[Mary Beth] You know, people say, "Wow, are you surprised?

She's 101."

We're not.

We know that she's got a lot of spunk and even though she's been diagnosed with, you know, with Dementia and Alzheimer's, she is outliving so many people and her spirit you really can't damper.

[Margarita] Mercedes is very social.

Here at Easterseals, she loves to play dominoes and bingo.

She gets very competitive.

Sometimes I actually walk in there and I'm always asking the same question like oh who's winning and she'll be like "Oh I'm winning."

[Gerardo] She's a very happy person.

[Mary Beth] She enjoyed life and she has a lot of struggles and challenges in her life but nothing held her back.

When she was leaving Cuba, his dad stayed behind thought change was going to be better and of course that wasn't the case, but they couldn't bring anything of value and so he was two and a half years old, so you can just imagine a hem of a two-and-a-half-year-old's shirt and pants.

That's where she put any money or jewelry that she had.

She sewed it in the hem and I just think that the courage she had to bring a two- and-a-half-year-old and her 60-some-year-old mother to a strange land, not know the language.

Coming from communist Cuba and everything that had changed.

It wasn't the beautiful country she grew up in.

She left it all behind but she did learn to trust and knew that it would be a better life for him.

[Margarita] She basically had to rebuild herself from zero like, you know, she had to basically put a child that was two years old through, you know, education and she was taking care of her mom, so that's obviously the determination of her wanting to do better for herself and her family as well as her, you know, revalidating her license to become a pharmacist all over again.

[Gerardo] It wasn't until the late 70s, which the legislature changed the laws and they would accept foreign diplomas to qualify for the board exam.

She's had friends since University of Havana that they all graduated pharmacy school from.

[Gerardo] So they all got together and started taking courses to, you know, refresh all their skills and they all sat for their board exams and they all passed and they started practicing pharmacy again and until she finally retired when she was 89.

[Gerardo] To her, it wasn't so much work, it was a way to stay engaged and active and that's why she did it.

She's been an inspiration to, you know, always keep improving yourself because what you have in your mind no one can take away.