Personal Loss Sparks Nursing Mission for Patient Safety

This is a multi-part series celebrating Arizona College of Nursing students, their stories, and their embodiment of the AZCN values.  

   

In 2023, Arizona College of Nursing established the AZCN Values Scholarship Fund as a way to celebrate our values with our colleagues, our students, and the communities in which we serve. Each time an AZCN colleague recognizes another colleague for demonstrating our values, $5 is added to the scholarship fund. These add up to $5,000 scholarships awarded to students the following year who have demonstrated our values within their communities.  

   

Join us in celebrating 2025 AZCN Values Scholarship recipient Denia Alonzo as she shares some of her journey to nursing:  

AZCN Student Aligns Her Passion with a Mission 

Meet AZCN Values Scholarship Recipient, Denia Alonzo, a Nursing Student at the AZCN Ontario Campus. Denia, a first-generation college student raised in San Bernardino and Fontana, embodies the values of hard work and perseverance instilled by her immigrant parents. This foundation drives her passionate approach to nursing, focusing on safe and compassionate care. 

Watch Denia’s video here:  

Denia Shares Her Path to Nursing 

I come from a humble background. I was born in San Bernardino, raised in Fontana, and the first in my family to attend college. My parents migrated to this country at a young age, and their sacrifices taught me the value of hard work and perseverance. These lessons became the foundation for how I approach nursing, with passion for people, their stories, and their right to safe, compassionate care. 

My two children, especially my son with autism and high needs, are my greatest motivation. I want them to grow up knowing that challenges are not roadblocks, they are reasons to push forward. Every time I study, advocate, or improve a process at work, I do it to show them that we can rise above adversity, and we can be the change we hope to see in the world. 

In December 2024, I lost my partner in the most painful way imaginable. He passed away while in a rehabilitation facility alone and unattended due to negligence. They were supposed to check on him every 15 minutes. They didn’t. That tragedy changed everything. It lit a fire in me to pursue quality improvement in healthcare, not just as a job but as a mission. My work now is fueled by the determination that no other family should have to experience what mine did. 

At work, I’ve turned that pain into action. I’ve led initiatives that raised our internal audit compliance from 20% to 90%, reduced outside specialist appointment delays from 60 days to 7, and improved our vaccine rates from 74% to 96%. These changes are not just metrics, they represent lives touched, outcomes improved, and trust restored. They reflect the excellence and accountability I strive for each day. 

I’ve adapted through grief, growth, motherhood, and leadership. And through it all, I’ve held onto one constant: my integrity. I believe that doing what’s right, especially when no one’s looking, is at the heart of nursing. It’s also a value I see echoed in Arizona College of Nursing’s mission and culture. 

Q&A with Denia 

Can you tell me about your healthcare journey and what got you into nursing? 

In high school, I had a passion, and I always wanted to be a nurse, but it took me quite some time to get there. In high school, I was able to take medical assistance, medical terminology, and it kind of lit my passion for healthcare. Once I got into medical assistance, I did that for a few years and then I started advancing slowly with that degree. I was able to do medical assistance and then I went to health information management, and then I even did enrollment and marketing for a while through healthcare, and then I went into quality and compliance. It’s been a little steppingstone. 

I was raised a lot by my grandparents as my parents had to work full-time. My grandparents don’t speak English, so I was that child in the doctor’s office having to translate everything the doctors and nurses were saying. A lot has changed since then as we now have translation services. But back then, it was me. 

How was your experience as a medical assistant? 

As a medical assistant, I was able to see a lot of patients who needed a lot of different care. I worked for a lot of federal nonprofit organizations that serve the community. You start seeing a lot of different backgrounds, a need for healthcare that they might not be getting, etc. I think those helped shape me and made me want to make sure that there are services available to them so that they could get the care that they need, no matter their background or where they come from. That’s like the beautiful thing about healthcare. You help people no matter what. And nurses are the hearts of healthcare. 
 

How has the college supported you and what kind of resources do you take advantage of at Arizona College? 

The college has a lot of resources. We are able to get tutoring at any time of the day. So sometimes you would be studying and you’re like, wait, I don’t [understand] statistics; it was hard for me, so I would go on tutor.com and go through their tutoring. That was helpful.  

We have the NCLEX prep where 2 of our professors will hold these NCLEX preps every few weeks where they’ll pick a different topic, and they’ll kind of just go through questions, how to break them down, what keywords to look for, and how to best tackle the ‘select all you can apply,’ because those are never fun. They will give us the strategies to look at these questions and break them down. 

 
What does the Values Scholarship mean to you? 

What receiving the scholarship means to me is that someone else believes in me. It is hard to believe in yourself sometimes, especially when things are going 1,000,000 miles an hour. It feels really nice to see what you believe in and what your goals are. Someone else also believes that you could accomplish those. 

Information in this post is accurate as of February 2, 2026.

*The Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree program at Arizona College of Nursing is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (https://www.aacnnursing.org/). All Arizona College of Nursing and Arizona College campuses are institutionally accredited by the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (https://www.abhes.org/), a U.S. Department of Education-recognized accrediting agency.