TRIUNFADORA: Community Leader

— -- Driving through the low-income Darbo/Worthington neighborhood on Madison, Wisconsin's east side, social worker Fabiola Hamdan spots a young woman leaving her red brick apartment building with an infant in her arms.

"How are you doing?" she asks the woman. "Is everything OK?"

Just weeks earlier, the woman's electricity had been shut off when she couldn't pay the bill. Fabiola, 42, worked with a local church to help raise money so her power could be restored. The woman thanks Fabiola and says everything is fine. "Call me, OK?" says Fabiola, before pulling away. "Let's get together and talk."

Throughout this neighborhood and around this entire city, Fabiola helps those who have lost hope. Whether it's standing up for a battered woman or helping a homeless person find shelter, Fabiola has dedicated her life to improving the lives of others.

She understands their struggles because she has lived them. When she arrived in Madison from Bolivia on a cold January day 22 years ago, she did not speak a word of English and had to clean toilets and flip burgers to make ends meet, all while caring for her seriously ill mother.

"I have worked hard to put myself in a position where I can help others," she says. "I feel so lucky. The people I help are my inspiration."

Fabiola grew up watching her parents help others. Lidia and Frittz Lazo, both teachers, traveled with her to rural, poverty-stricken areas of Bolivia where they worked in local schools. Their compassion extended beyond teaching. Before each trip, Fabiola's mother, Lidia, would try to gather a lot of medicines for the poor.

Fabiola's parents also often took children from especially poor families and raised them in their home in La Paz. Some lived with them as long as 10 years.

Lidia's benevolence was all the more remarkable considering she was battling chronic illnesses. In the early 1980s, after numerous inner ear surgeries, she learned she had a rare brain tumor that her doctors said could only be treated in the United States.

She had a friend who lived in Madison so she moved into a tiny low-income apartment there and worked as a cook and cleaned houses to make money. Not long after, Fabiola's younger brother and sister joined their mother in Madison, and Fabiola, then 18, and her father soon followed.

One day, Lidia told a doctor whose house she was cleaning about her tumor and he referred her to a surgeon at the University of Wisconsin Hospital. This doctor told her she had to have surgery soon or the fast growing tumor would rob her of her eyesight and begin to paralyze her. Because it was such an unusual tumor, one the doctors had never seen before, they agreed to perform the surgery free of charge.

The surgery lasted 18 hours and the results were mixed. Doctors were unable to remove the entire tumor and said radiation treatment would be necessary. Lidia had numerous complications following the surgery and was in and out of the hospital for most of the next three years.

Besides having to drain all their savings from Bolivia, the entire family pitched in to make ends meet. Fabiola's father took a job as a cook. Fabiola, along with her sister, got a job at Burger King, where she often opened the store at 5 A.M. and returned later at night to help close. Her brother worked at McDonald's.

They also all worked for a cleaning company that drove them around to bars and office buildings where Fabiola would spend hours on her knees scrubbing bathroom floors and toilets. Fabiola's supervisor in this job was a woman named Maria who bossed her around and always spoke rudely to her.

Although she never complained, Fabiola hated this back-breaking manual labor. "I realized that the only way I was going to get out of this life was to learn English and finish my education," says Fabiola. "Otherwise, I'd be cleaning offices the rest of my life."

Whenever Fabiola drove by the sprawling campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison she fantasized about graduating from there one day. It was especially tough for her each May when she would see all the students around campus in their caps and gowns preparing for graduation. "I want to be one of them," she said to herself.

She knew her dream could never become a reality unless she learned English. One day, a co-worker at Burger King told her about free English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at a technical college on the other side of town. Soon after, she took two buses to the school, but when she arrived she was too scared and intimidated to ask anyone where to register and she fled in a panic.

The next day, she summoned her courage and registered for classes. Her teacher took notice of her desire to learn and recommended an intensive summer English program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The idea sounded great to Fabiola, but she knew she could never afford the $800 tuition. "You've got to take this class no matter what," her father told her. "We'll all chip in."

The family was able to raise most of the money for the class and her teacher at the technical college even contributed $100. The day-long classes were a challenge because students were only allowed to speak English. After classes, while her friends went off to have dinner together, Fabiola headed straight to work at Burger King or to care for her mother.

Now that she could speak English, Fabiola knew it was time to focus on completing her education. Fabiola returned to the same technical college where she had taken ESL classes to earn a two-year associate degree in computer operations. To help pay her way, she took a job as a secretary in the school's art department.

Also, her parents open a restaurant/bar called "The Latin Club", where the whole family worked for seven years.

Fabiola earned her associate degree and landed a job as a computer operations specialist at an insurance company for $7.50 an hour, more than double the minimum wage she had earned in any job up to that point. Despite commuting 20 miles each way for her job, Fabiola still made time to take her mother to her doctor appointments and was able to help keep her younger brother and sister on track.

Even though Fabiola liked her job, after two years there, "I really felt like I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing," she says.

She wasn't exactly sure what that was, but had a sense that it involved helping others in some capacity. Thinking back to all those days she had driven past the university campus and stared wistfully at the graduating students in their caps and gowns, she decided to quit her job and apply to the University of Wisconsin. She knew earning a college degree could open up a world of possibilities.

When Fabiola learned she had been admitted she could not control her excitement. It was dream come true. Even more so because she had been granted financial aid from the university. But midway through her freshman year, it looked like her dream would dissolve. She had not been prepared for the rigors of a four-year university and was failing several classes and getting Ds and Cs in others. She was placed on academic probation and was at serious risk of being kicked out unless she lifted her marks.

To read more about Fabiola's journey to a college degree and commitment to help the Hispanic community, visit Selecciones. The latest issue of Selecciones is on newsstands now.