Maribel Gonzagui, RN

I grew up watching how people care for the sick at home. In my hometown it was normal: when someone in the family got sick, they stayed with their own. I remember my parents caring for an uncle: my mom cooked for him and my dad helped him move around. Everyone pitched in, and he got better there, at home and among his people.

Years later I came back from Hawaii, where I had worked with my husband's family in their restaurant. Being so far from my own family stirred something in me: I wanted to do work that truly mattered, but I had no degree, no profession and no experience.

In 2002 I found a hospice volunteer training program to support Spanish-speaking families. My job was simple: sit with the patient so the family could go out and rest. It was the same thing I had seen as a girl, just organized.

On my first visit I kept company with an older woman who had Alzheimer's and was also blind. At one point she needed her diaper changed, and I didn't know what to do. It wasn't my responsibility, but I understood that if I was going to do this work, I had to know how to do it well, safely for her and for me. That day I decided to study.

That same agency, Livingston Memorial VNA in Ventura, offered me a job as a caregiver. And I never stopped: first CNA, then HHA, then licensed vocational nurse and, years later, registered nurse. I did it all while working, without spending a single year away from patients.