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Nancy Leonardo Santos got an early start.
Life Stories
This feature chronicles the lives of recently deceased Tucsonans. Some were well-known across the community. Others had an impact on a smaller sphere of friends, family and acquaintances. Many of these people led interesting — and sometimes extraordinary — lives with little or no fanfare. Now you'll hear their stories. Past "Life Stories" are online at go.azstar net.com/lifestories.

Tucson Region

Nancy Leonardo Santos: Nurse Nancy was a natural for her profession of healing

By Kimberly Matas
arizona daily star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.05.2008
No one could tell a story, shop for bargains or care for patients like Nurse Nancy, say those who knew her best.
Born and raised in Iowa, Nancy Leonardo Santos found her calling as a teen when she was a volunteer candy striper at a county hospital in Des Moines.
"She was hooked immediately and she really liked taking care of people," said brother John Leonardo. "She decided she wanted to be a nurse from the age of 16."
Decades later, after spending nearly 30 years ministering to patients at University Medical Center, Santos found herself on the receiving end of the caregiving. Last summer she was diagnosed with central nervous system lymphoma.
Medical treatment initially diminished the size of the brain tumors and Santos rebounded, but by December, the tumors began growing again. Santos died Feb. 23. She was 52.
Friends, family and colleagues will gather for a 10 a.m. Mass on Saturday at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, 5150 N. Valley View Road, followed by an 11 a.m. memorial celebration.
"I just feel lucky that I had the honor of knowing her over the years and that she liked me and we were friends," said co-worker Franki Parin, who knew Santos for 18 years.
"She was one of those people in life that you think, 'Wow, how lucky was I to have her in my life.' "
Santos had a strong independent streak, her brother said. When she was 20, she packed up her VW Bug and drove from Iowa to Washington state to attend nursing school. After graduation, she lined up a job in Tucson and her brother, now a Pima County Superior Court judge, followed her to Arizona.
"The thing about Nancy is, she had a lot of other interests and talents," Leonardo said. "She was great at home decorating and real estate. She had a strong nesting instinct. I think she could have made a lot of money in real estate or interior design, but she always told me even though she really enjoyed those things she couldn't see doing anything other than being a nurse."
Parin considered Santos her home-decorating guru and sought advice from the hard-core garage-sale shopper when she bought a home that needed restoration.
Fortunately for the patients at UMC, Santos felt strongly about her vocation, so bargain-hunting and interior design remained hobbies.
"She was always positive. She was always a can-do person. She was a nurse's nurse," said hospice nurse Tani Bahti, who met Santos almost 30 years ago when they worked together in UMC's oncology unit. "If you were a patient, you wanted Nancy to take care of you with love and compassion and humor. They need the human heart and she brought it with full force."
After a while, though, working with cancer patients took an emotional toll on Santos, said Austin, one of her two sons — Sean is the other — with husband Michael Santos.
"She liked taking care of people. Probably one of her best qualities was the empathy she had for others," Austin said. But "having to deal with patients you get to know struggling through cancer finally got to her. Instead she started bringing life into the world."
For nearly 20 years, Santos worked in UMC's labor and delivery unit.
"Going through boxes of her old memorabilia, it seems she got a card from the parents of every baby she delivered," Austin said. "For one or two days she was a part of their lives."
Her skills as a nurse were enhanced by her unreserved demeanor, co-workers said.
"She was big in presence and big in personality and she was loud and gregarious. She filled the room up with her personality," Parin said. "Nobody told a story like Nancy. If we thought something was funny we would be laughing about it for years."
Perin remembers one story Santos told about a pet monkey.
"She always wanted a monkey when she was a little kid and they never gave her one. When she was 16, her dad came home with a monkey," Parin said. "She said, 'Did you ever try to walk a monkey? You take it out for a walk and everyone wants to pet it and talk to it. What was he thinking? I was 16! I was way past the monkey.'
"I think they ended up getting rid of the monkey after it bit someone," Parin said.
Austin remembers his mother talking about the unease her reserved Quaker mother felt because of her Italian father's boisterous personality, which Nancy inherited.
"She was a very enthusiastic storyteller. She could take any story and make it entertaining," her son said.
As a child, Nancy was interested in entomology and amassed quite a collection of dry shells shed by cicadas, Austin said.
When she showed her prized collection to her Italian grandmother, "she slapped them out of her hand and started yelling in Italian and stomping on them," Austin said.
Santos enjoyed learning about others as much as she liked sharing her own tales.
"She loved people's stories," Parin said. "She knew everything about my family and everybody's family on the (labor and delivery) floor. If you went someplace and did something, when you came back she'd say, 'What was your favorite thing?' "
Santos took the same interest in her patients that she did in her co-workers.
"She truly believed it was an honor to come to work and take care of these patients," Parin said. "I can't say the rest of us are that altruistic, but Nancy really meant it."
Whenever she was assigned to a pregnant patient, Parin said, "I thought, 'This patient is lucky. They are going to have quite an experience.' They are going to have a baby and that's an experience, but to have Nancy as a nurse to get them through that, those were the luckiest patients."
The care Santos bestowed on others came back to her manyfold when she was diagnosed with lymphoma.
"She had such inherent support in the hospital," Bahti said. "She just developed this community. Everyone adored her."
● To suggest someone for Life Stories, contact reporter Kimberly Matas at kmatas@azstarnet.com or at 573-4191. Read more from this reporter at: http://go.azstar net.com/lastwrites.
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