Junkyard owner’s girl is No. 1

MANILA, Philippines -- She did not expect to top the nursing licensure exams.

“Who would not want to be on top? But the exam was really difficult. I was satisfied with the thought of just having a passing grade,” Zandra Mae Zabaza Bongco said Thursday.

The daughter of a junkyard owner, who mainly sells used plastic bottles, emerged No. 1 among the more than 67,000 nursing graduates who took the recent nursing board exams.

Bongco, a consistent honor student since her elementary school days, said she learned of the good news through her teachers and classmates, who kept texting and congratulating her the whole day Thursday.

“It still hasn’t sunk in yet. I still cannot believe that I made it,” Bongco, the younger of two siblings, said.

“In fact, I’m more worried now about my friends. I haven’t heard if they passed the exam or not,” she said. more of this....