[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 80 (Thursday, May 15, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4274-S4276]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO LUCY AND ROSA TREVINO

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this past Sunday--Mother's Day--Barbara 
Mahany, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, wrote a touching front-page 
story about Rosa Trevino, a mother who never gave up on her daughter, 
Lucy.
  Born with a rare genetic degenerative disease, spinal muscular 
atrophy, Lucy Trevino was determined to win a degree in bio-engineering 
from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
  Her quest would have been physically impossible if her mother had not 
been by her side for every class, every lab, every study session, and 
there to turn every page of her daughter's textbooks when Lucy's arms 
were too weak.
  On Saturday, Lucy Trevino overcame the greatest obstacles and earned 
her degree. And Rosa, in reporter Barbara Mahany's words, taught us 
``all a lasting lesson of a mother's love.''
  At Lucy's commencement, the dean of UIC's engineering college stopped 
the ceremony to tell the members of the Class of 2008 about Lucy's 
persistence and Rosa's devotion. He said he

[[Page S4275]]

could barely get the words out without bursting into tears. When he 
finished, the entire audience rose and delivered a thunderous 2-minute 
ovation.
  Spinal muscular atrophy is a progressive disease that withers the 
muscles that control the legs, arms and lungs. It can make breathing a 
struggle and make turning the page of a heavy book nearly impossible. 
But it leaves the brain and the mind untouched.
  Lucy Trevino was 4 years old when she was told she had the disease. 
She started using a wheelchair when she was 9.
  It was during countless visits to neurologists and orthopedic 
surgeons when she was a child that Lucy first became fascinated by 
science. During medical tests, she says, she used to wonder, ``How do 
those devices work?''
  During her senior year in high school, she learned about a summer 
camp in bioengineering at UIC and immediately signed up. And she was 
hooked.
  The following fall, Lucy Trevino became the first person in her 
family to go to college.
  For her major, she chose bioengineering--one of the toughest programs 
in the engineering college.
  Now, the prospect of years of studying such complicated subjects as 
thermodynamics and circuit analysis would be daunting for almost all of 
us. For Lucy, college presented special challenges.
  You see, Lucy often needs help performing even such simple physical 
tasks as dressing, brushing her teeth, and cutting her food.
  It takes her twice as long as other students to write up her labs 
because just moving a pen across paper can be hard sometimes.
  At first, Lucy wasn't sure she could even go to college because UIC 
doesn't have a personal assistants program to help students with 
disabilities.
  One day, as the start of Lucy's freshman year grew near, her mother 
Rosa asked, ``How would you feel if I went with you?''
  Rosa had never even attended high school. But she had vowed years 
earlier that she would do whatever she could to see that her first-born 
daughter was never held back by her disease.
  So every day, every semester for the last 6 years, Rosa was by Lucy's 
side.
  Five days a week, mother and daughter took the CTA train from their 
home in Cicero to the University of Illinois at Chicago.
  They became a familiar sight on campus: Rosa pushing Lucy's purple 
wheelchair. Rosa ordering for Lucy in the cafeteria line because Lucy's 
voice is sometimes barely louder than a whisper.
  And there was Rosa, sitting a few feet behind Lucy in class, copying 
recipes or cutting coupons--always watching to see if Lucy needed a 
drink of water, or help turning a page. She sat through more than 2,100 
hours of lectures in 51 different classes.
  Pete Nelson, interim dean of UIC's engineering college, told the 
Tribune's Barbara Mahany, ``Lucy's story is about the sacrifices our 
mothers make for all of us.''
  Michael Cho, who teaches mostly graduate engineering courses at UIC, 
has come to know Lucy and Rosa and is in awe of them.
  Of Rosa's devotion, he says, ``The first thing that comes to my mind 
is this can't be anything else but a mother's love. It goes beyond 
commitment. It is sacrificial love. And I am just overwhelmed. It's not 
just 1 month or one semester. It's every day for 4 years.''
  In fact, it took Lucy Trevino 6 years to earn her degree. Serious 
health challenges forced her to take a break from school in her junior 
year.
  Last year, a student told Lucy that she had felt like skipping class, 
but she thought of Lucy and told herself, ``There's Lucy, she's always 
here. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm just lazy.''
  Lucy was amazed anyone noticed her.
  Another of Rosa's four children, Lucy's younger brother Hugo, also 
has spinal muscular atrophy--SMA--and uses a wheelchair. He is studying 
architecture at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.
  As much as Rosa would like to see Lucy and Hugo walk, she says she 
knows that God is good. She explains: One daughter can walk, one can't. 
It's the same with her two sons. What she can't see in one child, she 
sees in the other. And she sees in each child special talents.
  In a few weeks, Lucy will go back to school to take one more class so 
she can complete a math minor. After that, she says, she would like to 
study law and become a patent attorney.
  I hope Rosa is ready for law school. Because I suspect that once Lucy 
makes up her mind to do something, there's no holding her back.
  Rosa Trevino is one of our new Americans who came to this country 
from Mexico 30 years ago, when she was 17.
  This past Saturday, the day of Lucy's commencement, was Mother's Day 
in Mexico.
  When Lucy received her cherished degree, she gave her mother a gift 
she had ordered months earlier: a formal-looking ``Certificate of 
Gratitude.'' It read: ``Thank you for all your love and support. I 
would not be where I am today if it wasn't for you. I feel so grateful 
to have you in my life. Today is my day, but I dedicate it to you.'' It 
is signed, ``Lucy Trevino.''
  And on behalf of the Senate, I want to congratulate Lucy Trevino on 
her amazing accomplishment, and thank Rosa Trevino for her inspiring 
example of a mother's love.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the 
Chicago Tribune article about Lucy and Rosa Trevino be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Chicago Tribune, May 11, 2008]

                          Lucy's Mom Was There

                          (By Barbara Mahany)

       Lucy Trevino's mother cuts peanut-butter-on-whole-wheat 
     into bite-size squares, unscrews a strawberry-kiwi juice and 
     holds the bottle to her daughter's lips so Lucy can get 
     through lunch and make it back to class.
       She riffles through Lucy's lavender backpack to find the 
     lab report for BioE 494, bioengineering-based physiology. 
     When the cell phone rings, she holds it to her daughter's 
     ear. She zips her coat. Dabs a tissue to her nose.
       And before all this, she has slipped her into jeans, tied 
     her shoes, smeared toothpaste on her toothbrush and combed 
     her thick black hair into a perfect ponytail. Lucy Trevino's 
     mother was right behind her firstborn daughter all through 
     college--sometimes shoving through mounds of snow, or up an 
     icy ramp if her motorized wheelchair balked. When they got 
     stuck, her mother pulled out her cell phone to call 
     maintenance and ask if someone could please come clear the 
     walks. Over the last six years, Rosa Trevino also became 
     fluent in the CTA's Blue Line and Pink Line, as the mother 
     and daughter made their way five days a week from home, a 
     red-brick two-flat in Cicero, to the University of Illinois 
     at Chicago.
       Lucy Trevino graduated Saturday from UIC with a degree in 
     bioengineering, and the dean stopped the commencement of the 
     Class of 2008 to tell of the Trevinos' triumph. He barely 
     made it, he said, without breaking into tears.
       For the six years it took to get through one of the most 
     rigorous programs in the College of Engineering, it was 
     Rosa--a tad shy and always thinking two steps ahead--who got 
     her daughter to every class, lab and study session. She knew 
     which text and notebook to lay on Lucy's desk. And she turned 
     the pages when a heavy book tired Lucy's hands.
       For two or three hours, as Lucy absorbed lectures in 
     calculus or thermodynamics or circuit analysis, Rosa sat not 
     far away, just in case Lucy needed a sip of water or began 
     choking.
       Lucy, who is 24, was told she had a rare genetic 
     degenerative disease, spinal muscular atrophy, when she was 
     4. SMA is a progressive disease that withers the muscles that 
     control the arms, legs and lungs, and can make breathing a 
     struggle.
       Lucy's type of SMA usually takes away your ability to walk 
     by the time you're in your teens--she began using a 
     wheelchair at age 9--but unlike some other types, doesn't 
     necessarily affect life span.
       Lucy, who is the oldest of four, has a younger brother, 
     Hugo, who has the same disease. He, too, uses a wheelchair; 
     he's a freshman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
     Champaign, studying architecture.


                          Parental dedication

       ``Lucy's story is about the sacrifices our mothers make for 
     all of us,'' said Pete Nelson, interim dean of UIC's 
     engineering college. Trevino's teachers, he said, ``were 
     pounding down my door'' to ask for some recognition for this 
     mother-daughter feat of unconditional devotion.
       At UIC, where nearly a third of the students are the first 
     in a family to go to college, Nelson said it's not uncommon 
     to hear tales of parents working two or three jobs, sending 
     money from overseas and just plain struggling so their kids 
     can get what parents weren't afforded.
       ``But this is sort of the pinnacle in terms of the amount 
     of dedication,'' Nelson said. ``This is what makes this 
     business worthwhile.''

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       One of the professors pounding on Nelson's door was Michael 
     Cho, who teaches mostly graduate courses in cell and tissue 
     engineering, but who has gotten to know--and has been amazed 
     by--the ubiquitous mother-daughter duo, so often spotted 
     wending their way up a ramp, on or off an elevator, or tucked 
     away studying in some secluded corner.
       ``The first thing that comes to my mind is this can't be 
     anything else but a mother's love,'' Cho said. ``It goes 
     beyond commitment. It is sacrificial love. And I am just 
     overwhelmed. It's not just one month or one semester. It's 
     every day for the last four years that I can think of.''
       In fact, it's six years, because Lucy had to take time off 
     when she got really sick her junior year; she suddenly 
     couldn't lift her arms and was quickly losing memory.
       It took months before a sleep test showed she stopped 
     breathing 30 times an hour when she was asleep. She now 
     sleeps with a machine that helps her breathe, and, within a 
     week of using it, she said, she regained her memory, if not 
     her arm strength.
       ``Ever since I was little, I loved science,'' said Lucy, 
     who shares her mother's deep cocoa-colored eyes and rolls 
     around campus in a purple wheelchair with back wheels that 
     sparkle, like fireworks, with tiny neon bits. ``Because I 
     went to doctors a lot and had a lot of medical exams, I would 
     always wonder, ``How do those devices work?' ''
       In her senior year at Morton West High School in Berwyn, 
     Trevino learned from a counselor about a summer camp in 
     bioengineering at UIC, so she signed up, and found her life's 
     work.
       She once dreamed of working to find a cure for her own 
     disease, but decided ``it would be too stressful if I 
     couldn't find it.''
       The first one in her family to ever go to college, Lucy 
     Trevino said she was ``too afraid'' to venture down to the U. 
     of I. in Urbana-Champaign, where there's a whole dorm for 
     students with disabilities, and the nation's oldest college-
     level disabilities-services program provides trained personal 
     assistants, physical therapy, even wheelchair repairs.
       ``I didn't know if I should risk going all the way down 
     there,'' she said.
       Sticking closer to home seemed like a better plan. But 
     because UIC doesn't have a personal-assistants program, she 
     was stuck trying to find someone who could help her in a 
     thousand little ways and be there whenever she needed.
       ``In college, you have such a crazy schedule. You stay 
     after to study with other students. You need to talk to a 
     professor. I was like, `Oh, my gosh, how am I going to find 
     someone who's going to put up with all of that?'
       ``My mom was like, `Well, I guess I'll just go with you.'
       ``And then it was getting closer to the start of the first 
     semester, and I still hadn't found anybody. She said, `How 
     would you feel if I went with you?' I was like, `Oh, my gosh, 
     would you?' ''
       Because Rosa Trevino, who is 47 and moved from Mexico when 
     she was 17, had two children with special needs, she had long 
     since become a stay-at-home mom, giving up a series of baby-
     sitting jobs. Rosa's husband, Hugo, retired last year after 
     32 years as a CTA bus driver. Rosa herself had never even 
     been to high school.
       On the day back in 1987 when doctors said her little girl 
     would ``someday need a wheelchair,'' Rosa recalled, crying at 
     the memory, she promised herself she would do ``everything I 
     can.''


                           Mother keeps busy

       Even if that meant sitting through more than 2,100 hours of 
     51 classes, countless study sessions and hour-long train 
     rides, back and forth, each day. Most often, Lucy said with a 
     laugh, her mother spends time cutting recipes and coupons, 
     because she gets bored with all the bioengineering in a 
     language she doesn't fully understand.
       At first, Lucy admitted, going to college with her mother 
     wasn't exactly without its bumps.
       ``I had never spent so much time together with my mom. We 
     would sometimes get on each other's nerves,'' she said, 
     chuckling. ``But then we got to know each other really well. 
     We're like best friends. Now I tell her everything. Before I 
     wouldn't tell her everything that happens when you have a 
     disability. People who aren't in a wheelchair can't 
     understand. But now, since we do everything together, she 
     knows.''
       Semester after semester, year after year, Lucy and her 
     mother found a way. She passed 400-level exams. She wrote up 
     labs that took her twice the time of everyone else, simply 
     because the pushing of a pen on paper is so hard for her.
       Once, a civil engineering professor noticed that because of 
     Lucy's wheelchair, she couldn't write on her desk. He 
     challenged her to design a lightweight writing table. Then he 
     went and built it. She got an A.
       Mostly, the Trevinos relied on each other, and on 
     unflagging faith.
       ``One time, I think in the night, almost for an hour, I 
     cried to on high, `Why me? Why me?' '' Rosa said. ``I heard a 
     voice, `Why not me?' ''
       For those who watched their unswerving perseverance, the 
     simple fact that the Trevinos never stumbled inscribed a 
     lasting honor on Lucy's college transcript.
       ``One time last year,'' Lucy said, ``a student told me 
     she'd felt like ditching class, staying home. But then she 
     looks and says, `There's Lucy, she's always here. There's 
     nothing wrong with me. I'm just lazy.'
       ``Wow, I didn't even think that anyone noticed me.''
       In the very end, on a Mother's Day weekend in the red-
     carpeted UIC Pavilion, as Nelson saluted a student and a 
     mother who had taught them all a lasting lesson, a sea of 
     Lucy's blue-gowned classmates rose and nearly drowned out the 
     dean with a thunderous two-minute ovation. Chances are Lucy 
     and Rosa Trevino finally understood how very much a whole 
     college noticed.

                          ____________________