How Nurse Menchu Beat Hurricane Sandy to Save Little Babies
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Menchu with one of the infants rescued
The following day, the registered nurse was rescuing 20 at-risk infants together with a team of doctors and nurses at NYU Hospital Langone Medical Center when New York City lost power as Hurricane Sandy pounded the city. She was the transport coordinator at the time, responsible for moving patients into and out of NYU. The ambulance was her life-preserving apparatus.
“When I got home (from the party), I received a call that there was a typhoon coming,” she recalled to Positively Filipino. “That everybody should report to work. I just removed my witch’s hat, put on my uniform and went right away to the hospital.”
The task at hand was daunting: Evacuate 20 at-risk neonates out of NICU (NYU ICU). Menchu, now 68, designed a plan to bring the babies down to the first floor one by one using cellphones to light the way. From there, they could all be transferred to ICU units around the city that had electricity. Each baby would be transported by a team of doctors, nurses, and staff each one with his/her own role – one carrying the tubes, another holding and checking the monitor, another making sure the cell phone is lighted, and still another carrying heat pads and other equipment. It took a team of about five people to carry one baby from the ninth floor down to the first. Of the 20 babies rescued, Menchu carried four.
“There is no other way,” she insisted to her superiors.
“Every time we reached a platform, the neonatologist will check on the baby before proceeding to the next flight of steps,” she recalled. “I had to make sure I was holding steady because I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. It was a simple plan but precise and accurate.”
The trust was evident. Her superiors believed in Menchu’s judgment as at the time she had been with NYU Langone for 20 years. She started in 1994 as a part-time nurse while she was on the staff of St. Vincent’s Hospital. When St. Vincent’s closed in 2010, she had been a nurse there for 24 years; then she became a full-time NYU nurse.
Her Dream
Born Carmen de Luna in Catanauan, Quezon, she had been called “Menchu” early on such that it became her official name.
“I really wanted to go abroad,” she mused pensively. “Maliit pa ako nakikita ko si nanay nagtatrabaho mag-isa (even when I was a child I saw Mother working by herself). She was 30 years old when my father died.” Menchu was then three years old, the middle child between two boys.
Her mother, Simona de Luna, was a dressmaker. Her father, Macario de Luna, was a teacher who dabbled in politics. He became a candidate for mayor in Catanauan but lost by only five votes to someone who had the means and, in all likelihood, the machinery.
“Five votes lang, but because we didn’t have the money to appeal, we just let go of it,” she said, now finding the episode amusing.
In her family, she was the only one who ventured abroad.
“Ambisyosa ako (I’m ambitious). I want to improve our life because I wanted to help my nanay who became both our mother and father. At a young age. I wanted go abroad.”
She found work in Saudi Arabia and was a nurse for ten years at King Khalid University Hospital in Riyadh. While she found professional fulfillment there, her dream had always been to go to America. But Saudi was still memorable because it was here where she found romance with a medical technologist who worked in the same hospital.
Menchu as a young nurse in Saudi Arabia
“My dream before I got to be 30 was to buy a house for my mother. All my earnings in Saudi I gave it to her. I did not buy anything for myself, not jewelry, nothing. All my earnings went to Catanauan, all the fixtures and appliances in her house were bought in Saudi – the ref, the oven, the bathroom tiles, the carpet. They’re cheaper.”
She took the CGFNS (Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools ) in Kuwait to validate her nursing credentials so she could come to the United States. She passed in 1988. On Sept 21, 1989 she arrived in the U.S. and was hired by St. Vincent’s Hospital on 12th Street. She specialized in neonatal nursing, caring for high-risk newborns, even during her time in Riyadh.
She met Judith (YES, HIS NAME IS JUDITH), an affable and reserved medical technologist from Malabon. They became close confidantes at King Khalid. They got married in the Philippines with Menchu drawn to his caring and confident nature. They have two adult children, Jude and Michelle.
The Sanchez family from Secaucus, N.J., when daughter Michelle got her degree in Doctor of Sports Medicine and Exercises. From left: Jude, Menchu and Judith
Home Was Under Water
After all babies had been safely moved out of NYU, Menchu found a couple of minutes to call home and ask about the weather situation in Secaucus, N.J. where her family lives. Judith, her husband, dismissed her concerns, urging her “not to worry” and that “everything is OK.” When she got home, she was surprised, nay shocked, to see her first floor filled with brackish flood water, her furniture and appliances all black and submerged in it. She remembered what her husband told her as she entered the house: “‘Don’t look down, magpahinga ka na at matulog ka na. Rest and go to sleep.’” He purposely didn’t tell me the house was flooded.”
It took more than a week before news leaked out that the person responsible for saving 20 babies was a Filipina nurse from Secaucus. She didn’t even think what she did was worthy of the news and that the headline would reverberate around the country and find its way to the White House.
They were interviewed on television, all eight NICU nurses. Menchu said she didn’t talk much and preferred to stay quiet. Until her department got a call from the office of Michelle Obama at the White House. Her boss, she said, gave her credit for her resourcefulness and quick decision-making that led to the miraculous rescue. It was the White House that singled out Menchu as the “brains,” the heroine nurse of Superstorm Sandy.
She was the special guest at President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union, and sat between Michelle Obama and Second Lady Jill Biden.
Menchu and husband Judith, flanked by Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, at the White House during the 2013 State of the Union.
Barack Obama praised Menchu: “We should follow the example of a New York City nurse named Menchu Sanchez. When Hurricane Sandy plunged her hospital into darkness, her thoughts were not with how her own home was faring – they were with the 20 precious newborns in her care and the rescue plan she devised that kept them all safe.”
It was the White House that singled out Menchu as the “brains,” the heroine nurse of Superstorm Sandy.
At a recent concert event at the Philippine Consulate where she reshared her experience, Menchu thanked God, her family, and finally her dog Moana: “I was able to experience the appreciation and pride of the Filipino people both in our motherland and abroad. What an overwhelming feeling.”
Cristina DC Pastor is the founding editor of The FilAm newspaper published out of New York City. She co-founded Makilala TV, the first and longest running (10 years) FilAm television talk show in the New York area.
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