Otto and Desiree Sanchez still remember the novelty of a Minnesota winter when their family moved from Venezuela to Minnesota in 1972 so that their father, also named Otto, could study at the University of Minnesota.

“They would flood the backyard at the University housing where we lived, and we had an ice rink and would play outside all the time,” says Otto Jr. (Ph.D. ’03), the oldest of the three Sanchez children. “When you’re kids, you don’t feel that cold.” And little did the siblings know that after moving home to Venezuela in 1975, the extended Sanchez clan would eventually find their way back to both Minnesota winters and the U of M.

Otto Sanchez Sr. (Ph.D. ’75) was already a practicing physician, medical lab technician, and medical school professor in Venezuela when he decided to move his family to Minnesota to earn a doctorate in clinical pathology.

He prepared for the experience by perfecting his English. “All of his magazines, and journals—everything on his night table was in English,” remembers Desiree (M.S. ’06). Then Otto Sr. attended his first class, only to discover that he didn’t understand a single word.

Soon after that initial jolt of culture shock, Otto Sr. overheard someone in a Mayo Building lab speaking Spanish. He introduced himself and discovered that that person was from Spain and was researching clinical genetics, a field then in its infancy. That the research was overseen by another native Spanish speaker—acclaimed geneticist Dr. Jorge Yunis—appealed to Otto Sr. He learned more about the specialty and soon after switched his doctoral thesis to clinical genetics.

That shift would turn out to have a profound impact on the field. Yunis and Sanchez wrote seminal papers—including an article that was published in a 1973 edition of The Lancet about chromosome banding, a process that helps researchers better understand and identify a chromosome’s structural composition. At the time, the methods involved in that were burdensome, and scientists needed multiple procedures to rearrange the chromosomal structure and make the bands visible. Otto Sr. believed the bands reflected the natural structural pattern of the chromosomes and could be seen with a simple staining procedure that took minutes. This breakthrough—by a first-year student, no less—eventually allowed geneticists worldwide to diagnose and classify genetic conditions stemming from chromosomal abnormalities.

After completing his Ph.D. in 1975, Otto Sr. moved his family—including his wife, Carmen, and their youngest son, Orlando—back to Venezuela. He became a professor at the school of medicine in the Universidad de Oriente in Ciudad Bolivar, a city 365 miles southeast of Caracas. He also founded the Venezuelan Society of Genetics and the Foundation of Genetics in Guyana, where he conducted research, provided clinical care, and taught genetics. Otto Sr. also became an esteemed member of the Estudios Cooperativos Latino Americano de Malformaciones Congenitas (ECLAMC), a society that monitors congenital anomalies across Latin America. (One of ECLAMC’s early successes involved documenting that when folic acid was added to bread in Chile, the number of babies born with spina bifida was significantly reduced.) All the while, Otto Sr. also cared for patients, often driving to other cities to monitor their follow-up care and progress.

And his children built lives in Venezuela: Otto Jr. became a physician; Desiree a dentist. Son Orlando became a photographer. (He now owns an ice cream business in Porlamar, Venezuela.) But, even if only in subtle ways, Minnesota was still alive in their imaginations. Otto Jr. remembers attending his father’s lectures at the Universidad de Oriente, simply to learn from him. “Every time, he would mention the University of Minnesota,” he says. “What he learned in Minnesota he was able to bring back not only to Venezuela, but also to the rest of the world.”

In 1992, Otto Jr. was visiting Toronto with his then wife, Ana Diaz (M.P.H. ’08), when he suggested they take a side trip to Minnesota. He hadn’t been back in almost 20 years. They stayed with friends of his parents, and Otto Jr. mentioned he was interested in studying exercise physiology. The friends connected him to a fellow physician pursuing a doctorate in that field, under the mentorship of cardiologist Arthur Leon, known for his research into the relationship between exercise and heart health. Leon had been recruited to the U of M in 1973 for a research opportunity, and worked at the University for 45 years, first in the School of Public Health, and then in the School of Kinesiology in the College of Education and Human Development. (Leon’s research formed the basis of the U.S. Surgeon General’s recommendation to exercise at least three times per week at moderate intensity for at least 30 minutes.)

“Dr. Leon gave me a few of his publications, and I saw an immediate fit for my future career goal of bringing health to the population through exercise,” says Otto Jr. “At that point, I knew this was the place to come for my Ph.D.”

It took until 1997 to complete the necessary paperwork and obtain funding before Otto Jr. could start his studies, which he did in 1998. He completed his Ph.D. in 2003 and was affiliated with the University for years in several capacities, from supervising clinical trials to teaching at the Medical School to researching the clinical applications of natriuretic peptides, which are proteins made by the heart and blood vessels. He recently moved to the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation as a senior scientist.

Meanwhile, Desiree and her husband, Gavin Hart, initially saw their future in Venezuela. But several factors, including an increasingly unstable political situation, made them consider leaving. Otto Jr. introduced his sister to a U of M friend studying geriatric oral health. As her brother had, she began imagining new possibilities. She and Hart moved back to Minnesota with their three children in 2002 so Desiree could earn a master’s degree in oral health services for older adults. (Eventually she also got recertified to practice dentistry in the U.S., and today, she is the interim dental director at the U of M’s Community-University Health Care Center.) Hart also began working for a soybean research project in the University’s Agronomy department.

With two of their children now living back in Minnesota, Otto Sr. and Carmen Sanchez began to visit every six months. By 2015, the situation in Venezuela had grown precarious enough that Desiree convinced her parents to move back to Minnesota permanently. The elder Sanchez initially didn’t want to leave his patients or his research, and the move was tough on him, Otto Jr. and Desiree say. He coped with retirement by continuing to visit the University, attending lectures and seminars whenever he could. He died in March 2024 at the age of 85.

“For us, it was a whole circle of life for him to pass away at the U of M Fairview Center, looking outside the window to the Mayo building,” says Desiree.

The Sanchez family legacy doesn’t end there. Desiree and Gavin’s daughter, Kimberly Hart (B.A. ’16, M.A. ‘20, D.D.S ’24) was 8 when her family moved to Minnesota. Like her mother, she spent her formative years in University housing, at the Community Terrace Cooperative near the State Fair Grounds. “I’m always so thankful for growing up there,” Kimberly says. “My neighbors were from Kuwait, and Nigeria, and Argentina, and I really felt like I grew up with the world around me.”

She adds that earning her undergrad at the University felt like a natural progression. This spring, she received her D.D.S. degree, with her mom standing on the stage.

“Education can change a whole family’s trajectory,” Kimberly says. “If my grandpa wouldn’t have had the opportunity to come here to do his Ph.D., I always think of our alternative life or how it would’ve looked if he didn’t follow that opportunity. There’s a lot of political unrest in Venezuela right now. A lot of us have had to immigrate . . . I hope that accessibility to higher education for immigrants, and for people of color, [continues]. Because like I said, it can change generations.”

If you liked these stories, Minnesota Alumni magazine publishes four times a year highlighting U of M alumni and University activities. Early access to stories and a print subscription are benefits of being an Alumni Association member. Join here to receive a printed copy at home.