"Are you a conservationist?" a woman asked him.

"What's that?" Cox replied. When she explained that it was someone who wants to preserve plants and animals, he knew--it was just what he wanted to be.

Using Plants to Heal
At Brigham Young University, Cox studied to become an ethnobotanist (eth-no-bot-uh-nist). This, he explains, "is someone who loves plants and people and studies the relationships between them." People use plants for food, clothing and building materials. Cox is most interested in how to use plants for healing.

This interest became even greater after his mother died from cancer in 1984. "I wanted to find a cure," he explains. "I figured tropical plants may be the best chance." Just a few months later, Cox won a major award from the National Science Foundation. It would pay for him to study whatever he wanted for five years! His decision: "I would go live with native healers to learn from them."

Cox, his wife and four kids moved to a remote village in Samoa, an island nation in the South Pacific. "We lived for a year in a hut without running water or electricity," says Cox. His daughter Mary, now 16, remembers playing with the local kids: "They didn't need face masks to see in the water, and they could catch fish with their hands. I was jealous." Her sister Hillary, now 13, was in the forest once when it started to rain hard. "Dad took giant leaves, put them over our heads and wrapped them around us like raincoats!"

Tapping the Forest's Secrets
Cox learned the local languages. He took notes about which plant parts people used to treat illness and pain. The roots, bark and leaves of the same plant could all have different uses. When Cox thought a plant might help treat cancer, he sent samples to scientists at the National Cancer Institute in the U.S.

One sample was very exciting. It came from a tree Samoans call Mamala. It seems to be very active against the aids virus, and U.S. researchers are studying it. Cox first learned of the tree from a 78-year-old medicine woman. If it leads to a valuable drug, "her whole village will share the riches," says Cox. Even if it doesn't, Cox knows there's much more treasure to be found in the leafy kingdom of plants.