Yuen: 2024 showed us what it means to be human

In my twice-a-week column, I’ve shared with you tales of hope, grief, setbacks and joy, powered by real people who might otherwise escape the headlines. You’ve shown me that in an age when outrage and fear often win the most clicks, people want — no, they need — news that connects us and honors the beauty and messiness of life.

In this annual tradition, I’m revisiting people from some of my favorite columns over the past year. Thank you for reading these stories and caring about your fellow Minnesotans, making my dream job possible. May your days in 2025 be merry and bright.

After graduating from law school last year as an undocumented immigrant, Juventino Meza took the bar exam. The 36-year-old says he had been working too much to adequately prepare, and then he was socked with a sinus infection right before the exam. He didn’t pass. So he took on multiple jobs to build up his savings, allowing him to start studying full time this month and retake the bar in February.

What is it like cramming legal knowledge up to nine hours a day, so much that his back hurts from too much sitting? It’s horrible, he says, but also a privilege.

“Guilt is a big part of my life,” he said with a laugh.

Driven by that sense of guilt, he’s still trying to claw openings through which others may pass. Families without legal status in this country are panicked about Donald Trump’s promise of deportations on day one.

Meza, one of more than 3 million Dreamers who arrived in the United States as children, recently created a 64-page resource guide at bit.ly/UndocumentedMN for undocumented students. It’s a practical but hopeful document advising how these young people can find their paths. He notes that many of the benefits for undocumented families still exist in Minnesota, from driver’s licenses to in-state college tuition.

Meza reminds students to care for themselves and keep pushing for the lives they want.

“The threats are real, the fears are real, and you shouldn’t let that get in the way of loving your hardest, dancing a lot and being who you are,” he said.

Back in the 1970s, Teresa Mauer was a star athlete in the infancy of girls’ sports in Minnesota. In July, she and her family, including 10 grandkids, watched her son Joe be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“It was like a dream,” she said. “He’s still my little boy.”

She got teary-eyed when Joe thanked all of the people who helped him along the way. Her mind turned to her late husband, Jake Jr., as well as Joe’s grandparents and all of the other moms and dads who became a support system to the Mauer kids in St. Paul. Many of them have passed on, but Teresa felt their presence when clouds parted as soon as the ceremony started.

Another bittersweet moment in 2024 came when Teresa’s St. Paul Central High School basketball coach, Steve Studer, passed away. In 1976, he coached her team to the first girls' basketball championship in Minnesota history. Mauer met her former teammates after a celebration of Studer’s life. She urged her friends to tell their daughters and granddaughters about their own sports achievements after Title IX gave rise to girls' programs. “People fought so hard to get them going for girls,” she said. “The stories need to be heard.”

As I reported earlier, Maria Carmen Morra got her wish this year to be married to the love of her life in the eyes of her God. Knowing she would not have much time to live, the mom and stage 4 breast cancer survivor exchanged vows with her husband, Antonio, in a Catholic church in May. A determined priest and a fierce sisterhood in friends, many of them people Maria befriended as a family advocate for South St. Paul Public Schools, helped make the wedding happen.

This village again showed up for Maria in her Inver Grove Heights home after she entered hospice care earlier this month. She died Dec. 19.

Antonio told me he’s comforted by the fact that Maria passed after fulfilling her last sacrament, and that the many families she’s helped over the years are now thriving.

“She’s very, very special in the Latino community,” Antonio said. “Everybody will remember what she did for everybody.”

For a second school year, David Krieger and Sunnie He once again welcomed three international teen boys from Vietnam and Ukraine into their home on the campus of St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights, where Krieger teaches English. They say they couldn’t be prouder of the teens as they prepare for their senior speeches, compete on the swim team, apply for college and get their driver’s licenses.

When I visited their home in January, the boisterous calls of “Bro! Bro!” filled the space. In October, the family added another sound to their home: the coo of their newborn daughter, Luna. Kids about every stage in life are now under the couple’s watch. (Their son, Theo, turned 6.)

“I feel like a zombie, but it’s been beautiful and very fun,” David says.

Mark Rosen and his wife, Karin Nelsen, are settling into more than a year of marriage. Busy with road trips and dinner dates with friends, the Minnesota sports broadcaster still can’t believe how his life has turned since the darkest of nights spent in his empty apartment following the death of his first wife, Denise.

After my story ran, an organization called Jack’s Caregiver Coalition asked Rosen to speak at one of its events. For the first time, he put his thoughts together on paper about his journey of grief and healing. “I found out through this group that a lot of men are reticent to ask for help,” he said. “It can create a very lonely existence.”

He’s hoping to partner again with Jack’s and maybe one day launch a podcast. For other men who are caring for their loved ones or paralyzed by loss, his message is to be real: “Forget the macho stuff,” he told me. “Don’t be afraid to show your emotions and weaknesses.”

Speaking of being vulnerable, Rosen is letting himself feel the possibility of the Minnesota Vikings winning it all in February (Nelsen is the team’s chief legal officer). The couple crossed the pond to watch them play in London in October and are soaking in the season’s magic, not knowing how long it will last. Maybe the fifth time is a charm?

“We’re hoping for the best,” Rosen said, “and expecting nothing more.”