Sandy Beltran

Be the best you can be.

Sandy Beltran

I’m Sandy Beltran. I was born in 1940 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I am an only child. We lived in my grandparents’ home. I could come home from school and my grandma would be baking sugar cookies. My grandma was a favorite of mine, she taught my mom and daughter wonderful things to cook and bake. My dad was a policeman and he was part Native American and taught me about nature. My dad was also into raising bees. Everybody would call him if their bees were loose. My mom was a physical person. She was a Girl Scout leader for ten years.

I wanted to go to college. My aunt and uncle helped me pay for college. I went to Valparaiso in Indiana. I changed my major every semester. I drove my counselor nuts. I’d like to be an artist. I ended up going to teaching. I learned Spanish in college. I worked in Los Angeles as a Spanish teacher. Graduate school was more focused. I had fieldwork. I worked with pregnant girls. I worked with senior citizens.

In 1961, I applied with the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps was a volunteer organization. You help people in other countries with what they needed help with. Some was building roads, building schools, building health centers. Helping them to help themselves.

I went to Colombia because I could already speak Spanish. Our job was to help teach literacy in small barrios. I taught whatever the adults wanted. They wanted to knit and I knew how so I taught knitting. There were a lot of Communists trying to take over the government. Even when they televised the walk on the moon, they said it was fancy stuff by the US government and it wasn’t real. Sometimes the water was so bad you had to brush your teeth with Pepsi. Where I lived was a poor, poor area. I had a dog. We had rats running around. Food was wonderful.

My husband is from Colombia. I adopted my oldest daughter from Columbia. Miriam was twelve, her dad was from the Pueta. She was the oldest of six girls. She had to go to school and not understand the language. By the time she was in high school she was on the honor roll. She went on to Hamline University.

I went to Colombia for two years and then back to Ann Arbor and worked in community development. That was a time when the government had lots of money for education. There was a special federal program called Higher Incentives. I worked at Phillips Junior High with very withdrawn kids. I came here to Sanford in 1982 and I was a regular social worker in school. I worked with Special Education and everything. Three years ago I retired.

I’ve been to England, Japan, Norway and to Disneyland. I didn’t want to sit home all the time. Now I’m back at Sanford. I work on attendance and extra fun stuff too. I love being an attendance social worker. I don’t have as much paperwork. I get to talk to people.

I’m a quilter. I love to sew. A couple years ago, when I retired, I wanted to learn how to do cake decorating. I love calligraphy, most any kind of craft. I like photography.