Sonia Sotomayor

Sonia Maria Sotomayor was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. Her father was Juan Sotomayor from the area of Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and her mother was Celina Báez an orphan from the neighborhood of Santa Rosa in Lajas. The first Hispanic nominee to the high court. Not only has she had an impressive career in law and justice, she has also had an extraordinary journey in life.
Sotomayor continued to make a big name for herself when she was nominated to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York by former president George H.W. Bush in 1991
She grew up with her grandmother, who she later said gave her a source of “protection and purpose”. Sonia was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age seven, and began taking daily insulin injections. Her father died of heart problems at age 42, when she was nine years old. After this, she became fluent in English. Sotomayor has said that she was first inspired by the strong-willed Nancy Drew book character, and then after her diabetes diagnosis led doctors to suggest a different career from detective, she was inspired to go into a legal career and become a judge by watching the Perry Mason television series. She reflected in 1998: “I was going to college and I was going to become an attorney, and I knew that when I was ten.
When she was first diagnosed as a child, she recalls, having diabetes meant you weren’t going to live to old age or even middle age. That is no longer true, she observes, adding that diabetes “is really a fundamental part of me. It’s part of my body; it’s part of everything I do all day long exercising, eating, stopping internally for a moment to check where my blood sugars are.”
And even more, I have Type 1B that makes me even more strange! There are about 27 million people in the U.S. with diabetes. Only five percent has Type 1 diabetes, about 3 million. And I don’t even know the rarity of Type 1B. All I know is that it’s very common among people living in India and is caused by something environmental.
She says she decided to “tell the truth” about her life, warts and all, to inspire other “ordinary people.” Role models on TV are “fantasized,” she says, “but I think it’s important to move people beyond just dreaming into doing. They have to be able to see that you are just like them and you made it.”