Her own best savior

Regina St. Louis (BSHM, 2023) can explain a lot. She can tell you how growing up as a first-generation child of Haitian immigrants teaches you self-sufficiency from a young age. She can explain, as a site lead for Quest Diagnostics, how to manage staff and patient care. She can attest to the challenges and triumphs of parenting three children as a single mother.

But how she ended up in an online program at University of Phoenix when she is a self-described “hands-on learner”? That, as it turns out, is a mystery even to her.

“It was just the energy,” she reflects. “It pushed me … and I never looked back.”

By the time St. Louis arrived at UOPX, she’d already been buffeted by life in the most tragic of ways. The birth of her first son came with complications that delayed her high school graduation. Being pregnant at 19 had also been unexpected and at least partly a consequence, she thinks, of her upbringing.

“In the Haitian community, it’s OK for the boys to do certain things, but it’s not OK for the girls,” St. Louis says. “So, there was a lot of stuff I didn’t know until I was much older. For example, when it came to dating, my parents would just say, ‘Hey, we don’t want you to have a boyfriend.’ [They were so strict], I couldn’t come to them to speak to them when I was going through anything.”

Three years later, St. Louis had her second child, a daughter this time. It was a joy that helped her through the first tragedy of her life: the death of her 13-year-old sister from meningitis. There had been a considerable age difference between St. Louis and her sister, but with four brothers, St. Louis had treasured the bond. She paused everything — including her medical assistant program — to process the grief. Eventually, she graduated and on time.

It was the murder of her brother, however, that really threatened to derail St. Louis’ life. At the time, St. Louis was working in a hospital and going to school to become a nurse. Her brother had been released from prison a week earlier when she got a call from her brother’s friend expressing his condolences.

Condolences for what? St. Louis wondered.

The friend explained: Her brother had been killed.

St. Louis thought — hoped — the friend was joking. Another brother went to the police station to make inquiries, and St. Louis dozed, dreaming of her deceased little sister.

“I happened to dream of her, and I saw her hugging [my brother], and I was like, ‘It’s not good.’ Literally two seconds later, I got a text that said, ‘Yes, it was him who was murdered,’” St. Louis recalls.

Eventually, the family learned that St. Louis’ brother had been dropping off his girlfriend at work, where the woman’s ex-boyfriend was waiting for her. He shot St. Louis’ brother and the woman. The woman survived, but St. Louis’ brother was taken into surgery and passed away. 

St. Louis lost herself to a hurricane of emotion. She quit her job at the hospital; she couldn’t imagine working at the same place where her brother had died. She joined an OB-GYN practice, but it wasn’t a good fit.

“The day I felt it couldn’t work, all of a sudden, an agency called me for Quest,” St. Louis says.

St. Louis joined Quest in February 2015, but she was still grieving. She threw herself into work and into raising her family of three children.

“Regina is a very hard worker,” observes St. Louis’ colleague Donna J. Best. “She is very reliable, force-driven and always striving to achieve greatness.”

St. Louis was surviving — thriving, even — but she knew she hadn’t reached her full potential. So, when a co-worker suggested that she consider using Quest’s tuition assistance to earn her bachelor’s degree at University of Phoenix, St. Louis stopped to think about it.