This content was originally produced for audio. Certain elements such as tone, sound effects, and music, may not fully capture the intended experience in textual representation. Therefore, the following transcription has been modified for clarity. We recognize not everyone can access the audio podcast. However, for those who can, we encourage subscribing and listening to the original content for a more engaging and immersive experience.
All thoughts and opinions expressed by hosts and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views held by the institutions with which they are affiliated.
Mitch: From 亚洲自慰视频 of Utah 亚洲自慰视频 and The Scope Presents, this is "Clinical."
I'm Mitch Sears, and this is "Clinical." Today's story takes us on a journey of courage, resilience, and the unbreakable bonds of a family. Today we'll be sharing the story of Nelly Sierra, a woman whose life reflects the struggles and hopes of many who embark on a harrowing journey in search of a better future.
Sierra's tale begins in Honduras with its high level of violent crime and gang activity, where the daily threat of violence looms over its citizens. Her journey to the United States is not just a quest for safety, but a testament to her spirit and determination to provide for her family.
Through the lens of Sierra's experiences, we explore the challenges faced by those who risk everything to cross borders. It's a narrative that delves deep into the themes of maternal sacrifice, the immigrant experience, and the relentless pursuit of the American dream, as well as an exploration of her transformation from a fearful traveler to a resilient survivor, and ultimately a leader in the community.
In today's episode, you will be hearing the voice of Nayeli Hernandez. She will be helping us to translate and voice Sierra's firsthand experience for our English listeners.
Written and reported by Stephen Dark, "Clinical" presents "The Crossing."
Stephen: The women walked in a line, several men in front, several behind. They only walked at night under a desert moon that shaded the rocks in quicksilver. Several of the men shouted at women who were slow, who stumbled and pleaded for rest.
Occasionally, they were past places where the smell of death of a corpse clung to the air. Nelly Sierra knew that such bodies were a woman or a 亚洲自慰视频, or perhaps an elderly person who had fallen victim to the many predators that haunted the border between Mexico and the United States.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): On the pathway, you would see people bitten by snakes, others that perhaps had been hit and left flying there because they couldn't go on. If you get tired and the coyote had a specific arrival time and you don't hurry enough for him, you will be left on the pathway.
Stephen: These days, you'll find the 50-year-old 亚洲自慰视频 of Utah 亚洲自慰视频 Business 亚洲自慰视频 Supervisor Monday to Friday in her office, in the back room, on the ground floor of the Sugar House clinic. There, she administers 17 environmental services employees responsible for cleaning Sugar House and two other clinics.
Nelly is from Honduras, one of the most violent countries in the world. In 2019, 13 people were murdered every day, giving it a homicide rate of 44.7 per 100,000. Only El Salvador can claim higher rates. She has a work visa, a privilege earned through hard work, determination, and her commitment to her family.
While there are many colleagues in EVS who share similar stories of surviving horrific journeys to reach the U.S., few are willing to share them with such candor and detail. And looking back, Nelly is still surprised she succeeded.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): A very difficult road that if I had to do it again, I don't think that I'd make it.
Stephen: Nelly's story is more than simply someone seeking a better life. It's a tribute to a relationship that defines all our lives, the bond between mother and 亚洲自慰视频.
Nelly was born in Honduras in Catacamas, in the department of Olancho, to her single mother, Maria Cristina Sierra. Like so many Honduran 亚洲自慰视频ren, Maria Cristina's 亚洲自慰视频hood was consumed by working for her parents to help support them and her siblings.
Maria Cristina had become pregnant at 14 with her first 亚洲自慰视频, going on to raise five boys and Nelly, her one daughter, alone. She was determined that teen pregnancy would not befall her daughter.
Her mother worked in restaurants and ironed clothing. Eleven-year-old Nelly helped her mother by raising the youngest two boys while her mother was at work. That included Nelly feeding and putting her younger siblings to bed while her mother worked nights. Above all else, her mother insisted on one thing: to do her very best at school.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): I remember her telling me, "All you have to do is bring me good grades and stay out of trouble." I had to get almost perfect scores. It made me become responsible.
Stephen: Maria Cristina knew the cruel realities of city life and refused to let Nelly go even to the corner on her own. While her brothers were furious that they had to sell food on street corners, her mother worked hard to keep Nelly focused only on her studies.
But when she was 18, Nelly dated a 28-year-old friend of one of her brothers. The man, a taxi driver, got her pregnant. Things did not go well. He proved to be physically and mentally abusive. Nelly's son was born on February 6th. She felt she had let her mother down and begged her to support her while she finished her secretary school.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): When my son was born, I told my mother not to work but to take care of her grandson, and that I would be responsible for all of her expenses.
Stephen: She graduated with good marks and worked in the clothing factory inspecting goods made for export to the U.S. to support her mother and her own son. Despite having work, life was far from easy. She earned very little, just $12 a week in Honduran currency.
Without a car, she'd have to walk home from work. It was a situation that her 亚洲自慰视频's biological father would take advantage of to harass her. Driving his taxi behind her, he'd honk on the horn, hold out money, and shout, "How much do you charge?" She'd get home in tears.
When she was 24, a friend from the neighborhood told her he could arrange a crossing for her to the United States. Like so many others, she wanted a better life for her family, even if it meant risking her life to cross the border. First, she had to convince her mother from whom she had never been apart.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): I had never been separated from my son or my mother, so it was difficult for me. But I said, "Mother, this is the only opportunity we have to get ahead," because we lived in a rented house and there was no way that we can buy our own because we just worked. What I earned was just to survive.
Stephen: Maria Cristina stood her ground.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): So she told me, "No, I don't want you to leave." I told her, "But look, if I leave, I can help my son. I can make a house for him." Well, I finally convinced her. My mother didn't say goodbye to me. She hid from me the day I left for here. She hid. She didn't want me to see her crying, so I left. It was hard.
Stephen: Nelly's odyssey began on April 6th, 1996, when the 24-year-old left home to meet up with a male friend who had arranged to take her to a coyote who would guide her across the desert.
Later, Nelly learned that her mother had visited with her male friend before they had left, telling him she would kill him if anything happened to Nelly.
They crossed Guatemala in a car, and when they got to the Mexican border, had to wait in the house for several days while their guide made contacts to cross the desert. There, Nelly said goodbye to her friend.
That first attempt to cross stalled and Nelly found herself stuck with other women who wanted to make the trip with the same coyote in Mexico for some time. Nelly stayed with a family who gave her their daughter's name and national identity card number, so if she was caught, La Migra would return her to Mexico rather than Honduras.
Her first crossing was terrifying.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): We were in one of those cargo trailers that they put you in. You practically undressed because it's very hot. You have no air. You are short of breath. We had about two hours in there, and when we finally arrived, they made us get down.
Stephen: They started walking.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): We walked across. I think we walked for about eight hours during the night, and just at dawn they caught us, Americans with guns and everything. They threw us to the ground. They put their feet on you so that you don't move with your hands behind your back and things like that. I felt that my heart was pounding. I was afraid, nervous. We didn't know what was going to happen to us.
Stephen: Nelly couldn't even be sure if the men who had caught her were who they claimed to be.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): You don't know if they really are police or bad people disguised as police. It's a risk. You don't know if you'll get to wherever you're going or whatever.
Stephen: The border patrol deported her and the rest of her group. Thanks to the family who had lent her their daughter's information, she was returned to Mexico rather than Honduras.
Her second attempt, she and her group walked from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m. the next morning. She twisted her ankle and by the time they stopped, her foot was swollen. She had to ignore it and pray the swelling would subside. There was no way back now. An air of menace pervaded the journey. Women were prey to the men who went with them.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): Our group, fortunately, thank God, things went well for us. We saw many things. We saw many things on the road. For example, the men grabbed some of the women by force, and it was frightening.
We saw a girl who woke up crying the next morning. I'm a person who doesn't like injustice, so I went to talk to her and asked her what happened. She said nothing, but then we were alone and she told me that the boy had told her that if she didn't have sex with him, she would not pass.
Stephen: What kept Nelly going was the thought of those who depended on her.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): But thank God my son and my mother gave me the strength to get here.
Stephen: Finally, they reached the border.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): I was walking until we crossed the line that divides Mexico and the United States. We walked for about two hours more here in the United States, and they picked us up to bring us to Phoenix in a car. I had hurt my foot and they put me in a car, then put another person in between my feet. Then when they went to get me out of the car, I couldn't move because my legs were asleep and because I'd injured my foot.
Stephen: When they reached Phoenix, they were taken to an empty house with no kitchen or bathroom. They slept in a line along the floor. For three days, she waited. Out of fear, none of her group left the house. And then finally she learned it was time to leave.
Nelly had a friend who lived in Salt Lake City with his family. A relative of that friend took her from Phoenix to Utah, and so began her life of exile from those she loved in the land of plenty.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): It's a very nice country and it's very nice to see the dollars when you start to earn them, but it's very difficult, especially when you leave your people behind. It was very difficult.
Stephen: In comparison to her hometown's muddy streets, America's sidewalks were made of concrete and stone.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): The streets in Honduras were dirt where I lived. So here, you walk on sidewalks. You don't get dirty. You wear good clothes if you want. You eat well.
Stephen: As she ate her American food, all she could think of was what her mother and son had to eat back home.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): But you feel that nothing fills you up, nothing satisfies you. For example, I ate a hamburger and I didn't eat it in peace because I said, "I'm eating, but I don't know if my son is eating." It's hard.
Stephen: Her plan was to stay in the U.S. to earn enough money to buy her mother a home and then return.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): I came for two years. For two years, I came to make money to build a house for my mother and my son so she wouldn't have to rent. And those years have turned into 24 years of my life. I've given this country 24 years of my life.
Stephen: She sits back and looks around her office, taking in all that has happened to get her here.
When she had found somewhere to live in Salt Lake City, she looked for work. With no resume and little English, she applied to fast food restaurants to do food prep, expecting that she just had to speak Spanish in the kitchen. That didn't turn out quite as she had hoped.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): I would apply for the kitchen and they would put me up front, like at the cash register, and then I didn't like that because of the language. That made me so nervous because they didn't let me work where I wanted to. I didn't like it.
Stephen: She tried housekeeping. First, she worked at Holiday Inn near the Salt Lake City International Airport, then at a small hotel chain. In late 2010, she found work with a friend in a Las Vegas hotel.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): Housekeeping in Las Vegas is tough, very tough, because they give you many rooms, many rooms to clean. It depends on the supervisor, and supervisors who are bad check on you all the time, even though they know you don't have time to do all the details. It was just very difficult. Fortunately, as I said, I always had God's blessing before me.
Stephen: One of her supervisors was constantly on her case.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): I came in, she gave me some rooms, and I tried as best as I could. The supervisor didn't like me. She always found fault with what I did. "Look, you didn't do that." I would explain I just didn't have time. "You still have to do it." Well, in the end, I adapted and I cleaned everything, and they promoted me to clean the penthouses.
Stephen: Penthouses posed unique challenges.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): They gave me that place because nobody wanted to clean them, because they are delicate places that you have to clean well. Sometimes they have many valuable things. You have to be very careful.
Stephen: It was exhausting work.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): I'll tell you that when I got home, if I sat on the couch and took my shoes off, I would never get up from how tired I was. So what I did was take off my shoes and start cooking for the 亚洲自慰视频ren, because if I didn't, I wouldn't feed them. It was very difficult.
It's very difficult to work there if you are a responsible person. If you're a person who isn't bothered, then it's just something normal. But I have always liked to do things well, always, always.
Stephen: After four years working in the Midwest, Nelly had yet to secure a visa. She had applied several times for a visa for people fleeing violence or environmental disaster called a temporary protected status, but she had not been successful.
Then she hired an immigration attorney to apply on her behalf for a work visa, but again, struck out. Like so many millions of others, she had to live waiting for that knock on the door.
She tried a second time to get TPS status with a different attorney. He discovered she had a deportation order filed against her, which was inactive, but warned her that the proceedings might make things worse rather than better.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): "I don't guarantee that they will give it to you. It's 50/50," as he told me. "They could deport you." So I told him, "Well, I have nothing to lose by trying to do it. Let it all be in God's hands."
Stephen: When she had a court hearing to attend, she was terrified.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): Every time I went to immigration, Lord, I felt my insides trembling because I felt that once I went in, I wouldn't be coming out and they would send me back to my country.
Stephen: In the end, in 2010, she was granted legal work status.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): Fortunately, my deportation order was suspended and I was given a work permit.
Stephen: Over the next four years, Nelly worked hard in Las Vegas, faithfully sending money home to her mother and son to support them. By then, she was also raising three U.S.-born 亚洲自慰视频ren, two boys and a girl, from two relationships that had not worked out.
Then in June 2014, she received a phone call that would change everything. A relative she had in Salt Lake City told her that her first-born son had crossed the border alone. The 24-year-old was already in the United States and they were going to pick him up.
Nelly took time off work and traveled to Utah to meet him after 18 years of separation. Two days after the call, she crossed the Utah border and headed for West Valley and her brother's house. Her son arrived at the house the next morning.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): It was so emotional. I was hugging him, I was touching him, I was caressing him. I was telling him that he was the same little boy that I had left, but now a big and skinny one. He has these little legs that are open here and I call him my old man because his legs aren't even. I tell him that's why he looks shorter when he walks, but he is my size. But I bug him a lot.
Stephen: But her joy was quickly tamped down when she learned about events that had taken place around the same time she reunited with her son.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): What was sad and strange and, I don't know, was that my mother had already been sick for some time, so they took her to the hospital and they told me to get ready because, "Your mother won't go on for much longer."
Stephen: She called her mother at the hospital to tell her the good news, that her grandson had arrived safely to her waiting arms.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): We talked to my mother and I told her, "Mother, my son is already here with me," and she said, "I don't believe you." I said, "Yes." Then I took a picture and I sent it to her and told her, "Look, he's here with me," and she said, "Thank God. I can die in peace."
Stephen: Nelly drove back from West Valley to Las Vegas with her 亚洲自慰视频ren. Two hours after she got to bed, the phone rang. It was a relative in Honduras.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): I was told that my mother had already died.
Stephen: It would've been her 66th birthday.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): I think that the responsibility of having my son there wouldn't allow her to go in peace.
Stephen: Shortly after her mother died, Nelly lost her housekeeping job in Las Vegas. Her relatives brought her and her 亚洲自慰视频ren to live in Utah. Nelly applied to 亚洲自慰视频 of Utah 亚洲自慰视频 to join environmental services. She started working for the university in December 2016. Cleaning surfaces, particularly in a hospital, is a much more complex science than a Las Vegas penthouse.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): It's like this. It's delicate because you have to disinfect. You have to give it the necessary time. For example, all the chemicals you have to use to clean need to have time to kill all the germs.
It's a responsibility. You have to be responsible to be able to do that job, because if you don't do it, you know you're putting at risk both yourself and the patient that's going to come maybe after you cleaned because you didn't remove the germs that are there.
Man: This breaking news is about the coronavirus in Utah.
Woman: Governor Gary Herbert . . .
Stephen: In early 2020 as Utah confronted the first waves of COVID-19 infections, U of U 亚洲自慰视频 was in the final throes of preparation for opening the new Sugar House clinic across from Sugar House Park. It's an impressive five floors fronted by floor-to-ceiling windows and an atrium distinguished by natural stone tile. Nelly was one of the 16 EVS technicians who had to clean the building post-construction and make it ready for the public.
As the summer clinic opening approached, Nelly and her colleagues found themselves on the frontline of fighting the virus. In those first months of the pandemic when so little was known about the virus and its transmission, Nelly faced the potential horror of exposing her 亚洲自慰视频ren to it.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): So when the disease started, like everyone, I was afraid. With the hand sanitizer, we already have our hands all worn out from so much washing and using that sanitizer. This thing that suffocates me, the mask, left my face all marked. Arriving home and taking off all my clothes practically outside to go directly into the bathroom to protect my 亚洲自慰视频ren, it's difficult.
Stephen: The pandemic took its toll on EVS staff, resulting in some leaving out of concern about virus exposure. One of those who departed was the supervisor at Sugar House clinic. EVS Director Jessica Rivera made Nelly interim manager of the cleaning team.
She was ready for the challenge, even if she found it daunting, especially when it came to speaking English. Rivera felt she communicated well in her second language. Nelly worked hard on establishing a rapport with her team, both individually and as a group, something that Rivera appreciated.
Jessica: Nelly's really good at that. She's good at inspiring others and influencing them positively and just working alongside them and helping them. She'll leave her office and go help them out, make sure they feel comfortable, confident, just be right there beside them as they get some practice until they're ready to go on their own.
Stephen: Through the turmoil of the pandemic, Rivera and Nelly got to know each other better, and the Honduran shared with her boss the story of her journey to the United States. It gave Rivera chills.
Jessica: Oh, when she first told me about her story, I definitely leveraged that in many ways. When she was having difficulties with her confidence, I would tell her, "Don't forget how brave you are. You are so brave. Look what you did. I'm just in awe of what you have accomplished and overcome, and you can do this too."
Stephen: Nelly approaches life in her own way, coming up with quirky ways of looking at things that still surprise Rivera.
Jessica: Recently she started couponing, and so she has amassed all of these things, like toothpaste or soap or lotions. She does all this with her time and effort, and then she gives it all away. She gives it to her employees. She gave some to myself and our leadership team, like, "Here, I brought this for you."
She throws surprise parties for them, and her love just overflows throughout. I think that's what makes her story special, because she continues to choose to be just so happy and so vibrant and so content with things even when they're hard.
Stephen: Nelly's is far from the only story in Rivera's department that speaks to surviving hardships, long, painful separations, and finally, against all odds, families becoming whole again. But even then, when loved ones are reunited, so much hard work remains for all involved to rebuild treasured relationships that until then had lingered only as rose-tinted memories.
Like so many who have been through this journey to support their families from afar, the final journey still awaited Nelly: confronting the pain her son felt at the many years of separation he had had to go through in Honduras while Nelly worked in the U.S. to support him.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): At first, he was difficult because he didn't see me as a mom. We would get along like siblings. We'd joke around and everything, but at the beginning it was like he looked at me like, "Who are you? Why do I have to do what you tell me?"
Stephen: One day, she decided to have it out with him.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): Finally, one day I sat down with him, not to scold him, just to talk to him. I cried and I told him, "I know that you resent me because I came here and left you, but I didn't come to this country to rebuild my life. I didn't come to this country to give myself the luxury. If I left you, I didn't forget about you.
"You remember when you went to school? What did people say? That you were the best dressed. You were the one who wore good shoes. You were the one who ate better. You were the one who always had money to invite your classmates who didn't have anything to eat. So you remember all those stories you yourself told me. I mean, how do you think you survived all that, right?"
Stephen: She reminded him how his grandmother always had money for his needs.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): "I know she just took it out of her purse and gave it to you, but think about it. My mom didn't work. She didn't work. Who was it that gave her money?"
Stephen: They faced off. Nelly wanted him to understand the sacrifices she had made for him, something he seemed up to that point never to have taken into account.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): "Okay then. Thanks to this one who is here, the one you don't love. I understand that you don't love me as a mother because I didn't raise you with me, but thanks to me you were able to study. Thanks to me, I dressed you the way you were dressed. You had a roof over your head. Nobody told you to get out because you didn't pay the rent or they cut off your water because you didn't pay for it. You didn't lack anything. If you suffered, it was because you wanted to."
Stephen: Despite his life of relative luxury compared to his friends and classmates, her son had nevertheless become involved in the very world both his grandmother and Nelly herself hoped to insulate him from: street crime.
As Nelly learned from conversations with him and others about his life on the streets in Catacamas and some of the dangerous people he knew there, she became increasingly determined to reassert her maternal role, one that her own mother had provided her son in Nelly's absence.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): When he came here, it was difficult. It was difficult because I wanted to be as a mother. As I told him, you always have been my son even though you have been in Honduras, but I am your mother. "Yes," he would say, "but my mother has already died."
Stephen: She and her son had to find a middle ground.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): "Okay," I said, "let's do one thing. Don't look at me as Mom. Look at me as your sister. Look at me as your big sister who deserves the same respect. Look at me as a sister who struggled so that you could eat, who struggled so that you can have an education, so that you can have good clothes like that. She will scold you. She is a big sister. If she sees you drinking and driving, she will slap you.
"For example, in front of me, you are not going to smoke because I don't smoke. I need you to respect me in that aspect. If I see that you are doing drugs, for example, I will hit you in front of whoever you are with." Then he said, "Okay."
Stephen: From there, they began to define a new relationship. He called her "the old girl," la viejita. And when he'd admit to people that she was his mother, they'd express surprise.
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): Sometimes he says, "Let's go to the house. Let's see if la viejita, the old lady, cooks for us." Only when he arrives they find me and he says, "Look, it's my mom." One guy said, "But why does he call her old lady?" He said, "Because I love her." And the man laughed and said, "When he told me let's go to the house to see if the old lady cooked, I imagine seeing an old lady, a little old lady there," and I tell him, "No. That's what he calls me. He has never called me Mom."
Stephen: From the dirt streets and daily violence in Honduras that she escaped, through the money she sent home to protect best as she could her mother and eldest son, to her life now as a manager and leader, Nelly finds so much joy and satisfaction in seeing her 亚洲自慰视频ren striving to make the most of the opportunities she has given them. Much like her mother, she insists on her 亚洲自慰视频ren doing the best they can at school, and her youngest son did not disappoint
Nelly (voiced by Nayeli): My boy now graduated from sixth grade with the honor roll and a certificate signed by Donald Trump for being one of the top scorers.
Mitch: "Clinical" is part of The Scope Presents Network and brought to you by 亚洲自慰视频 of Utah 亚洲自慰视频. If you liked what you heard, please be sure to subscribe and share with your friends.
You can also help others find us by leaving a review on Stitcher or Apple Podcasts. Those reviews help out new podcasts a lot, and we really appreciate them.
Do you have a story of fighting on the front line against COVID-19, a nursing story you'd like to share, or just a message of gratitude to the men and women from our story? We want to hear it. Feel free to call our listener line at 1-601-55SCOPE, or email us directly at hello@thescoperadio.com
And finally, if you want to see the inside of a MICU and the faces of those brave professionals working to save lives, you can visit thescoperadio.com/clinicalpodcast. There, you can find bios and pictures of these heroes, bonus content, and teasers for future episodes. Again, that's thescoperadio.com/clinicalpodcast.
"Clinical" is produced by me, Mitch Sears, and Stephen Dart. Music by Ian Post and Collective Artists. Audio clips from CSPAN and KUTV. Special thanks to Charlie Ehlert and Jessica Cagle for their work on the portraits and the companion site.
And of course, a heartfelt thanks to the men and women who have shared their stories with all of us and continue to fight to this very day to keep each and every one of us safe.