A Colorado-born orphan who learned Spanish as a second language while living in Chile proved to be an influential player in Operation Pedro Pan, the famed mission to secretly spirit 14,048 unaccompanied minors out of Cuba after the arrival of Fidel Castro.

Peggy Lou Guarch, along with her husband, Jorge “George” Guarch, made up an unofficial welcoming committee for the frightened unaccompanied children. She died of respiratory failure on Saturday. She was 87.

Fifty-one years ago, Guarch and her husband were key players in the operation as her husband was hired by the Catholic Welfare Bureau to meet the flights clandestinely carrying the children to Miami International Airport. To keep track of the children, Guarch’s husband created the “airport log,” today a treasured listing of the names of all Pedro Pans who arrived at MIA between 1960 and 1962.

Peggy Guarch often helped her husband transport the children to the Miami-Dade camps and group homes where they were initially housed before they were relocated to other parts of the country.

It could be a heartbreaking job.

“We lived close to the airport, so my mother would take care and comfort the kids until they had to return to the airport for their connecting flights. Sometimes the camps were over crowded and children stayed with us overnight,” said her daughter Lynn Guarch-Pardo.

As an orphan, Peggy Guarch could probably identify with the plight of the children who arrived without their parents.

As a child, she and her siblings were placed in the Montana State Orphans Home after the death of their mother.

At age 4, she was adopted by Bert and Gertrude Hind and the family soon moved to Potrerillos, Chile, where Bert Hind was an engineer.

In 1943, when she was 18, the family moved to Nicaro, Cuba. “There, she met my father, the love of her life,” Guarch-Pardo said. The couple married in 1945. Two years later, they moved to Miami and began a family.

With Castro’s rise to power, the Guarches found themselves helping the Operation Pedro Pan kids, the first large group of Cuban exiles to Miami. Her husband’s special assignment with the Catholic church ended in October 1962, but he remained with the bureau until 1966.

“My mother never complained about my father’s work during that time; she was the glue that kept the family together, “ her daughter said.

Jorge Guarch died in 1991. Guarch was often amazed at how many Pedro Pan children as adults recalled her husband and his kindness to them.

Besides her daughter, she is survived by her son Jorge M. Guarch Jr. and five grandchildren, all of Coral Gables.

Visitation will be Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. at Ferdinand Funeral Home, 2546 SW Eighth St. A funeral Mass will be Wednesday 11 a.m. at St. Kevin Catholic Church, 12525 SW 42nd St.

Interment will follow at Flagler Memorial Park, 5301 W. Flagler St.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Operation Pedro Pan Group, Inc., 161 Madeira Ave., Suite 161, Coral Gables, FL. 33134.