Even when Rod Taitano
was working as director of
Salesforce’s western region data
center operations in San Francisco, the former Yigo resident
would make an annual February pilgrimage to Guam for his
family’s fiesta for “emotional
refueling.”

Mary Therese Perez Hattori embodies fuetsa pålao’an, the power of women of Guam and the rest of the Pacific. This modern-day Renaissance woman wields an array of professional credentials and expertise across multiple disciplines. This daughter of familian Titang, now working as interim director of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East West Center in Hawaii.

Pacific Daily News Dr. Ric Perez has led the nationally prominent kidney transplant program at the University of California, Davis Medical Center for the last three decades, performing up to 400 transplants a year with his team. Perez’s journey to leading the No. 7 program in the country has been filled with twists and turns, as Manny Crisostomo recounts in his latest “Manaotao Sanlagu: CHamorus from the Marianas”.

Heidi Chargualaf-Quenga is a “fa’fa’någue,” or certified CHamoru instructor, who works tirelessly to teach the CHamoru dance to students young and old living stateside through the Kutturan Chamoru Foundation in Long Beach, California. She was photographed at Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum in Long Beach, and she is part of Manny Crisostomo’s ongoing visual documentary “Manaotao Sanlagu: CHamorus from the Marianas,” translated as “our people, the CHamorus, overseas,” featured weekly in the Pacific Daily News.