U Magazine, Summer 1989

LIKE MOfHER, LIKE FATHER... Ruth Baja '89 plans a career in a helping profession. That 's not suprising. Look at the examples she has to follow.

Asked what wisdom her parents imparted to her as a child, Ruth Bajo ponders a moment before responding. "Our parents instilled in us a love for children," she explains. "They always taught us to share and how to work on projects together. And they never spoiled us, even though they could have." Ruth vividly remembers the chalkboard containing the day's play theme for the children that once dominated her mother's kitchen. And during a tour of her family home she points out a huge banyan tree which graces the front yard. "That was our Star Trek tree ," she recalls, eyeing the sweeping branches that stretch skyward. "We each had our stations. Sometimes some of my brothers would pelt us with berries to keep us there. " Dr. Sue Bajo '70, the first of the Bajos to graduate from USD, says she and her siblings enjoyed a secure family life as children. "We mostly played with each other," she recalls. There were regular Sunday baseball games, volleyball, bicycle races. "We were very competitive with each other," she remembers, "but we also learned how to get along. " Sue, an emergency room physician at Chula Vista Community Hospital, credits her parents for being wonderful role models.

By John Sutherland

serve as a calling card for the entire Bajo clan. For the virtues Peter listed seem to be totally harmonious with the way in which individual members of this remarkable family approach their everyday life. In short, this is not a family preoccupied with what kind of car looks good in the driveway of the mission-style family home located five miles north of the Mexican border. Nor is it a family which devotes much time to making fashion statements at spotlight social events. Instead, in a completely unpretentious and refreshing way, the Bajos anchor their lives in the bedrock of religious faith, family life and service to others. The evi– dence runs deep: • The family patriarch, Dr. Michael Bajo, in more than 42 years as a general practitioner in San Ysidro, has delivered more than 10,000 babies, many of them to parents too poor to pay for their medical care. • Eight of the Bajo children have elected to follow in their father's footsteps and devote their lives to the medical profession as doctors or nurses. • Ruth will travel this summer to Medjugotje, Yugoslavia, where the apparition of the Virgin Mary has appeared regularly, in order

"Our parents always made us feel like we could do anything. And our father loves his work. It's his hobby. Seeing that, we wanted to pursue a profession that would help others." Dr. Philip Bajo '74, a cardiologist at Scripps Memorial-Chula Vista, Community Hospital of Chula Vista and Mercy Hospital, also followed his dad's example. He echoes his sister in crediting his parents for his success. "They are good, supportive parents. They taught us to work hard and to be dedicated in whatever we did," he says. Adds Ruth: "They tried to teach us to be ourselves, too, to develop the unique– ness in each of us. And

Add to yourfaith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;

and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;

and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. II Peter I: 5-7 Those simple words tell a lot about Ruth Bajo '89 and her 14 older brothers and sisters. The Bible verses - inscribed on a framed sheet of paper which adorns a liv– ing room wall of the modest little house Ruth Bajo has called home the past four years while attending USD. - might well

to bring back to her family a firsthand accounting of the phenomenon.

• Six of Ruth's brothers and sisters - Sue '70, Stephen '72, Michael '73, Philip '74 , Mary '75 and David '82 - also attended USD, creating an extended family, of sorts, at Alcala Park.

Part of the Baja

4 U Magazine