The first was Fe Bolado, a 26-year-old beauty with long, shiny hair who couldn't carry a tune in karaoke. She left her family in the Philippines to teach math in Baltimore, where she hid her sadness behind a constant smile.
Her friends knew she was heartbroken that her marriage, less than a year old, was falling apart. They did not know the extent of the despair. Before dawn last May 25, Bolado hanged herself in her Mount Vernon apartment.
And then, between the night of Nov. 6 and the morning of Nov. 8, a second Filipino teacher in Baltimore took her life the same way.
FOR THE RECORD - A photo caption accompanying an article in Sunday's editions about the suicides of two Filipino teachers misidentified the source of the photo. All photos of Irenea Apao were taken by Manny Lopez.
The Sun regrets the error.
Irenea Conato Apao, 41, taught high school algebra and geometry while her son and daughter, now 10 and 17, stayed with her sister in the Philippines. Known as Irene, Apao had been separated from her husband for several years. In the months before her death, she struggled with financial problems and felt troubled by the unwanted attentions of a one-time boyfriend.
Coming less than six months apart, the suicides have stunned Baltimore's community of more than 400 Filipino teachers, a close-knit group that has bonded over the struggles of living and working half a world away from home.
Much links Bolado and Apao: bright young women from the same western Pacific country recruited by the city school system to fill vacancies. They were both bubbly and outgoing and left behind families and sterling academic records. But their most telling similarity might be the unwillingness of each to put her faith in mental health services at a time of severe emotional turmoil.
Bolado's friends say they do not believe she had sought any mental health care before her death. Apao had been prescribed antidepressants and was hospitalized for nearly a week after a suicide attempt in early October, but she resisted suggestions that she get into counseling.
In their apparent aversion to seeking professional help, Bolado and Apao reflected a cultural bias of their homeland, where, many Filipinos living in Baltimore agree, there is little regard for psychiatry and psychology.
"In the American perspective, there's nothing wrong with [mental illness] because, medically, it's a condition," said Alona Nu?ez, an English teacher at West Baltimore Middle School who's in the same recruiting program that Bolado and Apao were.
"For Filipinos, it could destroy your reputation. It would create a scandal."
Living in the United States, both Bolado and Apao had extensive support from friends and colleagues. It wasn't enough.
