Owner takes long road over border, through medical field

Stepping Stones Developmental Center owner Lourdes Martinez took a long journey to arrive in Chackbay.

For the first 10 years of her life, Martinez, 48, lived in Honduras. Then her parents divorced and her mother Norma Vitanza moved the family to the U.S. to give her children, particularly her daughters, better opportunities in life.

“When you live in a Third World country, the men are dominant and they take care of you,” Martinez said. “It’s not like over here in America where everybody has the opportunity to do what he or she wants.”

In the U.S., Martinez said she was afforded the education that she probably would not have received in Honduras. “As a woman, I was able to make something out of myself here in America,” she said. “I’ve had two interests in my life since I graduated high school in Nebraska. One was to be in the medical field. The other was early childhood development.”

Martinez has been able to do both. Her first career as a paramedic with Acadian Ambulance Service lasted more than 16 years. Five of those years she was a paramedic field supervisor.

In 2004, she was ready to get out of the medical field and open her own daycare business. Martinez said she did not open the daycare center because the industry was underserved in her area, but rather, she wanted to fulfill a passion to care for and develop youth in the critical stages of life.

Before she opened Stepping Stones five years ago, her husband Darryl Martinez, who is also a paramedic, was leery about opening a daycare center in such a small area where one already existed. However, Martinez believed that Chackbay was growing.

“There are so many families moving outside of the city to a little more country setting,” she said. “With the increase, I knew they would need a daycare center to service their children.”

Sure enough, within six months of opening Stepping Stones had a full roster of 73 children from ages 6 weeks to 4 years old. Five years later, she is still at the 73-child limit.

Making the transition from a paramedic to a business owner was easy for Martinez, she said.

She enrolled in early childhood development classes and earned service hours while still doing her duties at Acadian.

“Being a supervisor for Acadian, I would always tell the paramedics that I was riding with that they were not treating a machine, but a person,” she said. “You can do nothing for them medically, but if you take care of their emotional needs, then you have done a lot more for them than you think.”

She added, “Paramedics can do everything that is right as far as protocol, but if they are cold emotionally, then you mean nothing to the people you just took care of.”

That is how Martinez operates her daycare center.

“These are someone’s babies we are taking care of,” she said. “These babies’ parents are working to make a living to care for them, and all we have to do is care for them until they can. We are in a position to provide the attention that the children need at this critical age.”

Stepping Stones teaches the children basic social, cognitive and motor skills that they will need to transition from a daycare setting to a school setting. And Martinez said her staff knows its role as supervisors and educators.

“When I hire someone, I tell him or her if you are here for just a job, then you can walk right out the doors,” she said. “I tell them that I want them to be here because they love children.”

Lourdes Martinez, owner of Stepping Stones Developmental Center in Thibodaux, is a paramedic-turned-daycare center owner. She said her job is to provide children with the attention and care that they need in the critical stages of their lives. * Photo courtesy of STEPPING STONES DEVELOPMENT CENTER