Student Spotlight: Ivo Perez Torres

Ivo Perez Torres began dreaming about leaving Cuba for the United States when he learned English at age 17. "I was attracted to the opportunities and the freedom here, not just the political freedom but the freedom to choose my path, to do what I want the way I want."

Twenty years later, Perez Torres began his journey to America. He flew to Venezuela, then traveled through 10 countries over the course of a year before finally entering the U.S. He was given a list of places where he could resettle and chose Syracuse. His cousin, who is also a nurse, had come to the U.S. 15 years earlier and encouraged him to select New York State because of the excellent public education system for health care professionals. Today she is a nurse in New York City.

Perez Torres landed in Syracuse in December of 2017. Because he had attended Nursing school in Cuba for a year, a local resettlement program connected him with a position as a Certified Nursing Assistant at Loretto. In January of 2019 he enrolled at Onondaga Community College and began taking his Nursing prerequisites. He worked at Loretto for a year-and-a-half, then took a position at Crouse Hospital as a Nursing Assistant.

During the spring 2020 semester, Covid arrived and Perez Torres was working on the front lines. "I was taking classes and working there as much as I could. They (Crouse) really took care of us. They had whatever PPE was recommended and made sure the environment was as safe as possible."

Perez Torres is now 42 years old. He'll complete his Nursing degree this May and has already been accepted for a Registered Nurse position at Crouse. He'll also continue his education as he works to become a Critical Care Registered Nurse. Life couldn't have worked out better for him. "I'm so thankful I made it. And OCC's Nursing program was tailored for me. It was the program I needed to be in. I could learn at my own pace. I had the freedom to work and do things my own way."

As someone who has been on the front line of the Covid crisis since the outset, Perez Torres is passionate about the virus and the vaccine. "In other parts of the world people are paying thousands of dollars for a vaccine we can get for free here. People are dying in other countries because they don't have the money or the access to it. Sometimes people here are in a bubble and they don't realize everything they have."