Socorro Gomez doesn’t know anything about the young woman who died and whose lungs she received through a transplant.
“A 19-year-old girl gifted me her lungs. It has flooded me with gratitude and joy,” said Gomez. “Each day is a gift from God and I’m now able to value it as such.”
Gomez wanted to express her gratitude to the deceased woman’s parents, but they never responded. Instead, the 72-year-old Gomez is living out her gratitude as a volunteer at Catholic Charities St. Martin de Porres Senior Center in Alexandria. Putting her 43 years as a teacher, school counselor and principal to use, she serves as an English tutor for those who have struggled in traditional English as a second language courses.
“When you suffer great pain, it either softens you and makes you empathetic, or it hardens you and makes you bitter,” she said. “I came here as a child with no ESL classes in 1959, before bilingual education, and they just kind of threw us in the classroom with no support.”
Nothing was easy for Gomez, whose family immigrated from Mexico when she was 9 years old. She worked as a laborer during the summers, picking grapes in the Southern California heat, and didn’t have much hope for her future.
But her high school English teacher knew better. “I never thought of myself as capable of attaining a college degree,” she admitted. “He saw some potential in me and began to mentor me.”
Gomez is now returning all the gifts she has received. “It was painful for a child to be in that situation,” she said. “It gave me great empathy for anyone who is in a similar situation whether it’s a child or an adult.”
After learning in 2017 that she had pulmonary fibrosis and might have five years to live, she moved from California to Alexandria to be near her daughter and two grandchildren. “I moved to Virginia for what I thought would be the last years,” she said.
Then the unexpected call came at 2 a.m., Nov. 14, 2020. There was a match. The bilateral lung transplant occurred four hours later. The surgery was successful, but depression set in during Gomez’s long convalescence. A therapist recommended she volunteer at St. Martin’s to help with her isolation.
“I went there, I loved it and I’ve been there ever since,” she said. “It’s all about finding things that interest and nourish you, and hopefully nourish others.”
Gomez wasn’t shy about volunteering to tutor ESL students who weren’t making progress. The most challenging situation was with Gahmar, an Iranian woman who speaks a regional dialect that most Iranians don’t understand.
“She has great patience with her,” said Juanita Balenger, program director at St. Martin. “Gahmar was very quiet when she first started coming here and Socorro has really brought her out of her shell.”
Gravitating to Gahmar was natural for Gomez, who will never forget what it was like picking grapes from dawn to dusk while other high school kids were playing sports and hanging out at the beach.
Now she sees her life, and her second chance at life, as a gift. “It is a debt I can’t repay,” she said. “I liken it to the gift on the cross.”
