MARCH 2023

PROFILE
Hard Work Bears Results
BY CAL ABBO
Rita Soka – daughter to Samir
and Najat Elias, an immigrant,
wife, mother, transfusion medicine
technologist, and health care
validation consultant has added yet
another item to her resume. As of last
year, she graduated from Detroit Mercy
School of Law (UDM) and became
a barred attorney – and as of as last
month, she partnered up with her former
professor at Detroit Mercy School
of Law and formed a new law firm,
Taylor Soka, PLLC. Rita’s story tells
of a special kind of perseverance. She
has lived many trials in her lifetime
and expects to see many more in her
newfound career. It started in the early
‘80s, when she was born in Baghdad.
“I was born during the Persian-Iraq
war,” Rita said, reminiscing about her
early childhood and the strife in her
home country at the time. After this
war ended, Iraq faced another war –
the United States/Iraq war – and this
brought much more imminent danger
to her hometown of Baghdad.
“I missed a lot of elementary school
during the war,” she said. “We would
escape and go to Karamlesh for a few
months at a time. That happened twice.”
Rita and her extended family, which
numbered around 25 people, would pile
into her aunt’s small village house in
Karamlesh when Baghdad became too
dangerous. “I think they had two bedrooms,”
she said. They slept wherever
there was floor space available.
Despite this hardship, Rita remembers
her upbringing and education
fondly, and attributes much of
her work ethic, discipline, and love
for education to her Catholic school,
Al-Makasib Elementary and Middle
School and Digla High School for girls.
Rita came to the United States at a
young age, after meeting her husband
in Baghdad and marrying in Jordan.
Steve (Sarmed) and Rita met when he
traveled to Iraq with his family. They
became engaged quickly and married
in Jordan soon after. She finally arrived
in Detroit in 1999, eager to continue
her education, which was her passion.
With the help and encouragement
Rita Samir Soka at the Michigan Supreme Court.
of her father-in-law, Farouk Soka, Rita
applied to Oakland Community College
(OCC), trying to enter the college’s
English as a Second Language program.
Unfortunately, she only knew
English from grade school in Iraq. In
her own words, she had learned English
grammar, but didn’t know how to
communicate.
As a result, she failed OCC’s ESL
entrance exam. This consequence,
however, wouldn’t stop her. She enrolled
in a nighttime English course
to learn the language better and secured
her first job at T.J. Maxx, folding
clothes.
Within a few weeks, Rita was promoted
to a cashier position. Within a
few months, she started to become
comfortable with English. She got a
secondary job at Kroger as a cashier,
but her education plans were once
again halted as she became pregnant
with her first daughter, Celena.
Rita had always dreamed of working
in the medical field, and had a
special interest in pharmacy. Luckily,
her Kroger location was building a
pharmacy while she was a cashier. She
asked the manager if she could help
run it as a pharmacy technician and,
once it was built, helped develop the
business by bringing in new clients
and increasing its sales. In October
2001, her second daughter Sabrina was
born, and she decided to quit working
and raise her children, but she still
dreamed of pursuing an education.
PHOTOS BY CELENA SOKA
Early 2003, Rita went back to OCC
and enrolled in the ESL program focusing
on prepharmacy. In 2005, she
became pregnant and delivered her
last child and only son, Luke, her education
plans were yet again halted.
Just after he was born, the rest of her
family—mom, dad, and siblings, Sarmad,
Linda and Tamara, arrived in
the states. This was the missing piece;
suddenly, she had an extended support
system to help raise her family. At
this point, she went back full force to
OCC to continue her journey.
A year later, Rita graduated from
OCC with honors and a near-perfect
GPA. She entered a Clinical Laboratory
Science program at Wayne State University
with a merit scholarship and three
children at home. Finally, in 2009, she
graduated with a bachelor’s degree,
summa cum laude, and secured a job at
Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
Rita initially worked in transfusion
medicine, helping as a liaison between
the medical staff and the companies that
provided blood to the hospital, like Red
Cross. For a long time, Rita wanted to attend
graduate school; she started shadowing
doctors, but after gaining some
experience, realized her feelings were
conflicted. She wanted to work with people
and solve problems, but didn’t feel
passionate about examining patients.
Since Rita’s priorities were her kids
and commuting to and from Detroit was
keeping her away from her family for
long hours, Rita decided to look for a job
near her home in West Bloomfield. Rita’s
Henry Ford manager found her a job at
Providence Hospital in Southfield.
In 2015, almost by chance, she
stumbled upon a new role – the hospital
was upgrading its software and
needed someone to conduct clinical
validation and test the software. After
some time, Rita became an expert in
this role, and was eventually recruited
by the clinical software developer to
do similar work. She accepted the job,
mostly because of its work-from-home
style and excellent compensation, but
she was still unsatisfied working with
machines and not people.
22 CHALDEAN NEWS MARCH 2023