Cristina Medrea is a psychology major living in Sullivan Hall. She ranks near the top of her class, works several part-time jobs, and enjoys going to hockey games and movies. She has a long list of volunteer activities, which is not unusual for Saint Anselm College students. But for her, as for many multicultural students, life before Saint Anselm is something her peers (and professors) have a hard time imagining. Few Americans have stood in line for hours to buy bread. Communism is something most of us have only read about. Few, if any, of us have lived through a violent revolution culminating in a dictator’s overthrow and execution. Medrea knows about all these things first-hand, but rarely talks about them. She talks animatedly about what she is doing and what she wants to do, and as a result it is easy to overlook just how remarkable a journey she has made to get here.

Cristina Medrea was born and raised in Arad, a city of 200,000 near the Hungarian border. She and her parents, Maria and Gheorghe, and her sister Raluca and brother Calin, live in a modest second-story apartment on the outskirts of the city. She has lived there all her life, but she feels just as much at home with her grandparents, who live in the country less than an hour away. All of her relatives in the countryside work the land, raising pigs and chickens and growing their own vegetables and fruit. Gheorghe is an engineer and Maria was an accountant before joining her brother in the charity he founded, Romanian Christian Aid.

Medrea’s belief that she is called to help others comes from her family. Although not wealthy, her mother devotes herself to the poor, the orphaned, the ill, and the handicapped. Medrea recalls visiting nursing homes with her and inviting orphans home for weekends. She taught Sunday school, sang in the choir, and served as president of her class.

When she was 14, Medrea’s uncle Peter asked her to come to his city, Beius, to translate for a group of medical volunteers. Dale Kuehne, a Saint Anselm College politics professor and ordained Protestant minister, was the administrator and pastor for the group. It was the beginning of an important relationship for the young linguist; but Professor Kuehne says it was no less life-changing for him. He had brought his daughter on the trip, and she and Medrea became friends. Furthermore, he says, she was an outstanding translator. “She had the language ability and maturity to translate up to 14 hours a day for doctors and nurses using medical terms, and for a pastor preaching a sermon.”

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