Linda Hofer joined an elite group June 12, one that required years of personal sacrifice, late nights and more than a few blood pressure readings and bedding changes.
She graduated from the Peninsula College nursing program, an achievement she had worked toward for four years.
“It’s been quite a journey,” she said the day before graduation. “It was a lot of hard work but totally worth it.”
Hofer, 31, is also a divorced, single mom with a 6-year-old daughter, Jaylinn, who was Hofer’s inspiration to choose a career.
“After I had Jay, I was waitressing and making good money, but I felt I needed to get something more secure so she’d have a good future,” she said.
While she had always been interested in nursing, school was the last thing on her mind in her younger years.
Hofer dropped out of Port Angeles High School at 17, then took her GED at Peninsula College to increase her odds of getting a job.
“I was just over it,” she said of high school. “I wanted to get a job.”
At 18, she moved to Auburn with a friend and began working.
Her first job was at a gym, working the 4 a.m.-to-noon shift.
She moved on to waitressing, including serving cocktails in a casino.
She enjoyed the single life in the city.
“I had a lot of fun,” she said. “It was a path I had to take. I needed a little bit of life experience to drive me back to school, and I came back ready to do well — I know what it’s like out there.”
Her time in Seattle included a marriage, motherhood and divorce, all in a 10-year time frame.
She returned to Port Angeles ready for the next phase of her life.
She credits her mother, Dieula (Jayla) Marie Fromm with helping her manage being a full-time student and single mom.
“It would have been very difficult without her,” Hofer said.
Many mornings, the nursing student would wrap her daughter in a blanket at 5:30 or 6 a.m. for a trip to Grandma’s, where the two would spend the day together.
“They did a garden together this year,” Hofer said.
Jaylinn also went to the Peninsula College Educare day care program, located on the college campus, which allowed the mother and daughter to stay in contact during the day.
Hofer attended Peninsula College for four years, taking prerequisites for two years before entering the rigorous two-year nursing program.
Kathy Murphy-Carey, nursing program adviser, said Hofer had the qualities needed to succeed, both in the program and as a nurse.
Only about half of the applicants to the program are accepted; still fewer make it all the way through.
This year’s graduating class was 25 to 30 students, Murphy-Carey estimated.
“She’ll be a wonderful nurse,” she said. “She’s bright, warm, caring and a hard worker. She struggled at times but never gave up.”
The advisor recalled a time when Hofer came to her office tired and stressed from the work required in the program.
“I told her she didn’t have to do this — she just asked what the next class she had to take was.
“She’s a cheerleader for herself,” Murphy-Carey said, adding the highest praise: “I’d want her to take care of me or my loved ones.”
Like labor and childbirth, Hofer remembers the good times more than the painful ones.
“School hasn’t been painful for me — I’ve always been excited about it,” she said.
“Some of my best memories are laughing with friends in the program about our day. No one gets it but them.”
Last August, Hofer was part of a group of nursing students who went to Costa Rica, where they earned class credit and life experience
They visited schools in the capital city of San Jose and the smaller town of Boca Tapada, where, with the help of interpreters, they taught hygiene lessons in hand-washing and toothbrushing to schoolchildren.
They also taught CPR to adults and held health care question-and-answer sessions for village women.
“People there were so nice and so loving,” Hofer said.
Hofer had a first-hand lesson in helping others after the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti in January.
For the daughter of a Haitian native, the disaster struck close to home, and she wanted to do something to help.
Her mother runs a catering business in Port Angeles and offered to help the best way she could — by cooking and serving a fundraising Haitian meal for the community.
Hofer took on the additional duties of promoting the Feb. 8 event, contacting local media outlets in person, putting up posters and getting the word out.
To help with serving the to-go meals, she enlisted the help of her fellow nursing students and the Peninsula College basketball team.
The event raised $5,000 for the American Red Cross efforts in Haiti.
Hofer and her brother, Jeff, were born in the United States to Dieula and Robert Fromm, and the family has only returned to Haiti once, when Hofer was about Jaylinn’s age.
“I just remember dirt roads, that it was really hot and that we got chicken pox there,” she said.
She hopes to go back someday and use her nursing degree and experience to help the people of Haiti.
But in the meantime, there is more school ahead.
After a very short breather, she will start taking classes at University of Washington’s Bothell campus once a week, working on a bachelor’s degree in nursing.
She will also take classes online and plans to move to Seattle to complete the course by next summer.
“I think working over there will give me more opportunities to grow,” she said.
Hofer originally thought she wanted to go into obstetrics, but after doing a four-day stint in the OB ward at Kirkland’s Evergreen Hospital as part of the program, decided she would rather work on the medical/surgical floor assessing patients.
“I’m an ‘on my feet and going’ type,” she said.
She is interested in working at a VA hospital or possibly Harborview Medical Center.
“They serve the underserved, and I like that,” she said.
But before that, she has to take the state boards to become a registered nurse.
She plans to do that this summer, as well as watching her daughter’s T-ball games.
She also has to find a good neighborhood and a good school for Jaylinn in north Seattle.
There’s still a lot of work ahead, but she’s up to the challenge.
“I never thought, ‘I can’t do this,'” she said. “This is what I want to do — it’s exactly where I want to be.”