The 2025-2026 CenterPoint Scholars focused on Communication and Connection. They contracted with Kate Elliott, associate lecturer of journalism at Ball State, to conduct a series of $20 interviews called “Twenty Forward.” Each month, Kate puts $20 in the hands of two Muncie residents and then writes about who or what they support with their modest but meaningful investment in our city. Read the project introduction to learn more.
After tragedy, she chose a life without limits
By Kate H. Elliott
Her younger brother played on the deck while 10-year-old Cathy Lee Arcuino splashed in their backyard pool. “Watch your brother,” her mom said, and she did — until she pulled his limp, 2-year-old body from beneath the surface.
For the next 16 years, Cathy Lee helped her parents clean Rey John’s trach, flush his G-tube and more for eight hours a day before handing off his care to a privately paid nurse for the remaining 16.
“I knew he would never wake up, but I think my mother always held out hope,” Cathy Lee said. “I will never know, though. My parents immigrated to the United States from the Philippines, and in our culture, you don’t talk about it. It was all around us, but we never talked about it.”
When she graduated high school, Cathy Lee desperately wanted to leave Fresno (California). She felt trapped — every day at home was a reminder that Rey John drowned on her watch. She did move a few hours away for college but drove six hours every weekend to return to Rey John. One day, she sat beside him and made a pact: “’Please let me go into the Peace Corps,’ I asked him. ‘Then I will come back and fulfil my duty to watch you.’ I don’t know that he heard me, but I felt a peace about going, so I did.”
Cathy Lee boarded a plane for Kazakhstan to live in a remote village, where she “pooped in a hole and wiped my ass with the pages of a Russian book that you’d throw into a basket to burn later for heat.”
A year and a half into her service, Cathy Lee learned that Rey John died.
“It rocked my world,” she said. “But I began to wonder if it was almost a gift to me because he knew I wanted to get out and live — for me and for him. I made a pledge to never live in a coma, to walk around mindlessly like so many people do. I wanted to do something with my life, so I live big and in my own way, bringing Rey John with me everywhere I go. He’s my guardian angel.”
Since then, Cathy Lee has traveled to more than 50 countries, worked for a nonprofit in Kyrgyzstan and taught English in Poland, Thailand and Japan. She rides her Harley across the country, wears clothes with skulls, jewels or both, and collects tattoos that tell the story of her life.
By 35, Cathy Lee had earned a Ph.D. in educational leadership. The following year, she decided she wanted to have a daughter: “I didn’t want a relationship, so I asked my gay best friend, David, to donate his sperm.” A year later, Mirasol, was born.
“Her name means ‘Sun-watcher and sunflower,’ and my nickname for David was ‘Sunflower’ since we met in the Sunflower State (Kansas),” Cathy Lee said. “Mirasol is bright like a sunflower, so her name fits her.”
Mirasol makes her mother proud: “She’s 10 and rocks a pixie cut, has traveled with me to 23 countries, and, in January, won the Martin Luther King Jr. Award for exemplifying the qualities of MLK Jr.”
The two have moved to four states as Cathy Lee has built a career in international education, eventually landing at Ball State University as executive director of Graduate & International Admissions and Services.
“I oversee Ball State’s graduate and international admissions and supports international students before, during and after enrollment,” she explained. “I love and live for working with students — both helping international students adjust to life and learning in the United States and helping American students explore overseas.”
Cathy Lee will invest her $20 in Ball State’s Rinker Center for Global Affairs to support students studying abroad. Pushing out of one’s comfort zone is Cathy Lee’s greatest advice to students: “It might be community service in your town, a mission trip to a Native American reservation or a study abroad experience. These all provide you with opportunities to get outside yourself, which enriches your life in unimaginable ways.”
The more different the experience is from your life, the better, she said. “Go to a country that speaks another language or go poop in that hole,” she said. “Those experiences test you, stretch you and often make you more grateful and resilient and interesting.”
Then, she tells students to make a difference — not necessarily in a big way but in some way. “Sometimes the small things are the big things,” she said, “Don’t minimize showing up for people or helping neighbors and loved ones. We can all do good and be good.”
And when others aren’t good to you, lead with questions, she advises, after a lifetime of people assuming she can’t speak English or is not from America. At a Kansas grocery store, a woman asked her, ‘Where is the rice you all cook in China, and how do you cook it?”
“I have learned to respond with questions or a story so people can better understand my experience or stance,” she said. “I’ve found that approach leads to more empathy and understanding.”
Cathy Lee gathers stories through travel and connections with others. “This is why I love my job,” she said. “Every day, I get to talk with students, hear their stories, and empower them and provide support. I get to watch them dream and go and grow.
Those meaningful connections are Cathy Lee’s way of “doing good” in the world. “I wasn’t able to make a connection with my brother, so I make connections with others and the world. That passion for life and people helps me make meaning of tragedy.”
Thank you to Muncie Action Plan and CenterPoint Scholars for supporting these small but meaningful investments in community. Go to Twenty Forward to read this and other stories about what your neighbors are doing with $20.
