New York Times, Jan. 3, 2007 If medical researchers were to pick someone who might defy national life expectancy statistics, few would pick Irma Lara. She came to this country illegally from a small town in Mexico to work as a baby sitter. She was 26, had only a first-grade education and was desperately poor. She married a Mexican-American and had seven children. Her husband’s meager salary at a cotton compress company was never enough. The family had no health insurance, never saw a dentist. Now, widowed at 75, Mrs. Lara is still poor; her monthly income is less than $600. And, if statistics are any guide, Mrs. Lara has a long life ahead of her, longer than would be expected if she were black or a native-born white woman. It is called the Hispanic paradox, and it is one of the most puzzling discoveries in research on aging. “Everyone,” said Kyriakos S. Markides, who directs the Division of Sociomedical Sciences at the University of Texas in Galveston, “is trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”(Story includes a video.)