As a child Sheila Nazarian escaped from Iran. She was shot at by Iranian border guards as she was smuggled to the United States. Today she is an accomplished Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who starred on her own popular, Emmy-nominated Netflix series, Skin Decision. 

Sheila was six years old when during the Iran-Iraq war, a bomb landed two blocks from their house. “As kids, we would wake up, go to the window, and watch the bombs. My parents told us they were fireworks.”

“I didn’t know we were escaping. My mother told us nothing. One morning, we went to the bazaar and my mother told us to get into the back of a large vehicle, and we all hid under corn and burlap. We were in the fetal position on the bottom of this trunk with several other strangers. The car drove us to the border. Then, we got onto the back of a pick-up truck. We started making our way to Pakistan.”

The group of refugees spent one night sleeping in the desert.

“The lights were off of the pick-up truck, and we drove only at night so as not to be discovered. At one point we were seen, and they started shooting us. Once the truck was discovered, they put their lights on and drove at super-speed over a ravine. The border police thought that was too dangerous and didn’t pursue us further.

“We arrived in Pakistan by the skin of our teeth. Only when we made it across the border did my mother tell me that we were going to America. As a six-year old, my first reaction was, ‘Oh my God! We’re going to meet Michael Jackson!’