A second chance at life

Socorro Gomez knows nothing about the young woman who died and whose lungs she received through a transplant.

“A 19-year-old girl donated her lungs to me. It has flooded me with gratitude and joy,” said Gomez. “Every day is a gift from God and I can now appreciate it as such.”

Gomez wanted to express her gratitude to the deceased woman’s parents, but they never responded. Instead, Gomez, 72, is living out her gratitude as a volunteer at the Catholic charity St. Martin de Porres Senior Center in Alexandria. Using her 43 years as a teacher, school counselor and principal, she serves as an English tutor for those who have struggled with traditional English as a second language course.

“When you suffer a lot of pain, it either makes you softer and more empathetic, or it hardens you and makes you bitter,” she said. “I came here as a kid with no ESL classes in 1959, before bilingual education, and they just threw us into the classroom with no support.”

Nothing came easy for Gomez, whose family emigrated from Mexico when she was nine years old. She worked as a laborer during the summers, picking grapes in the heat of Southern California, and didn’t have much hope for her future.

But her high school English teacher knew better. “I never thought I was capable of getting a college degree,” she admitted. “He saw potential in me and started mentoring me.”

Gomez is now returning all the gifts she received. “It was painful for a child to be in that situation,” she said. “It gave me a lot of 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 few years,” she said.

Then came the unexpected phone call at 2 a.m., November 14, 2020. There was a match. The bilateral lung transplant took place four hours later. The operation was successful, but during Gomez’s long recovery, depression developed. A therapist recommended that 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 occurred with Gahmar, an Iranian woman who speaks a regional dialect that most Iranians do not understand.

“She has a lot of patience with her,” said Juanita Balenger, program director at St. Martin. “Gahmar was very quiet when she first came here and Socorro really brought her out of her shell.”

The interest in Gahmar came naturally to Gomez, who will never forget what it was like to pick grapes from dawn to dusk while other high school students were playing sports and hanging out on the beach.

Now she sees her life, and her second chance at life, as a gift. “It’s a debt I can’t repay,” she said. “I compare it to the gift on the cross.”