At the age of 54, nurse practitioner Drizza Tabisola-Nuesca continued to struggle so much with her remaining student debt of $50,000 that she constantly looked at jobs on the mainland and prayed about whether to move to someplace more affordable.

The debt was so crushing that 10 years ago she and her husband, Rodney — a construction super­intendent — sold their three-­bedroom, two bathroom home in Mililani “just to keep up with the bills,” and now rent in Kalihi.

And then last week Tabisola-­Nuesca received an email from the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine telling her that she had been accepted as one of 492 Hawaii health care workers to have their student loans paid off through the new program Hawaii Education Loan Repayment Program.

Tabisola-Nuesca remembered the exact time and date of the email: 9:44 p.m. Dec. 19.

“I said, ‘Is this for real?’” she told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Friday after receiving a certificate in Gov. Josh Green’s fifth-floor conference room.

Tabisola-Nuesca had been on the lookout for jobs on the West Coast, but her husband never wanted to leave Hawaii.

“This is the best present ever, so I told him, ‘I guess we’re staying.’”

And that’s the point of the $30 million loan forgiveness program funded by the state Legislature and pushed by Green, America’s only sitting governor who is also a medical doctor, who started his medical career in Kau on Hawaii island through the National Health Service Corps.

Coincidentally on Friday, Green — age 53 — made his final loan payment on his own 30-year-old student loan, which ran up to $315,000 with interest.

The goal of HELP is to keep health care workers home and — perhaps in 2024’s group — bring back those with island ties.

There’s enough funding to pay $50,000 in debt for each of two years for as many as 1,000 additional health care workers when applications are scheduled to open in July through August.

Several of the first group of recipients said that getting their loans paid off will keep them treating Hawaii patients, such as orthopedic surgeon Dr. Paul Morton, 38, who was born in Wahiawa but grew up in Kona where he attended Keaau Elementary, Middle and High schools en route to an undergraduate degree at Antioch College in Ohio and a JABSOM medical degree.

It all added up to about a $250,000 worth of student loans.

Morton has since paid his debt down to $50,000 but still makes monthly payments of $3,000.

Morton called getting his debt paid “a big deal for me, absolutely. … I definitely thought about living on the mainland. So paying off your student loan is a pretty big deal. ”

Even though his wife works as a Realtor, they were unable to get a mortgage early in his medical career while forming his own practice because of his income-to-debt ratio.

“When we were trying to get a loan, I couldn’t qualify,” Morton said. “They’d say, ‘Better luck in a few months.’ It’s not just me. It’s other people who are like me, in my shoes. People with student debt are very in tune to the cost of education debt. The pay doesn’t match what we owe for our student debt.”

Keeping — and potentially adding — more health care workers with Hawaii ties is especially critical on the neighbor islands, Morton said.

“As somebody who grew up on a neighbor island and practices on a neighbor island, there’s a pretty dramatic shortage of physicians here,” he said. “It’s a big contrast to what I see in Honolulu. It’s pretty frightening for patients who are sick. Sick patients have a hard time getting in to see their general physician, let alone specialists.”

Dr. John Misailidis, 52, grew up in Northern California, attended the University of California at Berkeley and medical school at New York Medical College, and also racked up over $250,000 in student loans.

He came to Oahu in 2001 at the age of 30 for his residency through JABSOM and now works at the Queen Emma Clinic treating low-income patients.

“With the debt, I looked at places on the mainland because I wanted to see other options. But I love it here,” Misailidis said. “I didn’t want to leave, so I sucked it up. Making minimum payments, I was never going to pay it off.”

Tabisola-Nuesca attended Leeward Community College and Kapiolani Community College, and got her undergraduate nursing degree at the University of Phoenix and nurse practitioner degree at Hawaii Pacific University.

She now specializes in pediatric endocrinology, treating children with Type 1 diabetes at Hawaii Pacific Health, and teaches at UH’s Nancy Atmospera-Walch School of Nursing.

Her daughter, Hayley, 18, and son, Ezekiel, 21, also want to go into health care at UH — Hayley studies psychology and Ezekiel, kinesiology.

But Tabisola-Nuesca doesn’t want them saddled with the same kind of student loans that nearly forced her to relocate to somewhere less costly — over Rodney’s constant objections.

So, in addition to her own student debt, Tabisola- Nuesca and Rodney are paying for their children’s educations.

She doesn’t want them with the same kind of debt “that’s just kind of looming over you.”

To be informed that the rest of her student loans will be paid off just before Christmas seemed beyond belief.

“I think I’m still in shock,” Tabisola-Nuesca said.

HOW TO APPLY

For more information and to apply, visit bit.ly/3NGUz81.