In the summer of 1952, at only fifteen, Margaret Dieguez was diagnosed with the polio virus. This year would see sixty thousand documented polio cases and three thousand deaths from the virus. Margaret would be part of the last big epidemic of the virus before Jonah Salk would discover the polio vaccine two years later. After initially being sent home from improving, she would later succumb to polio and be sent to a teaching hospital in Kansas. She would go on to spend forty days in an iron lung, spend five months in an isolation ward, and have eight months of rehabilitation.
Margret Dieguez was born and raised in Warrensburg, Missouri. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English in St. Mary College in Leavenworth, Kansas. From California State University in Northridge, she has also earned forty-five graduate hours of education. Now, Margaret is retired and living in Lancaster, California.