Compass draws grad back home
“I am ... home.”
Katherine Uchupailla speaks pragmatically about how the pandemic scuttled her immigrant parents’ plans to see her become the first in the family to graduate college (“Mom said, ‘But there are other ways we can celebrate’ ”).
She speaks passionately about the potential for reform in her field of choice — health care — at one point not pausing for 10 minutes until she meekly voices a fear she is “rambling” (she is not).
She paces words repeatedly halted by emotion as she expresses appreciation for everyone who has helped her, like an Oscar winner fearful she’ll neglect to mention someone before the orchestra starts playing.
No topic we discuss summons anger, frustration, cynicism, or any other dark tones that have been amplified in this spring of 2020.
But the way she says three words — “I am ... home” — capture her soul. She almost sings them, pausing like Lady Gaga might at the finale of a soulful ballad. Her phrasing is wistful, joyful, grateful. Home is the West Side of Stamford, near the Greenwich border. Instead of preparing for graduate school in pursuit of a master’s degree in public health, she is taking a gap year to test the waters of the working world and to help her parents shepherd her four younger siblings (ages 4-17) through the pandemic (“We are a rambunctious household”).
Four springs ago we profiled Uchupailla, now 21, as she graduated from Westhill High School in Stamford. Hers was the dream resume of a college applicant. She tutored at the Boys & Girls Club, volunteered with buildOn to combat poverty through education, and got involved with a breast cancer campaign sponsored by the NFL and the American Cancer Society.
“I knew that I wanted to help people out no matter what,” she pledged in 2016. It is her refrain.
Her efforts earned her a Mentoring4Success scholarship from Person-to-Person (P2P), which assists low-income individuals and families in lower Fairfield County.
“The P2P Scholars we support are some of the most resourceful young people I’ve had the honor to meet,” P2P CEO Nancy Coughlin said. “Many of them are first-generation students and all of them will be centrally involved in solving the world’s most pressing challenges.”
Like many first-generation students, Uchupailla headed to college without a compass. At Providence College, she quickly found herself adrift in a psychology class.
“She was the only freshman in the class. She didn’t realize it, I didn’t realize it and I don’t think her teacher realized it,” recalls Liz Mackie of Darien, a P2P board member who became Uchupailla’s mentor. “She really struggled.”
Uchupailla dropped the class. Mackie, and some challenging biology classes, helped her reshape her goals.
“I think she talked to her family about becoming a doctor and that was the expectation,” Mackie says. “We helped her realize there are other ways to help people in the care field. I think she has found her niche.”
After that brief derailment, Uchupailla rallied onto the Dean’s List, majoring in both health policy and management and in public and community service studies, with a minor in business innovation studies.
A union of health care and community. It’s a career path that could take her anywhere. But here’s where you need to keep a close eye on Uchupailla’s path.
Her studies included a service trip to Guatemala, and a summer fellowship in Costa Rica, with several honors along the way, including a Newman Civic Fellowship.
Three months ago, Uchupailla was spending Spring Break working at her internship in the human resources department at a psychiatric hospital in Providence. After the school closed along with most of the rest of the nation, she accurately predicted to a friend in New York that “if you look at this from an epidemiological standpoint, there’s a high possibility we’re not coming back.”
So she wrapped up her studies from Stamford, while helping prep 4-year-old Sofia for Kindergarten. When graduation day came, her family “got all dolled up,” and she put on her cap, gown and mask and they headed to Binney Park in Greenwich for photos.
As she recalls the day, she again reflexively tilts the focus away from herself. A neighbor spotted the family leaving the house. When they returned, the neighbor greeted them with a congratulatory cake.
“To go to the grocery store to buy a cake in a time of crisis means a lot. It’s the little things that make people happy, the little things that people remember. I’ll always remember that kindness.”
Grad school will wait, because “you’ve got to help family out as much as you can.” In the meantime, she’s working at P2P, packing food in the Stamford warehouse, acting as “the social distancing police,” and helping clients.
During this historic pandemic, the work at P2P is its own grad school. She offers solace to people who break down because they never had to ask for help before, who seek housing advice after a landlord kicked them out, who whisper pleas for assistance because they can’t read. She’s in the front lines with P2P colleagues, helping people in Stamford’s COVID-19 hot spots near the Yerwood Center and DOMUS, where the minority, low-income population is most vulnerable.
She is now the compass for people who need direction. But she knows where she is headed. It’s not Ecuador or El Salvador, where her parents hail from, it’s not Rhode Island, where she spent the last four years, or Guatemala or Costa Rica.
“I’ve always wanted to stay in Connecticut, in Stamford,” she insists. “I think it is really important to give back because this community has given me so much.”
She mentions the rioting and protests that rose in recent days after the George Floyd tragedy.
“We need people to remain in the community, to help bridge divides.”
She knows the local nonprofits, and sees potential in how they can collaborate. Then she repeats the mission statement of four years ago: “Regardless of where I end up I want to end up helping people.”
She is home.