The phone on my desk rang last week and the halting voice said, “Hi, Mr. Portillo, this is Natalia Moncayo. Do you remember me?”
OMG yes, I told her. And I choked up.
In 2005 I wrote two stories about Natalia, who was then 9 years old. An inoperable brain tumor left her unable to walk. Speaking and seeing were difficult. She couldn’t attend Drexel Elementary School and she spent much of her time lying on the floor of her parents’ south-side apartment.
Complicating her medical condition, Natalia couldn’t receive necessary medical care because she and her parents were undocumented immigrants. They had fled the violence in their native Colombia five years earlier. They found refuge in Tucson, where Natalie’s sister Rebeca was born. The family struggled against the odds.
I wrote a second story that some big-hearted Tucsonans donated a bed, a wheelchair and provided other support to Natalia and her family. It was a small glimmer in their darkness.
I had wondered, over the years, what had become of Natalia and her family. Life is brutally hard for families who cannot legally work and provide for themselves adequately, much less the Moncayos, who were desperately seeking and praying for an answer to Natalia’s brain tumor.
Then she called. Her voice filled me with joyful emotion. She wanted to interview me for her college class assignment.
Wednesday night I visited with the Moncayos in their roomy home on Tucson’s southeast side near the University of Arizona Tech Park. A smiling Natalia, now 19, greeted me at the door. Rebeca, 12 years old, is in the eighth grade at Vail Academy and High School. Her mother, Daisy, and father, Jhon, were there, as was Camila Hurtado, Natalia’s 17-year-old cousin from Colombia who is studying in Tucson.
They have so many reasons to be thankful. No need to ask. They immediately acknowledged their blessings.
“A lot of good things have come from this,” said Natalia about her family’s trials these past years.
Natalia and her parents are U.S. citizens. Her father has a job, with benefits, with Pima County. They bought their home after hard work and saving.
Above all, Natalia, or Natty as her family calls her, has beaten the doctors’ dire predictions. She shouldn’t be alive.
“It’s not supposed to be possible but it is,” said Natalia, who graduated from Sunnyside High School and is now in her second semester at Pima Community College. She hopes to transfer to the University of Arizona and eventually study law.
“It’s a miracle of God,” Jhon Moncayo said in Spanish.
The appreciation extends to Rebeca, who clearly understands that life can not be taken for granted and that she and her family are indeed fortunate.
“It’s helped me to be more patient and considerate,” she said about her family’s travails. In her sister, Rebeca finds inspiration.
“She’s made a big impact on my life,” said Rebeca, who one day wants to be a doctor.
Natalia still has the tumor which continues to affect her speech and mobility. Natalia wishes her life would be different. She has a few friends and making new ones is difficult.
But in the past eight years she has not had to see a doctor.
“The Bible says if you love him, your life will be OK,” Natalia said. “I’ve applied that to my life.”
The Moncayos’ hope and optimism comes from their religious faith, supported by their small congregation, Nueva Creación, in South Tucson. It sustains them. Every step of their way, through Natalia’s uncertain future, they put their lives in God.
Like the time when Jhon had to return to Colombia, as a condition of his application for residency because he had entered this country without documents. The family was in despair, not knowing if he could return and if so, when?
Daisy said they prayed and prayed.
But his residency request was expedited because of Natalia’s medical condition. He spent six months away instead of the many years his family had feared.
The irony is not lost on the family. While her medical condition brought them pain and worry, it helped them become U.S. citizens.
“Every day is a blessing,” said Natalia.
