Ileana Vargas   (interview 1999 photo 1999)

   When Ileana Vargas' family first arrived from Puerto Rico, they lived on 178th Street and Pinehurst Avenue. When she was a teenager, living on 108th Street and Broadway, she attended Mother Cabrini High School, which is how she first came in contact with the neighborhood. She remembers walking along Cabrini Blvd., thinking, 'This is a place I would like to live.' After graduating from medical school in 1986, she rented an apartment on 181st Street. About a year later, she and her fiancee (the proposal came at the Cloisters, during a jog in Fort Tryon Park) purchased a one-bedroom apartment at Cabrini Boulevard and 187th Street, less than two blocks from her old high school.

   Dr. Vargas remembers that time, "We had our big wedding. There were limos, and everybody in the building was kind of excited, because at that time, I think we were one of the youngest people that had moved into the building, and it was the first wedding in a long time . . . When we then had our first son, Nikko, he was probably the only child in the building besides one teenager.

   "When my husband matched at Hospital for Special Surgery, we were forced to live at hospital housing on East 71st Street. At that point, we rented our apartment, and we moved downtown for about eight years. Then, the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center was opening up at Columbia and the Pediatric Endocrinologist, specializing in Childhood Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes. It was a great opportunity for me to come back up to the old neighborhood . . . Now I'm able to walk to work, and we're going to buy a three-bedroom in the area, because now we have two children.

   "We moved up here about a year and a half ago, just to see if we still loved the neighborhood. You know, when you're twenty-something everything seems great. You just got married, but now that you're older, you're looking for safety. As my children get older and go out and come home by themselves . . . are they going to be safe? We really love the neighborhood, and we're staying.

   "I volunteer at the Police Athletic League one day a week to try to get the kids to exercise. Eventually, we'll try to get a big grant to get the community to exercise more. There's an increasing incidence of obesity.

   "Maybe someday I'll run for something!"