NSU Horizons Spring 2018

24 NSU HORIZONS BY KATHLEEN KERNICKY Yaritza Torres Ruiz grew up in Rio Grande, a town in the mountains of northeastern Puerto Rico that neigh- bors the El Yunque rain forest, a popu- lar tourist spot—at least until Hurri- cane Maria barreled through the island. Torres had witnessed many storms, each one frightening, but nothing like the 155-mile-per-hour winds of Maria, a Category 4 storm that left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean. In Puerto Rico, the storm killed at least 64 people and left 3.4 million people without power. Residents struggled to survive in the face of critical shortages of food, water, and supplies. “Where I grew up, the storms always come our way, but Maria was different from what we’d experienced in the past,” said Torres, a third-year doc- toral student in NSU’s College of Pharmacy program at the Puerto Rico Regional Campus in San Juan. Hurricane Irma, just two weeks earlier, had left Torres’ house without power even as Maria approached. Torres and her husband packed important documents, clothes, and photographs into plastic bags. They made the 15-minute drive from their wood-frame house in Rio Grande to her husband’s grandparents’ house. It was safer there—that house is concrete block—and they could take care of the elderly couple. The wind started around 2:00 a.m. Torres describes the noise like a giant pressure cleaner, interrupted by crashing metal. The following day, Torres and her husband returned home. The roofs were missing from the houses on their block. Torres waded through standing water swirling around her living room. “The house was totally destroyed,” Torres said. “Around us, the streets were blocked with trees and debris. The trees were brown, like there had been a fire. We salvaged a few things, some clothes, a photo we had in the dining room. Everything else was lost.” They moved in with her husband’s grandparents. A week after the storm, Torres drove to the neighboring town of Carolina to find a cell phone signal. From there, she spoke to Blanca I. Ortiz, Pharm.D., assistant dean at NSU’s College of Pharmacy in San Juan. “They asked me if I wanted to withdraw or continue classes,” said Torres, who earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 2011 at the University of Puerto Rico. “In that moment, I knew in my mind, ‘you need to complete this.’ ” Torres was not ready to quit. “My biggest dream is to complete my pharmacy degree,” she said. “Since high school, I knew I wanted to be a pharmacist. Nothing can stop that. Not Maria. Not Irma. Not any kind of situation can stop me.” COMPLETING DEGREE A PRIORITY FOR NSU PHARMACY STUDENT ON STORM-RAVAGED PUERTO RICO DETERMINED TO continued on page 26