This article was originally published in the Napa Valley Register. Read the original article here.
Cecilia Villegas was born with an innate sense for nurturing others.
The fourth-generation Napa native said that in her 20s, she always felt comfortable assisting friends who got sick while she served as the “wing-mom.” Around the same time, she felt a calling to become a nurse and make helping others her occupation.
Villegas’ road to nursing wasn’t easy or speedy. It took grit, determination and turning to the Napa community for support to achieve her dreams. Looking back on her first year as a nurse at Providence Queen of the Valley Medical Center, Villegas said she can’t help but think about the people who propelled her toward destiny.
“This community elevated me in an insane way,” Villegas said. “It felt like once I made the decision to have my kids and do it on my own, there wasn’t a door that didn’t open for me as long as I had the will to pursue it.”
Although Villegas knew she wanted to become a nurse, she said juggling multiple jobs to afford living in Napa made attending college nearly impossible. Then, in her 30s, Vilegas gave birth to twin boys, Zion and Kasai, which made going to school feel even more unlikely. That’s when the single mother turned to community resources, where she quickly found the Cope Family Center.
Cope provided Villegas with weekly visits and assisted her in the early development of her children. The organization also helped her get enrolled at Napa Valley College and walked her through the process of obtaining a housing voucher.
Once she entered the classroom, she never looked back. With her goal of becoming a nurse in mind, Villegas excelled in her coursework and earned scholarships and frequent part-time employment as a supplemental instructor. It took her two rounds to be admitted into the highly competitive nursing program at NVC, and Villegas recalls crying when she learned she was accepted.
She continued to excel academically in the intensive two-year nursing program. Her academic work earned her several scholarships, including those awarded by the Humpbert family, Murdoff family, Elks Larson General, and the Julia DuLay Montgomery Trust.
While in the nursing program, Villegas was placed for clinicals at the Queen, the same hospital where her grandmother Jean Bianchi worked in the 1950s. Bianchi still lived a couple of blocks away from the hospital while Villegas was doing her clinical hours, and she said it was incredible connecting with her grandmother after shifts.
“I would go sit with her and tell her about my experiences,” she said. “It just felt really fulfilling to have that shared experience, something that she could relate to and we could bond over.”
After graduating from NVC in December 2023, Villegas applied to work the Queen. By February 2024, she was starting her new job, working in the same Napa hospital where she was born and following in her grandmother’s footsteps.
“Working there just feels like home,” she said. “It has always felt like home.”
Villegas was unsure how working nights would affect her ability to take care of her twin boys. She quickly realized it was the ideal situation, with her schedule allowing her to pick up and drop off the siblings and spend dinner with them before heading off for her shift at Three South, the hospital’s acute care cardiac telemetry unit.
Working nights at Three South brings a broad spectrum of patients to Villegas, including those struggling with addiction and other critical instabilities. There’s never a dull moment, she said, and she is always excited that every shift brings about a new opportunity to learn and work in a team environment.
“As a nurse, you constantly have to be reaching out and asking for help,” she said. “If you’re not going to ask, you’re not going to learn. You have to surrender your humility, otherwise you are never going to grow.”
More than a year into her job, Villegas is proud of the fact that she has received a Daisy Award, for which patients have the ability to nominate hospital staff as a way to honor their hard work. She’s even more proud, she added, that she gets to see her growth in many aspects, and constantly notices that tasks that were challenging when she started are now second nature.
Getting to work as a nurse is still surreal to Villegas. She said she’s wanted it for so long, and the fact that she gets to help others each and every day is always exciting.
For others who have the same calling but are facing an uphill battle like she did, Villegas had words of support and encouragement.
“Utilize all of your resources, don’t be afraid to ask for help, and don’t get overwhelmed by the big picture,” she said. “We do it one day at a time, and when things get really rough, we do it 15 minutes at a time."
Read more about Cecilia’s experience at Cope here.
Written by Keith Cousins
Napa Valley Register