Broken Hearts, Broken Dreams

SUNDAY 02.24.2008
BALTIMORE, MD
THE SUN’S 171ST YEAR: NO. 55
BALTIMORESUN.COM
THE
óóóó FINAL
$2
SUN
STATE
ELECTION 2008
Fe Bolado (left) and Irenea Apao were found dead in their
apartments. Their deaths were months apart.
[ L E F T P H OTO BY C I N E D I A Z ; R I G H T P H OTO BY M A N N Y LO P E Z ;
B OT H P H OTO S S P E C I A L TO T H E S U N ]
Broken hearts,
broken dreams
Two Filipina teachers
in Baltimore lost a fight with despair
SUN SPECIAL REPORT
by Sara Neufeld
[ s u n r e p o r t e r]
he first was Fe Bolado, a 26-year-old
beauty with long, shiny hair who
couldn’t carry a tune in karaoke. She
left her family in the Philippines to
teach math in Baltimore, where she hid her
sadness behind a constant smile.
T
Her friends knew she was
heartbroken that her marriage, less than a year old,
was falling apart. They did
not know the extent of the
despair. Before dawn last May
25, Bolado hanged herself in
her Mount Vernon apartment.
And then, between the
night of Nov. 6 and the morning of Nov. 8, a second Filipino teacher in Baltimore took
her life the same way.
Irenea Conato Apao, 41,
taught high school algebra
and geometry while her son
and daughter, now 10 and 17,
stayed with her sister in the
Philippines. Known as Irene,
Apao had been separated
from her husband for several
years. In the months before
her death, she struggled with
financial problems and felt
troubled by the unwanted attentions of a one-time boyfriend.
Coming less than six
months apart, the suicides
have stunned Baltimore’s
community of more than 400
Filipino teachers, a close-knit
group that has bonded over
the struggles of living and
working half a world away
from home.
Much links Bolado and
Apao: bright young women
from the same western Pacific country recruited by the
city school system to fill vacancies. They were both bubbly and outgoing and left behind families and sterling ac[See TEACHERS, 6A]
A smiling Gayle Nowlen cradles a baby doll after lunch at Castagna
House in Palmyra, Pa., a progressive kind of facility for the elderly that
emphasizes a home-like setting and that could be headed to Baltimore.
L LOY D F OX [ S U N P H OTO G R A P H E R ]
INDEX
E D I T O R I A L
1 4 A
/ /
4 B
/ /
[ s u n r e p o r t e r]
CLINT ON, N.C. // The old men passed their time
ing to private bedrooms, a whirlpool
bath, a living room with a fireplace
and landscaped outdoor areas.
It doesn’t sound like a nursing
home, and for good reason. This unusual living arrangement is called a
Green House — a progressive new
way to care for the elderly in their
last years of life. While licensed as
nursing homes, Green Houses provide care in a home, not an institutional, setting.
“I’ve been in different places, and
this is the first place I felt like I
wasn’t in jail. I’m not kidding,” said
George Hess, 90, who uses a wheel-
G A M E S ,
nomination on the line, Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton are competing all out for Hispanic votes in
next week’s pivotal Texas primary.
The race in this state is a dead heat, polls show, and
even former President Bill Clinton says his wife must
win to keep her hopes alive. Clinton campaign officials acknowledge that she needs heavy backing from
Latinos, expected to cast more than one in three Democratic ballots.
Obama doesn’t need to dominate the Hispanic vote
in the March 4 primary, but he has to chip away at her
support. There are indications he is doing that,
though the state’s Hispanic voters are still more familiar with Clinton.
“Once you make contact with Texas Latinos, it’s very
hard to move them, particularly when they can’t distinguish policy differences between the candidates,”
said Henry Flores, a political scientist at St. Mary’s
University in San Antonio.
But “the more they see him, the better he may be
able to do,” added Flores, noting that Obama is outspending Clinton on TV ads in heavily Hispanic South
Texas, which could erode her edge.
Tensions between black and brown Americans — in
competition for jobs or minority power status, for ex-
............................
by Julie Bykowicz
ing station, the focus of activity at
Castagna House is a homelike kitchen with double ovens and a long
wooden dining room table.
The people who live here aren’t
called residents or patients, but
“elders.” Those who care for them
are not nurse’s assistants or aides;
each is called a shahbaz, a Persian
word that means “royal falcon.” And
antiseptic corridors are replaced
with short, sunlit passageways lead- [Please see GREEN HOUSE, 12A]
O B I T U A R I E S
SAN ANT ONIO // With the Democratic presidential
Willie Parker, 81, awaits return
to Maryland for 29 years owed
Not a nursing home,
but a nurturing home
PALMYRA, PA. // Instead of a nurs-
.........................................
by Paul West [ s u n r e p o r t e r]
Past caught up
to fugitive who
lived in open
MICHELLE ALBOR-BASABE, IRENEA
APAO’S RELATIVE
[ s u n r e p o r t e r]
Obama, Clinton go all out
to win over Latino voters
[Please see TEXAS, 5A]
“I COULD NOT EXPECT
SHE WOULD EASILY GIVE
UP ON HER KIDS.”
..........................
by Tanika White
Hispanics
hold key
in Texas
primary
watching television in their separate bedrooms, generally keeping to themselves in the small, worn house.
These two are in poor health, their home nurse said
— Mr. Rufus, 76, with his memory and breathing
problems, and Mr. Willie, 81, with his heart trouble
and a limp from a recent stroke.
Willie Parker had moved in with Rufus Peterson, a
relative of a relative, about three months ago, when
Parker decided to leave his wife of 25 years. Peterson
said he knows little else about Parker, except that “he
is a real nice old man.”
Certainly Peterson would have had no reason to suspect that his roommate was an escaped convict from
Maryland, a man convicted decades ago of robbery
and drug dealing.
Three U.S. marshals showed up Wednesday at
[Please see PARKER, 8A]
WEATHER
SUNNY
Today’s high, 42; low, 25. Yesterday’s downtown
high, 37; low, 34.
>>>> PG 6B
C R O S S W O R D S
1
1 1 E
/ /
2
3
4
T V
Gemcraft Homes Celebrates 15 Years
in Homebuilding with $15 Options!
L
T V B O O K
6A SUNDAY 02.24.2008
THE SUN
D
FROM THE COVER
Broken hearts, broken dreams
TEACHERS [From Page 1A]
WHERE TO GO
FOR HELP
ademic records. But their most
telling similarity might be the unwillingness of each to put her
faith in mental health services at
a time of severe emotional turmoil.
Bolado’s friends say they do not
believe she had sought any mental health care before her death.
Apao had been prescribed antidepressants and was hospitalized
for nearly a week after a suicide
attempt in early October, but she
resisted suggestions that she get
into counseling.
In their apparent aversion to
seeking professional help, Bolado
and Apao reflected a cultural bias
of their homeland, where, many
Filipinos living in Baltimore
agree, there is little regard for psychiatry and psychology.
“In the American perspective,
there’s nothing wrong with [mental illness] because, medically, it’s
a condition,” said Alona Nuñez,
an English teacher at West Baltimore Middle School who’s in the
same recruiting program that Bolado and Apao were.
“For Filipinos, it could destroy
your reputation. It would create a
scandal.”
Living in the United States, both
Bolado and Apao had extensive
support from friends and colleagues. It wasn’t enough.
If you or someone you know is
experiencing depression or
suicidal thoughts, these hot lines
offer assistance.
National Hopeline Network:
1-800-SUICIDE and
1-800-442-HOPE.
Baltimore Crisis Response Inc:
410-433-5175 and
410-752-2272.
Employees of the Baltimore City
Public School System and their
dependents can also access a
free assistance program that
provides counseling by calling
1-888-454-7545.
High hopes
“If the stigma here is bad, it’s worse in the Philippines,” Dr. Benedicto Borja says of mental illness. Borja, who is associate director of the
psychiatric residency program at Sheppard Pratt, has offered to help Filipino teachers in Baltimore. He is a native of the Philippines.
As far as is known, neither woman left behind a note to reveal
why she felt suicide was the only
option. What is certain is that
both arrived in this country with
expectations for brighter futures.
Economics impelled them to
leave their families, bound, eventually, for Baltimore. They enlisted in international programs that
recruit “highly qualified” teachers into American school districts
with shortages.
With its high poverty and a surplus of English-speaking teachers,
the Philippines is fertile ground
for recruits.
Bolado was in the first crop of 58
Filipino teachers brought to Baltimore in the summer of 2005.
Since then, their numbers have
grown every year.
Bolado was the baby of her
group, just 24 at the time she arrived, an honors graduate of the
University of the Philippines.
Her mother had been working
in Hong Kong as a domestic helper to support the family. She was
able to return home when Bolado, striking for her drive and desire to excel, accepted a high-paying job in the United States.
During that first school year, at
least, she was very much a part of
Baltimore’s community for Filipino teachers.
She lived alongside dozens of
her countrymen at the Symphony Center apartment building
near the Meyerhoff, sharing a
fifth-floor unit with three Filipino
roommates. She liked to dance
and to shop at Old Navy.
She was also selected to be followed by a Filipino-American documentary maker chronicling the
experiences of Filipino teachers
in Baltimore.
A M Y DAV I S [ S U N P H OTO G R A P H E R ]
Troubled marriage
slit her left wrist before hanging
herself in the closet with an extension cord.
In her final moments, she taped
signs to her bedroom wall instructing her roommates not to
contact her husband.
Happy facade
If Bolado despaired over a fractured romance, Apao’s situation
appeared more complicated. Interviews and documents suggest
a stretch of time in which she was
losing control, in her personal
life, in her professional life, in her
finances.
Like Bolado, Apao often appeared happy. And like Bolado,
she had been professionally successful in the Philippines, having
been singled out for national recognition by the country’s education department.
She left home in 2005 for a
teaching job in Spotsylvania, Va.
After a year there, Apao arrived
in Baltimore, telling administrators she was looking for a more
lively environment. She impressed them in her interview at
a job fair for a position at Baltimore Talent Development High, a
well-regarded school in Harlem
Park run in partnership with the
Johns Hopkins University.
She wanted to teach physics, in
which she had a master’s degree,
but with no science openings, she
settled on math.
Colleagues say she struggled
with the behavior of her students
and by midway through the
school year, she was frequently
showing up to work late or calling
in sick.
Because Apao didn’t come directly to Baltimore from the Philippines, she did not have many of
the strong relationships that usually go with being in the program.
At first she lived in an apartment on West Lombard Street
with two colleagues, one the former principal of her school in the
Philippines.
Then last fall, she moved by herself into a basement apartment
across the street.
Cheryl Curtis, the school system’s coordinator of international teachers, urged Apao to move
into an apartment building
where she’d be surrounded by
other Filipino teachers. She did
not.
Nonetheless, her social life was
active. She sang in the Filipino
choir at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and she was involved in
numerous Washington-based Filipino community organizations,
particularly the Migrant Heritage
Commission, which provides legal advice, health care and cultural activities.
A short, slightly chubby woman
with wavy dark hair, Apao loved a
sell for a commission.
‘I am alone here’
At a party in December 2006,
Apao hit it off with a pizza deliveryman, a native of India who
spoke limited English. They dated
for two months, at which point
Apao tried to break off the relationship, she wrote in court documents.
Last April, she filed papers in
Baltimore District Court seeking a
peace order against the man, who
she claimed had sexually assaulted her and threatened to kill
“WE CAN’T JUST
IGNORE THE FACT
THAT TWO PEOPLE
HAVE LOST THEIR
LIVES.”
DR. BENEDICTO BORJA
good party. For her birthday in
August, she played hostess to dozens of people and had a roasted
pig brought in from New York.
She also loved fashion. She became fast friends last summer
with Jennifer Hong, a jewelry
saleswoman she met on a bus
(Apao didn’t have an American
driver’s license), and with Hong’s
friend Michele Blanchard, a dress
designer.
She talked about going into business with them, but she told
them she was having financial
difficulties, and the plans never
materialized.
At the time of her death, she
had in her possession several of
Blanchard’s mannequins and
clothes, which she was trying to
her. She appeared in court five
times, before several different
judges. Tape recordings of the
proceedings do not indicate that
any of them asked her about her
assault allegation.
In the courtroom on May 11,
Apao broke down in tears after
learning that the hearing was being postponed for the third time.
She said she could not continue to
miss school to come to court.
“Look at my eyes,” she can be
heard telling the judge in the recording. “I’m not sleeping well because I’m scared. I am alone here.
I don’t have any family.”
Later that month, she finally
obtained the order, effective for
six months. It was due to expire
10 days after she was found dead.
In June, she found a new companion in Manny Lopez, 44, a Filipino engineer raised in Guam
who was the official photographer at the Migrant Heritage
Commission’s annual ball. Lopez,
who lives in Prince George’s
County, said they met when Apao
— wearing an elegant maroon
gown — asked him to take her
picture with her friends.
By the fall, Apao was talking
about moving to Prince George’s
County to live closer to Lopez, and
about bringing her children over
from the Philippines to live with
her.
But her daughter, who recently
started nursing school, didn’t
want to move away, friends and
family said. Apao talked often
about missing her kids, whom she
hadn’t seen since she returned
for her father’s funeral a year earlier. Lopez said that Apao’s general practitioner had prescribed
antidepressants and sleeping
pills.
“She just always said she missed
her family so much,” said
Blanchard, the dress designer.
Her frustration at school was
also mounting. Despite trying to
arrange a job over the summer at
Frederick Douglass High, she returned to Talent Development,
where she found herself working
as a substitute for the first few
weeks of school.
She was supposed to start a permanent assignment teaching
math in small groups to struggling students, but because of her
frequent absences, colleagues
said, those classes never got off
the ground.
“She didn’t have anything to
do,” Lopez said. “She kept asking,
‘Where are my students, where
are my students?’ She wanted to
teach.”
System and then sent home to
rest. Lopez said he’d check to see
that she was taking her antidepressants.
At the school system, Curtis said
she encouraged Apao to take advantage of a free employee assistance program that provides counseling. She took the information
and politely thanked Curtis, as
she had several months earlier
when a Talent Development administrator made the same recommendation.
Curtis and Duque arranged for
Apao to transfer from Talent Development to a co-teaching position at Booker T. Washington Middle School, to lighten her load and
give her a fresh start.
She reported to Booker T. Washington for only one day, Monday,
Nov. 5. She complained that night
to a friend that the students
weren’t as well behaved as those
at Talent Development. Schools
were closed that Tuesday for Election Day, and on Wednesday, she
didn’t show up.
Lopez, unable to reach Apao
since 5 p.m. Tuesday, was in a
panic by Thursday morning and
called the landlord. That afternoon, the landlord found her
body.
Nilo Narciso, a Filipino special
education teacher at Talent Development, saw Apao the Friday
before her death, when he helped
her empty her desk at the school.
He called her a cab and carried
her boxes to the curb. As they
waited for the taxi, he said, she
promised him that despite her
previous suicide attempt, she
would never actually go through
with killing herself. “I will make
this life a better one,” she told
him.
Apao had made the same promise to numerous relatives and
friends on both sides of the globe,
and many had trouble believing
that her death was really a suicide.
“I could not expect she would
easily give up on her kids,” said a
c ousin of Apao’s husband,
Michelle Albor-Basabe, who
teaches third-grade at Patapsco
Elementary and who handled her
affairs after her death. “Sometimes you give up on your
dreams, but not on your kids.”
Circle of support
Part of what makes Bolado and
Apao’s deaths puzzling to their
colleagues is that a strong support
network exists for the city’s Filipino teachers, literally from the moment they arrive at BaltimoreWashington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
Congregants at area Filipino
churches rush to bring the teachers everything from food to furniture.
Two school system administrators, Curtis and Duque, check up
on them constantly and intervene whenever there’s a job-related problem. They are so involved
in the teachers’ lives that they’ve
earned the nicknames “Mom”
and “Dad.”
Most of the teachers live together, renting adjacent apartments
in four buildings around the city.
They carpool together. They pray
together. They’ve developed their
own governance structure with
elected leaders, including an overall coordinator, coordinators for
each group arriving from the Philippines, even coordinators on every floor at the Symphony Center
apartment building.
As school systems around the
country increasingly turn to the
Philippines and elsewhere abroad
to find teachers, Baltimore has
become a model for the support it
provides. Its foreign teacher retention rate is higher than that in
many other cities.
Yet the suicides were here.
Ligaya Avenida, a recruiter who
has been sending Filipino teachers to American schools for nearly
a decade and referred about half
the teachers now in Baltimore,
said Bolado’s was the first suicide
she’d seen.
Officials at Amity Institute,
which sponsors visas for international teachers, said Bolado was
Bolado worked at Thurgood
Marshall Middle, a challenging
Northeast Baltimore school that
she and the other Filipino teachSuicide attempt
ers there jokingly called “ThurOn Oct. 9, Apao tried to kill herbest.”
self by overdosing on pills in her
Despite the culture shock of enapartment. A friend found her
countering insubordinate chiland called the police. The redren, she thrived professionally
sponding officer wrote in a report
and was beloved by her students,
that she was unable to stop cryaccording to colleagues and
ing.
school administrators. In addiShe was hospitalized for nearly
tion to her regular load of math
a week at Sheppard Pratt Health
classes, she taught a weekly science class for gifted students, lugging loads of materials to school
for projects such as making ice
cream.
“Fe was amazing,” said George
Duque, the school system’s director of staffing and certification. “I
remember her saying, ‘Adding
and subtracting is not math.
Thinking is math.’ ”
Outside school, much of Bolado’s life revolved around a troubled relationship with a boyfriend back in the Philippines
whom her family never liked, her
friends said.
Returning home the summer after her first school year away, she
married him without her parents’ knowledge.
Back in Baltimore for a second
school year, Bolado and four other teachers left Symphony Center
for the Horizon House apartments on Calvert Street. Her husband followed her here that winter and moved in with her and
her two roommates.
But problems in their relationship continued.
On May 21, according to a later
police report, he left her for another woman. A few days later, At left, Fe Bolado, 26, was bubbly and outgoing with a sterling academic record in her native Philippines. At right, Irenea Apao
wearing boxer shorts and a (center front) was involved in Filipino-American organizations, and invited dozens of friends to her 41st birthday party in August.
[Please see TEACHERS, 7A]
sleeveless shirt, Bolado tried to M A N N Y LO P E Z ( R I G H T P H OTO ) [ S P E C I A L TO T H E S U N ]
THE SUN
TEACHERS [From Page 6A]
2005-2006 school year and who
has been elected the overall coorsion. The only other mental dinator of Baltimore’s Filipino
health care is at private facilities, teachers, started a support comnot covered by insurance, and mittee within her organization.
treatment is far beyond the financial means of most Filipinos.
ONLINE
“Those that are going to psychiatrists in the Philippines, first of
To read a series on the
all, they’re rich people,” said Jose
experience of Filipino
Arturo “Art” Maga, a special eduteachers in Baltimore, go to
cation teacher at William S. Baer
baltimoresun.com/teacher
School. “The best thing is to have
counsel with a priest, a pastor,
without paying anything.”
On the books, the Philippines
has one of the lowest suicide rates
in the world. But some say that
suicide, considered a sin by the
Catholic Church, often goes unreported.
“In the Philippines, they will
make up other reasons for the official cause of death,” said Annalisa V. Enrile, an assistant professor
at the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work. A
Filipino herself, her research centers on the Filipino-American
community.
Someone who has offered to
help the teachers in Baltimore is
Dr. Benedicto Borja, a Filipino
who is associate director of the
psychiatric residency training
program at Sheppard Pratt and
University of Maryland Medical
Center. He previously headed the
university medical center’s psychiatric emergency services.
Borja and his wife, also a psychiatrist, moved to the United States
in 1994 after medical school because there were virtually no opportunities to do a residency in
psychiatry in the Philippines.
He was following in the footsteps of his father, who became a
psychiatrist after watching two
sisters struggle with mental illness. Both eventually committed
suicide. But even then, Borja recalls that when one of his aunts
died, his parents ordered him
never to speak of the cause.
His father, who had done his residency in Ohio before returning
to the Philippines, couldn’t handle working in the state hospital
for long because he thought the
conditions were deplorable. In
private practice, though, business
was so slow that he worked on
the side in real estate to make a
living.
“If the stigma here is bad, it’s
worse in the Philippines,” Borja
said. “The slightest hint of depression, you’re a nutcase.”
Seeking mental health care is “a
sign of weakness in our culture,”
he said. “It’s unthinkable. The
thinking in the Philippines is,
‘Snap out of it, you’ve got your
whole family.’ ”
Enrile added that, even if someone in the Philippines did want
professional help, it typically is
not available. “Even if there
wasn’t stigma involved, there
aren’t resources either,” she said.
“All of that sets up a situation
where, when there are resources
available, you wouldn’t even
think to look at them.”
In Baltimore, Bolado relied on
her friends for support. The week
of her death, she spent hours confiding in them about her marital
problems, but she never mentioned thoughts of suicide. In any
case, saving Bolado by that point
may well have been beyond the
capacity of her friends. As Borja
said, “if there’s truly a chemical
imbalance, social support is not
enough.”
After her October suicide attempt, Apao appeared to return
to her spunky self. School officials
perceived that she seemed embarrassed by what she’d done. At
the same time, she did not return
repeated phone calls from her
friend the jewelry saleswoman,
Jennifer Hong, who was urging
her to get counseling.
“I feel so guilty,” said Hong, a
nursing student. “I tried because I
knew she needed professional
help, but if she doesn’t receive my
phone call, if she doesn’t want my
help …”
In the aftermath of the suicides,
groups such as the Baltimore
Teachers Union and the Philippine Embassy have reached out
to the city’s Filipino teachers.
School system administrators
started doing more to promote
the free counseling program
that’s offered.
Aileen Mercado, who was prof iled in The Sun during the
ì
Borja has extended an open invitation to work with teachers in
Baltimore to overcome their reluctance so that those in need of
help can get it.
“We can’t just ignore the fact
that two people have lost their
lives,” he said. “We have to, I
wouldn’t say change the culture,
but I would say enlighten the culture.”
.......................
[email protected]
SUNDAY 02.24.2008 7A
Irenea Apao, 41, taught
high school algebra and
geometry. In the months
before her death, she
struggled with financial
problems and felt
threatened by a scorned
boyfriend .
MANNY DIAZ
[ S P E C I A L TO T H E S U N ]