Special Feature
Debbie Trujillo:
A Banking Professional Reaps Dividends
By Wayne Trujillo
With Christmas and the economic boom both
behind us, it's easy to forget the true meaning of the holiday.
That Christmas is a time for miracles, thanksgiving and the
Messiah is somewhat overshadowed these days by a conception that
the Yuletide is more about money, marketing and merchandise. But
those experiencing miracles understand that the season's most
valuable profits are spiritual rather than financial and retain
their value during the worst recessions.
Debbie Trujillo isn't entirely blinded to
commercialism run rampant during the holidays, the festive
enterprise that hawks gifts, displays and edibles to consumers.
She understands something about marketing. After all,
Trujillo has 27
years of banking experience and is professionally intimate with
dollars and cents. But there is another dimension to
Trujillo's professional --- and private ---
personality. Rather than dollars and cents, she is aware that
dollars and sense are
conjunctive concepts. And that includes spiritual sense.
The notions of spirituality and financial
markets might conflict with the general perception of
professionals who populate financial institutions.
Trujillo is a
living testament that far from being an anomaly, the two
concepts reconcile. As her professional and personal examples
explain, without spirituality she would have no business in a
world revolving around temporal concerns such as account ledgers
and Wall Street.
This is precisely the reason Trujillo measures compensation based on God's
grace, not by stocks and salaries. Today she is vice president,
Hispanic Program Manager at Key Bank. Yesteryear,
Trujillo
was told that she wouldn't amount to anything. Imagining her
future, any observer of her adolescence would've predicted doom
and gloom for the young Trujillo.
Reeling from her parents' divorce when she
was 13, Trujillo's life became
unbalanced as the familial foundation that supported her
childhood collapsed. "The family turned dysfunctional," she
states. And her parents, stunned as well by the family breakup,
couldn't aid her search for spiritual or self-discovery. "My
parents were searching for their own life."
A conflation of shattered family and
prospects nearly capsized
Trujillo. Her academic performance
suffered, with her schooling dominated by an alternative
education of truancy, binging and self-destruction. She
graduated from high school without a credit to spare. The first
miracle was receiving a diploma despite her extracurricular
exercises. But Trujillo
claims a particular experience following graduation as a
benediction from which today's ongoing blessings stem.
Immediately after high school graduation, Trujillo accompanied her father and stepmother
to a church camp. Not particularly interested in spirituality at
age 18, she says there was no desire to attend programs or
participate in anything the camp offered.
She simply wanted a
vacation; certainly didn't expect burning bushes and sweeping
chariots. But that, according to
Trujillo, is what happened, at least
metaphorically. "I found God in my life," she explains. "Peace,
guidance, everything I'd been looking for, I found at this camp.
I just knew that I could be everything that I want to be."
Her father took a little longer to discover
serenity. Despite being responsible for his family's presence at
the camp, he didn't leave with any seismic spiritual alterations
or revelations. In fact, he departed a disappointed man, still
struggling for an answer. Trujillo
and her father traveled in separate vehicles; when he pulled his
truck to the roadside and paused at the summit of
Cumbres
Pass, she stopped. He
rushed to her window and hugged his daughter, a seemingly
changed man. According to
Trujillo, her father experienced a
belated spiritual awakening on the mountaintop, miles from the
camp where her own conversion took place.
The demons that drove him since the
breakdown of his original marriage (and delivered him to the
brink of a second divorce) halted to a standstill along with the
truck. "My dad's face looked different," Trujillo recalls. "From
then on, he didn't need a drink for peace and comfort."
Today, her father resides in a nursing
home. And even though his physical prowess has diminished, the
tranquility and joy haven't abated. "Even though he is
paralyzed, he has a lot more than others," Trujillo relays. "He has God in his life."
Trujillo
attributes his enduring spiritual alteration, which transformed
and healed her father; that occurred shortly after the camp.
The wilderness excursion propelled Trujillo on a parallel spiritual path. She
immediately embarked on a life intent on serving God and
community, relocating to Mexico for a year and learning the
national language, Spanish, during the soiree. Her residency
south of the border introduced
Trujillo
to more than they typical tourist traps. She discovered the
spirit and circumstances of the average Mexican citizen. The
experience was illuminating. "I was blinded to everything I had
here (in the U.S.)," she explains. "It opened my
eyes; that I could make a difference when I came back home."
With considerable cynicism surrounding
organized religion, Trujillo presents an
amorphic, but paradoxically, solid alternative to popular
perceptions of a Higher Power. She disproves the religious
stereotypes typical of spiritual conversions as dogmatic,
explaining that her faith is non-denominational. She states,
"God is not a religion but a relationship."
Life has been good to
Trujillo. Besides claiming a successful
career, she is a wife and mother.
And when the she
traveled rough roads, her God paved the way. "I've seen my life
crumble and God put the pieces back together," she marvels.
Trujillo
also reserves praise for her family, touting her husband Ron as
the human power largely responsible for her current successes.
Other family members make the gratitude list, including her
children, Nicole, Nathan and Noah. While God lifts her spirit,
Trujillo's family anchors it. One of the
reasons for her enthusiasm about their current accomplishments
in their respective college and professional lives is that they
also know God. Throughout their childhood, she hammered home an
idea. "I will fail them as a mother, their dad will fail them as
a father... but God will never fail them."
For
Trujillo, not only Christmas, but all
seasons are a holiday --- and time of family. And Thanksgiving.
When asked to explain her remarkable feats in both her
professional and personal life, she offers a simple explanation.
"I'm an ordinary girl serving an extraordinary God."
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