SECAUCUS AND BEYOND — Secaucus resident Menchu DeLuna Sanchez was invited to attend the State of the Union address as a guest of the Pres. and Michelle Obama, according to a news report in The Record. According to the report, Sanchez has been invited in recognition of her heroic acts during Hurricane Sandy. When New York University Langone Medical Center on Oct. 29 lost power due to the tidal surge, Sanchez organized the neonatal intensive care nurses and doctors to carry 20 babies down nine flights of stairs with only cellphones to light the way, according to the article. She personally carried a newborn who weighed less than a pound and was hooked up to a ventilator down nine flights and went back up to retrieve other babies for two additional trips.
Sanchez told the Record, “We knew immediately we had to get the babies downstairs…With the elevators out, we didn’t have a lot of choices.”
Throughout this time, her own home flooded in Secaucus.