Loyola Academy in Phoenix to graduate first class
When Blanca Fuentes-Pholyotin was a little girl, her father told her to value education above all else. Although a captain in the Mexican army before he immigrated, in the United States he worked at a garbage-disposal center. “He told us the more knowledge you have, the better off you will be,” said Fuentes-Pholyotin, a health technician at the Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center in Phoenix. Fuentes-Pholyotin’s father died young, leaving his 18-year-old daughter to care for her mother and five siblings. Not able to go to college, she joined the American armed services. While Fuentes-Pholyotin is grateful for the opportunities that being in the military afforded her, her dream for her five children is that they get a college education. And she believes her oldest son, Miguel Cordova, is on his way to doing that, thanks to Loyola Academy.