When Leonor Salgado arrived in Princeton from Nicaragua, she came without an existing community to lean on. What she carried instead was immense curiosity and an unrelenting drive to learn, qualities that became her compass as she built a life from the ground up. With her two children, one born just six months after she arrived, Leonor has called Princeton Community Village home for over twenty years, firmly rooted and among the first to welcome others into the community that shaped her.

Though always warm with neighbors and staff, it was during COVID-19 that Leonor experienced the full power of her community. She described feeling the sickest she had ever been while navigating single parenthood, and the profound relief of watching neighbors arrive with food and medicine while PCH's social services team provided steady support. She characterized that period as when she understood, in the deepest sense, what it means to belong somewhere, and the experience that set her on a path of service.

Leonor entered the workforce as a part-time school translator while raising her children largely on her own. Colleagues recognized her natural gifts for communication and encouraged her to find work where those gifts could truly thrive. Today, she is the Community Engagement Representative at Zufall Health, a New Jersey nonprofit providing high-quality healthcare for patients of all economic backgrounds. Based in Plainsboro, right next door to her home, she works daily alongside her Princeton neighbors, including residents across all PCH communities.

Leonor's deepest commitment is to women's health and to the mothers and seniors who pour themselves into caring for others while often neglecting their own well-being. She continues to translate for neighbors in need, volunteers at food banks, and has built a reputation throughout the community as someone people can count on. She takes quiet pride in that, and in being able to offer others what was once offered to her.

Her children — now 20 and 15 — have grown up watched over not just by their mother, but by a whole community that rallied around them. Leonor is grateful that the PCH staff has been part of that village, and she carries that gratitude with her in everything she does.