Each May, Sutter Health celebrates Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month to honor and recognize the contributions of the AANHPI community. This year’s theme—“A Legacy of Leadership and Resilience”—pays tribute to the trailblazers who have overcome adversity to inspire and pave the way for future generations.
At Sutter Health, our values demonstrate the importance of inclusion—creating a sense of belonging. This month, we thank our AANHPI colleagues across all departments and care settings for their contributions to Sutter.
Judy and Chris Abe have built their lives around caring for others. As a physical therapist and a nurse at Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, they bring deep clinical experience, empathy, and a strong sense of purpose to their work each day.
Married couple Judy Abe DPT, GCS, an acute care physical therapist at Alta Bates and Chris Abe, R.N., BSN, a nurse at the Alta Bates PACU work together and both embrace their immigrant backgrounds.
A Reflection by Judy Abe, DPT, GCS, Physical Therapist, Alta Bates Campus
“As a second generation Chinese American, I carry a deep sense of pride in my heritage as a healthcare worker. I’ve been working at Alta Bates in Berkeley since 2008 as an acute care Physical Therapist, following five years of experience as a rehab aide, studies at San Francisco State University and Azusa Pacific University. As an AAHPI clinician, I enjoy connecting with various backgrounds, ethnicities and sharing my culture with patients and colleagues.
Working at Alta Bates Summit in Berkeley has allowed me to embrace my culture while learning and accepting other cultures and beliefs. I have appreciated that family is a strong cornerstone in many cultures, and I value this with many of my patients as they are on the receiving end of their circle of support during their recovery process.
I have gratitude for my upbringing in Oakland, as I share my mother, Miriam Wu Lee, as my inspiration to persevere in my healthcare career. My mother taught me grace and resilience, as she entered the U.S. as an immigrant from Peru, previously having immigrated from China.
She overcame many hardships as an adolescent surviving the Sino-Japanese war, becoming a teacher in Peru and a mother of five, losing my father too early to fathom and managing to assure my siblings and I pursued education as the most important asset in our lives. She did so with English as a third language, without a driver’s license, and as a single mother. She taught me the simple virtue that ‘whatever will be will be’ and faith will always guide us.
My greatest blessing has been working alongside my husband during our time together on the 6N med-surg unit. Our relationship, built both on respect for our professions and our individual character, subsequently led to our union and having our two cherished sons here at Alta Bates.
Chris has been a nurse at Alta Bates since 2007 and currently serves in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit. He is a strong, compassionate human being and clinician.
As a fourth generation Japanese American, Chris also shares appreciation for his mother and father, giving him a life and opportunity. Despite growing up in the U.S. during WWII, Chris’s parents, my mother and father-in-law, sought fulfilling lives in the U.S. Navy, U.S. postal office, and administrative work for an adult school. They taught Chris, by example and action, that hard work and dedication leads to outcomes you make for yourself.
Being descendants of immigrants, Chris and I both carry a sense of community and giving the underserved a chance. We volunteer annually in the medical section of Project Homeless Connect in San Francisco. There, we get to be a tiny part of a bridge to healthcare for people who are working through struggles of their own.”
