When family medical troubles seemed to have struck down a top student’s hopes for university, the administrators took action to lift them back up again.
Now the holder of a doctorate and a successful entrepreneur, she has given back to the school that did so much for her by covering the cost of the entire senior year for hundreds of students.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer, the story centers on Sonia Lewis, founder of Student Loan Doctor, and graduate of Bodine International Affairs High School in the northern part of Philadelphia.
Raised by her single mom and grandmother, both of whom were teachers, Lewis always excelled academically. Class president, student government, honor rolls: you name it, she was on it. But she was forced into a caregiving role when her mother was hospitalized with bacterial meningitis just after her grandmother had recovered from cancer.
School suddenly moved to the back bench amid hospital appointments, form-filling, and care for the household which her mother couldn’t do. Set to graduate in the class of ’05, school principal Karen P. Hill noticed that one of the school’s standout students hadn’t applied for federal student loans, and wanted to know why.
“I told the principal, ‘We don’t have any money. We missed the deadline,’” Lewis told the Inquirer, remembering the conservation she had with Hill. “There was no money coming in from my mom. We had my grandmother’s retirement, but that wasn’t enough.”
Her grandmother, she said, considered taking out a second mortgage on her house, but Lewis wouldn’t allow it. She planned to spend a year working and apply for the loans next year.
Hill was having none of it, however, and Lewis got wind of her plans when, at the end of the year award ceremony, each and every one was awarded to her. She ended up collecting $16,200 in academic fund and endowment stipends and prizes that are typically shared among the student body, but which the principal had channeled to a single student down on her luck.
It allowed her to enroll at Bloomsburg University, and pay for her first year of tuition. That set her on the path toward a doctorate in higher education. Once there, she earned scholarships, worked several jobs, and kept grinding. Before long, she was working as an academic coach, and founded the Student Loan Doctor, which provides both consultation and planning for students in debt on how to manage or escape it.
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She has helped medical students in particular get hundreds of thousands in loans forgiven. But throughout all her success, Lewis never forgot that night when Bodine sent her off with thousands to her name when she and her family had nothing.
A few days before winter break, 2025, Lewis entered the Bodine auditorium with a massive smile on her face and big surprise on her lips. The students knew only that a successful alumni was visiting for a presentation. She was introduced as one “whose journey began right here in this building,” and she then explained to the students that as they begin to enter the period of applying for scholarships and worrying about tuition for college, there was one thing they’d be able to forget about.
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That’s when the Bodine High School mascot—a globe—walked out with a big cardboard check for $16,200, enough to pay for the senior trip, senior brunch, yearbooks, etc. of the whole senior student body.
There have been larger such gifts to schools in America in the past, and there will be many more in the future, but one might imagine there will be fewer that mean as much to a single person as Lewis, whose school gave back to a star student in need.
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