One Young Life That Touched So Many Others

Rosemarie Maldonado’s autobiography is single-spaced, typewritten, just over a page long. She was 21 when she wrote it for the medical school admissions officers at all those big-name places, like Harvard and Stanford, Northwestern and UCLA. That was when Rosemarie was a premed student at UC Irvine, when she had that glistening future to wake up to every day.

It was earned, that future. Deserved.

Yet what strikes me about Rosemarie’s autobiography is its opening line. “My parents are David Maldonado and Alicia Vasquez Esquivel,” it says.

Then Rosemarie’s simple words march forth, mundane yet eloquent, to compose a grateful paean to family love. There is not a hint of boast; the pride is genuine here.

She tells of her mother fleeing north across the Mexican border, leaving an abusive first husband and rescuing her young son. Then there are the family struggles in the United States, the time they had to go on food stamps and when bankrupt, they lost their home.

There’s even something about her mother’s thyroid condition, her dad’s diabetes and her family pulling together to help a brother get off drugs. When an 11-year-old brother was killed in a fire that burned down their home, the family moved from Chicago to Los Angeles 22 years ago.

It is everybody else--Rosemarie’s parents, her grandparents, her two sisters and three brothers--that take up most of the autobiography’s lines.

“My family has shown strength and I gather strength from them,” Rosemarie wrote.

Rosemarie’s father gave me this autobiography along with many other papers chronicling his daughter’s academic life. By all accounts, it was charmed.

There are the transcripts of her grades, glowing evaluations from faculty advisers, congratulatory letters on awards and scholarships, Phi Beta Kappa, news that her scientific research would be published soon. Her admission to Harvard Medical School was a sure bet.

Only her volunteer efforts--at medical clinics for the poor in Santa Ana and Mexico, and at the convalescent home she visited to cheer people up--kept her from the books.

We are in the Maldonado home now, a trailer in Santa Ana where Rosemarie lived with her parents so that she could be close to school. Her brothers and sisters, little nephew, her brother-in-law and two close friends are here. Everybody’s dressed up.

Today Rosemarie is to be awarded her bachelor of science degree, magna cum laude. This is the day the whole family had dreamed of, for years. Rosemarie, the youngest Maldonado, embodied a family’s hope.

“We used to laugh that all of us would go up with her to get the diploma,” says her sister, Mary Alice. Then she cries.

Rosemarie died almost 10 months to this day. Her family will accept her degree on her behalf.

A traffic accident in rural Mexico, where Rosemarie was volunteering with the Flying Samaritan doctors, claimed this young life over several agonizing hours. It was a particularly Third World death: What little medical help there was came too late.

“She worked so hard, she studied so much, but at the same time, she had this unique way of helping people--students, at nursing homes, at the clinics,” Rosemarie’s father says. “She was a young Hispanic American. Maybe her life will be a catalyst for someone else. You read a Spanish surname in the paper and it is always negative. Rosemarie was something else.”

She was better than most. Where there was misery, Rosemarie got angry--and then she helped. Where there was loneliness, she shared of herself. Where there was ignorance, she brought truth.

Rosemarie’s soul seemed much older than the delicate body that was buried in the earth.

“I feel very lucky,” says her mother, trying to smile through the tears. “She left very good memories. I told her to try to be nice--understanding--to everybody because all you leave are your memories. She listened to me.”

Her sister Mary Carmen remembers those notes to herself that Rosemarie would stick on the walls of her room. “Be Alert!” said one. “Don’t Give Up!” said another.

Then there was the message that she found in Rosemarie’s wallet after she had died. “The miraculous: To see the beauty in the common,” it said.

“Now, what would Rosie say about this?” is a question that Mary Alice says she often asks herself since her sister’s death.

I don’t know, of course, but after speaking with those who knew her so well and reading through her papers, I have an idea about what this young woman might like to share.

In her application to medical school, Rosemarie recalled some of her experiences as a volunteer at a Santa Ana medical clinic for the poor.

There was the time that she helped a young Latina mother learn how to breast-feed the child she had just borne.

“I then felt more like a part of, rather than a spectator to humanity,” Rosemarie wrote. “Small instances like this one, not one dramatic one, led to my decision to become a doctor and have led me back to the clinic week after week.”

Another section tells of meeting a convalescent patient, Alma, and talking about the old woman’s first date, her marriage and the death of the husband she loved. When Rosemarie came back next week to talk again, Alma was gone.

“She died and left only an empty bed at the center, but for me she left touching memories of two individuals sharing their lives if only for a brief time,” Rosemarie wrote.

“I want to be the doctor who helps the community, takes on challenges, holds hands, and communicates with the patient. Sharing lives is what I feel life is all about, even in death.”

Dianne Klein’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.