hard. She suffered from loneliness at Tampa Bay's Berkeley Preparatory School, which had few enrolled military children. She learned to cope with separation anxiety by writing poetry, eventually publishing a book of poems on Amazon. She swam at the local park district and read books.

"I'm very blessed to have gone to [Berkeley]," Amani said. "I received an amazing education, but also a lot of the kids there were not understanding at all of what I had, what military families go through."

She was the only child in her class with a parent in the military; she began brainstorming online and connecting with other military children.

Her connections with other military kids eventually led to the formation of her nonprofit organization. The Yalla Foundation provides underprivileged children in 26 countries with access to quality education through video conferencing apps.

"Even though I had a loving family, I still had to learn to be self-sufficient with my father being gone and my mom working very hard to support us, and that kind of taught me a lot of resilience, especially by my father," she said.

The healer finds healing

During another deployment, this time in the Afghan city of Ghazni, Raj's life would be forever changed. There in the town of 200,000, 93 miles southwest of Kabul, Taliban attacks outside the perimeter became the norm.

One day, as Raj walked from his medical tent in an open area, he heard an incoming, rocket-propelled missile. The impact, which landed 30 feet away, sent him flying into the air.

As he struggled to stand, the Soldier felt numbness in his left leg. He saw that he had suffered shrapnel injuries. Initially, Raj thought he had escaped the attack without serious repercussions.

He thought wrong. In the weeks that followed, Raj learned that he had suffered dislocations in his spine and eventually developed septic arthritis, autoimmune pancreatitis and kidney failure. He had surgery to repair an elbow and had plates and screws inserted to keep his spine stable.

He weathered through multiple surgeries and weeks in the ICU. Instead of filing for in-home medical care, Raj taught Amani how to flush a peripherally inserted central catheter, known as a PICC line, so Raj could receive care at home. She rebandaged and cleaned his wounds.

Raj, unbeknownst to his daughter at the time, suffered symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. He winced at loud sounds. He could no longer be around fireworks. He asked his family not to greet him with sudden surprises. With his career as a surgeon in jeopardy, Raj didn't want his daughter to see his suffering. So, he tried his best to remain upbeat around his daughter.

Raj made it a point to remain as involved in his family's lives as he could. Instead of isolating himself in his room, he engaged in all family activities.

"He inspired me to have the courage to pivot," Amani said. "When bad things happen, the world keeps moving forward."

In 2024, the family rebuilt a new home on the same plot of land where their old house once stood. The family decided to build a new home in the old Florida neighborhood to cut expenses and remain in the same area. The now gated, single-story home stands as a symbol of the family's perseverance.

A year later, Amani graduated from Berkeley and decided to attend college 900 miles away from home at George Washington University. Next spring, she will join a 10-student team to study abroad in Singapore, Spain and the United Arab Emirates. She still makes weekly video calls to check in with her parents and visits as often as her rigorous academic schedule allows.

"She's really become self-sufficient, confident and caring," Raj said of his daughter. "But she's kind of directed her life and her work towards the things that she's passionate about."