Filipino Nurse Hailed by Obama

Filipina nurse Menchu Sanchez was hailed during President Obama’s State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress, reports Balitang America. Sanchez, a nurse at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, one of the special guests of the First Lady Michelle Obama, was honored as one of the heroes of the Hurricane Sandy disaster that devastated large parts of New York and New Jersey last year. Sanchez devised a plan to transport 20 at-risk infants at the Langone Medical Center to intensive care units around the city, organizing the nurses and doctors to carefully carry the babies down eight flights of stairs with only cell phones to light the way. Even as her own home was flooding, Sanchez thought only of protecting the babies in her care, the White House explained. Menchu was born, raised, and educated in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States in the 1980s.