Elma Arellano turns tragedy into purpose

The loss of a child can derail the most steadfast and focused of people. For UOPX alumna Elma Arellano (MHA, 2024), however, it propelled her to find ways of helping others through education.

Arellano is used to thinking on her feet. As the director of clinical education for respiratory therapy at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona, she has to be at the top of her game, whether she’s answering students’ questions about protocols or implementing those protocols with patients.

This life was not what she envisioned when she was growing up in Tucson with two older sisters and one younger brother. She was used to hard work but not in healthcare. Her father has his own masonry business and, together with her mother, taught their children the value of hard work.

“He never let us sit down,” Arellano says, smiling.

Arellano started working for her father when she finished high school, first as an apprentice, then as an estimator. She got married in her early 20s and soon became pregnant with the couple’s first child: a daughter they planned to name Guadalupe.

But about 20 weeks into the pregnancy, the couple received devastating news: Guadalupe had a diaphragmatic hernia. The birth defect would essentially prevent her lungs from fully maturing.

The Arellanos accepted the diagnosis and moved forward with the pregnancy anyway, hopeful that she’d survive. When Arellano went into labor, she was evacuated by air to Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix. There, Guadalupe lived for eight days, thanks to ECMO and a committed team of caregivers.

Among the physicians and nurses helping Guadalupe were respiratory therapists (RTs), who explained to Arellano how they facilitated the airway management that was vital to her daughter’s survival.

This resonated with Arellano, who saw them as harbingers of life for her tiny warrior. “She was so smart,” Arellano says of her daughter. She recalls how Guadalupe’s heart rate would climb when she heard her parents’ voices in the hallway, for example.

Despite everyone’s efforts, however, there were complications. The most significant was a blood clot that developed in Guadalupe’s brain. This, Arellano explains, made a successful surgery unlikely. The Arellanos had to prepare to let their daughter go.

“When it was time to say goodbye, again, here came the RTs,” Arellano recalls. “They were the ones to extubate, and they had to explain, step by step, what [was] going to happen.”

Just before she said goodbye for the last time, Arellano made a promise to her tiny daughter. “When we had to say goodbye, I promised her right there. I said, ‘I’m going to devote my life to helping babies like you,’” Arellano recalls.

Either she’d help babies like Guadalupe survive, or she’d help their families through their loss. Either way, she’d found her calling.

Just months after her daughter’s birth in November, Arellano began classes to make good on her vow. “It did help with the grieving. It did help me grow as a person,” she says.

Then, on what would’ve been Guadalupe’s first birthday, she found out she was pregnant with her son, Frankie. From there, his brothers, Joseph and Alejandro, followed at two-year intervals.

Her growing family did not deter Arellano from her calling. She secured a position working in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) as a respiratory therapist after she completed her training. “I have known Elma since 2002,” says Anne Miros, RRT, BSRT, the cardiopulmonary services director at Banner University Medical Center – Tucson/South. “I have worked alongside her as a peer, as her educator, as her leader and as a community partner with the colleges she has represented during her career. From the very beginning, Elma demonstrated great skill and compassion while caring for her patients.”

Her compassion is as notable as her work ethic. Like her father, whom she describes as “very hands-on,” Arellano likes to be at the forefront of both clinical care and industry knowledge.

“I remember one shift in particular, Elma reached out to me after having a dialogue with a very firm, outspoken physician,” Miros says. “He had asked her a question about how the specific ventilator delivered a breath in a specific mode. This was during the team’s rounds. Elma very clearly and effectively explained the mechanics of the breath delivery. This provider doubted her response. She had come to me to verify that the information she presented to the team was indeed the correct information. It was. … Even though Elma knew the answer to the question, she was not above verifying her information. … As long as I have worked with Elma, she has consistently demonstrated this willingness to question what she knows and ensure that she understands the most updated information available.”

This approach has stood Arellano in good stead as she has grown in her career. After 10 years in the NICU, she realized she was forgetting aspects of respiratory therapy with regard to treating different patient populations. So, she changed it up, working as a float RT and, later, with patients being transported to Phoenix from Tucson.

As she picked up shifts in hospitals, she crossed paths with students. This presented a new opportunity to expand on her natural inclination toward lifelong learning.

“Students would always want to come with me, and they would challenge me,” Arellano says. “I realized I enjoy teaching.”

In 2009, Arellano joined the staff at the institution where she had trained. In 2018, she moved to Pima Community College. Again, she implemented a hands-on approach to her role. She teaches, yes, but she also rounds with students and runs labs. She has just over 40 students each year, and she works with hospitals across Tucson. In January 2025, she began sending students to Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix in what feels to Arellano like a full-circle collaboration.

Her arguably unorthodox approach as a director of clinical education offers up a significant advantage: She can immerse herself in her community and in clinical education — and that lets her to identify ways she can be more effective.

Case in point is the community outreach she facilitates to promote asthma and COPD awareness. She started this about the time she decided to go back to school for her master’s degree. “I felt a lot of things were coming at me,” she says, noting how she knew she needed more education but also felt pulled to work more directly in her community.

So, Arellano did what she always does in times of crisis. She prayed. And she decided to enroll in the Master of Health Administration at University of Phoenix.

“I prayed a lot about it,” she says. “I always get an excitement when [the answer comes], and I was excited. I was nervous, but there was no fear. No fear.” 

Arellano completed her program in September 2024 and has grown her confidence as a result. The graduate-level training put into words and concepts some of the things Arellano was already doing, like the Gemba Walk (when leaders visit a workplace setting to find areas for improvement).

Other things were new that, she says, better position her for leadership, both in and out of the classroom.

“Elma organizes participation for her students in varying volunteer opportunities throughout the community,” Miros says.

Specifically, Arellano has developed partnerships with day care centers in Tucson and Phoenix to identify children with asthma and teach them and their families how to manage the condition so they can stay out of hospitals for emergency treatment.

It’s hard work but gratifying.

And it’s key to fulfilling a promise she made more than 20 years ago. 

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