Jason Koski/University Photography

Mar Perez speaks at Soup & Hope in Sage Chapel, March 28.

Before Mar Pérez moved with her husband to Ithaca in 1996 – leaving her family, pets and belongings in her hometown of Macuto, located between the mountains and coastline of Venezuela – she packed up everything she didn’t need to bring with her and numbered and color-coded the boxes.

Two years later, after three days of rain, the mountainside slid into Macuto – burying everything in its path – including her pets and all those boxes. Her parents survived, but because of the town’s isolation, Pérez did not hear from them for three days.

“Those were the longest three days of my life,” said Pérez, a program coordinator in the Office of the Dean of Students, presenting the final Soup and Hope talk of 2013, March 28 in Sage Chapel.

When her father finally got through by phone, he recounted the event – at 8 p.m. he heard screaming to “run, run … the mountain, the river is coming down.” But there was no time to run, and water poured into the house everywhere. The family huddled in the house and prayed, holding on to faith that they would survive. Just when all seemed lost, the water levels stopped rising.

When her family went outside, water and mud were everywhere. “So much of the town was gone, friends and family lost forever,” Mar Pérez said. “No childhood house, my school, grandmother’s house, my own house and my beloved animals … .”

Her mother died a year later.

Pérez said that from these experiences came what have been her guiding lights ever since: her parents’ “valor, fé y esperanza . . . courage, faith and hope.”

In spite of all his losses, Pérez said that her father, a former consular general officer for the Venezuela Consulate, kept moving forward, becoming, for her, a rock “bigger than those that came down the mountain.”

Now, whenever life seems overwhelming, she calls him. He listens quietly until her voice slows down, and “then comes all the advice that he can share, simple and to the point,” Pérez said. “When you have lost so much, you know how to keep things in perspective.”

And for Pérez, too, life has gone on. She still lives in Ithaca, with her husband and children, and she works full-time for the Staley Center for Student and Community Support, mentoring student staff; bringing leadership support to “Tapestry of Possibilities”; providing artistic counsel, publicity promotion and Web support for EARS, Minds Matter and the Women’s Center; and offering direct administrative support to the University Crisis Management Team.

She has learned that “making time for happiness matters,” accepting support is part of the healing process, and “it is totally 100 percent OK to love chocolate more than anything in the universe.”

Family, friends and experiences, Pérez said, are what keep her going. “No matter how big or small a crisis, we always have each other,” she said. “While I no longer have all the color-coded boxes, I carry all the experiences and memories – from Venezuela and from many of you here – with me,” she said. “We can only give out what we have in our hearts, and what we give will always come back to us in bigger ways.

“Live fully in the present with valor, fé y esperanza … courage, faith and hope,” she concluded.