Leticia Arcenas Allas

Leticia was born on 15 May 1931 in Paco, a suburb of Manila/Quezon City Philippines to Manuel Arcenas and Emilia Tersol. She is the eldest among 4 children. Her other siblings are: Noemi, Rafael, and Ofelia. There is also an adopted brother named Alejandro. She and her family endured the sufferings of World War II. She helped her parents provide for the family by going to far places with her father to sell things. She also helped raise her siblings.

As a young adult, Leticia went to college and graduated from Far Eastern University (FEU) in Manila where she also worked until leaving the Philippines for the US. She always had a desire to come to the United States after she first tried a juicy apple from Washington State. She had never seen & eaten such a fruit. She wanted to know where it came from. So, a dream was born.

Leticia was married to Teofilo Allas Jr in 1954. When Teofilo got a job with a logging company in Surigao province, Mindanao Philippines, she accompanied him in the jungles and worked at a medical field clinic. Those times were tough because of the environment and the 24/7 work hours demanded on Teofilo. She described the place as lawless (like the Wild West) back in those days. There Leticia suffered a miscarriage due to the hardships. When she got pregnant again, she urged Teofilo to move back to Manila for her health or she was going to do so alone. He complied. Eventually, she had four sons - Manuel, Angel, Ferdinand, and Anthony.

Leticia & family lived in Kamuning, Quezon City adjacent to her parent’s house and worked at FEU which she commuted to by bus or jeepney. Back then, Manila was easy to get around in with public transportation.

Going back to her dream of migrating to the US, Leticia urged Teofilo to apply for legal immigration, but the US consulate would not accept any applications at that time, so they applied for Canada which was denied. They waited. And when the US policy relaxed, they again applied and were accepted. In 1968, Teofilo went first to find a place for the family & a job. Six months later Leticia departed the Philippines with Ferdinand, to Seattle Washington USA. The rest of her children and her mother followed another six months later. Her dream has been finally fulfilled.

The family settled in Aberdeen Washington, a logging town of around 35,000 people where Teofilo worked as an engineer for Lamb Grays Harbor, which designs and produces logging mill equipment. In those times, there were less than 6 Filipino families in the city. Leticia worked at Saint Joseph Hospital as a ward clerk. The family stayed there until 1975 and then moved to San Diego CA. They first stayed with relatives until they bought a home in the Paradise Hills area.

Leticia got a job at Kaiser Zion where she worked until retirement doing what she did previously in Washington State. She worked hard and managed the family affairs as well. Leticia was a devotee of the Maranatha Church in Rancho Bernardo after the family moved to the Carmel Mountain area in 1990.

On Sunday morning, 27 April 2025, she suffered a massive brain stroke that left her in critical condition for 25 days before passing at 05:40 AM on 22 May 2025. Leticia did make it to her 94th birthday on May 15 2025.