Daphne Bolman of San Carlos Apache College

Daphne Bolman is a student from the San Carlos Apache Tribe. Before enrolling at San Carlos Apache College, Daphne was a storied basketball player, earning all-tournament and MVP honors at age 9 and 10 and making it to the state championship in her middle school years. She played and started at San Carlos High School all four years, earning first all-team and winning MVP her freshman year when they went to the state tournament.

She learned at an early age how disciplined, focused, and ambitious she needed to be to experience success as a student-athlete. She took those personal lessons and vast potential with her to Haskell Indian Nations University where she walked on to the basketball team in 1995 and played two seasons there. She met her husband at Haskell and started a young family with him. She lost him in a rare and tragic health accident in 1999, which led Daphne to abandon her student-athlete dream. Now, a single mother, she moved back to San Carlos with her two young children and found work in various jobs to support her growing family. She eventually found a home in security jobs over the next couple decades. Despite these wonderful things being in place, Daphne was not ready for the battle she would soon end up fighting.

From 2012 to 2022, Daphne struggled with a substance abuse addiction that took her away from many of the best things in her life. It put her in a bad place, separating her from all her children and plunging her into chaos and instability for 10 long years. Thankfully, Daphne found her way back in April of 2022. She began the long, life-giving road of sobriety and decided in June 2022 that she needed to find something to keep her productive and busy to stay vigilant in the fight. She remembered that she always wanted a degree and that her previous dream was cut short 24 years prior when her husband passed. Social work was an easy and obvious choice due to her background. It was a way to redeem her past, make sense of her present, and secure her future. Beyond personal reasons, Daphne saw how strategic and useful a social work degree would be for her surrounding community; her story was a familiar one for other families she had seen.

Armed with a renewed focus, Daphne was able to apply the same hustle, discipline, and ambition that she had learned earlier in her life to her current sobriety and educational journey. To no one’s surprise, she secured her certificate in social services in December of 2024, graduating with high honors. One semester later, Daphne finished her coursework for two more degrees: an Associate of Arts in social work and a certificate in substance abuse and addiction studies, graduating once again with high honors in each. Daphne accomplished all this while working full-time as lead security for San Carlos Apache College, a volunteer coaching girls’ basketball, and raising children and grandchildren. Following these victories, Daphne applied and was accepted to Arizona State University, so her educational journey is continuing forward to the next chapter.