CABAGAN, Isabela — If they were in a card game, Ace, King and Jack would have needed only a 10 and a queen of the same suit to make a royal flush, the highest hand in poker.

But they’re the 20-year-old triplets of Sonny and Leliza Pagaran, who might as well have hit the jackpot when the brothers graduated cum laude together at Isabela State University (ISU) on Tuesday.

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Their parents worked hard as they struggled with the high cost of college education to help their sons get their Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture from Provincial Technical Institute of Agriculture on ISU’s Cabagan campus.

The Pagaran couple, who are farmers, had to sell their farm to relatives but continued to work on it as tenants.

Mired in debt, they tried to get school loans but some creditors and neighbors in their hometown of Sta. Maria, about 15 kilometers from the Cabagan campus, tried to discourage them from sending the trio to college because of the rising costs of miscellaneous fees, transportation and other school expenses.

The triplets had wanted to enroll in a criminology course but their uncle, Rexon Baldova, said there were more advantages to studying agriculture. He also told them the tuition for an agriculture course was virtually free.

The brothers also did their part to help their parents, working as farmhands to earn some money for their food and allowances.

Their grandmother helped raise them while the teachers at Naganacan Elementary School and the nuns of Mary School Boystown Adlas Campus helped them grow to be morally upright young men.

In their college yearbook, the triplets’ fellow graduates Ali Salinas Simon and Cynthia Obispo said they had been praying that all three would not change.

“I hope that we will all be successful and happy because we have been together with them,” Simon said.

Themilyn Garro said the triplets’ hardwork had rubbed off on other students, helping them finish the course.

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Their schoolmate and friend, Bernadeth Ramos, said the three brothers were “worth emulating” and another, Jackelyn Concha, said she was proud of the Pagaran boys.

The brothers said the rigors of school life were “survivable.”

Their next challenge after college is the “real world obstacle of employment,” they said.

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