Returning home the summer after her first school year away, she married him without her parents' knowledge.
Back in Baltimore for a second school year, Bolado and four other teachers left Symphony Center for the Horizon House apartments on Calvert Street. Her husband followed her here that winter and moved in with her and her two roommates.
But problems in their relationship continued.
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.
On May 21, according to a later police report, he left her for another woman. A few days later, wearing boxer shorts and a sleeveless shirt, Bolado tried to slit her left wrist before hanging herself in the closet with an extension cord.
In her final moments, she taped signs to her bedroom wall instructing her roommates not to contact her husband.
Happy facade
If Bolado despaired over a fractured romance, Apao's situation appeared more complicated. Interviews and documents suggest a stretch of time in which she was losing control, in her personal life, in her professional life, in her finances.
Like Bolado, Apao often appeared happy. And like Bolado, she had been professionally successful in the Philippines, having been singled out for national recognition by the country's education department.
She left home in 2005 for a teaching job in Spotsylvania, Va.
After a year there, Apao arrived in Baltimore, telling administrators she was looking for a more lively environment. She impressed them in her interview at a job fair for a position at Baltimore Talent Development High, a well-regarded school in Harlem Park run in partnership with the Johns Hopkins University.
She wanted to teach physics, in which she had a master's degree, but with no science openings, she settled on math.
Colleagues say she struggled with the behavior of her students and by midway through the school year, she was frequently showing up to work late or calling in sick.
Because Apao didn't come directly to Baltimore from the Philippines, she did not have many of the strong relationships that usually go with being in the program.
At first she lived in an apartment on West Lombard Street with two colleagues, one the former principal of her school in the Philippines.
Then last fall, she moved by herself into a basement apartment across the street.
Cheryl Curtis, the school system's coordinator of international teachers, urged Apao to move into an apartment building where she'd be surrounded by other Filipino teachers. She did not.
