Speaker 1: Orla Latino Usa listener Gomostas. Today, we're going to bring
Speaker 1: you an episode of a new podcast series by our
Speaker 1: friends over at Radio Diaries. It's called The Unmarked Graveyard
Speaker 1: and it's a collection of stories that want to put
Speaker 1: a name and a human face on a place known
Speaker 1: as Heart Island. It's a burial ground in New York
Speaker 1: City where more than a million people have been buried
Speaker 1: without headstones or plaques, people like Angel Garcia, a New
Speaker 1: Yurekan from the Bronx. In this episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: meet Annette Vega, who looked for her biological father Angel
Speaker 1: for more than thirty years. Through her search, a Nette
Speaker 1: discovered a whole new family Athia. Several cousins even have siblings.
Speaker 1: None of them had heard from Angels since the late
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and finally she found Angel in his resting
Speaker 1: place at Heart Island. Here's the story of Angel Carcia.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's the island. It's crazy. There's not
Speaker 2: a lot of land for that many people to be buried.
Speaker 2: At first, I thought it was eerie, but it's kind
Speaker 2: of pretty because the fog just like erases the city.
Speaker 2: It's just so beautiful. It's nicer than I thought. My
Speaker 2: name is Annette Vega. I'm a registered nurse and I'm
Speaker 2: fifty three years old. I grew up in the Bronx.
Speaker 2: I lived with two of my younger sisters and my
Speaker 2: mom and my dad. Dad was always working. He was
Speaker 2: an electrician for Local three, and he was always the
Speaker 2: strong guy, and a lot of the neighborhood teenagers looked
Speaker 2: up to him. Not everybody had their dad and their life,
Speaker 2: you know, looking back, it was a great childhood. So
Speaker 2: when I was about seven or eight, I found out
Speaker 2: that my dad wasn't my biological father. That's the first
Speaker 2: time I came to know that there was someone else
Speaker 2: out there. This is a picture of my biological father,
Speaker 2: Angel Garcia. He looks like he's in his thirties, and
Speaker 2: he has a long mustache and a da here that's
Speaker 2: kind of brushed back. And I'm like, who was this person?
Speaker 2: Why hasn't he been in my life? Could he be
Speaker 2: looking for me? I just felt a persistent urge to
Speaker 2: find out. Hello, hey, mom, Ayanet, So did you win
Speaker 2: a bingo yesterday?
Speaker 3: I won seventy five dollars yesterday and three hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy something on Tuesday. Wow, I wish there was a
Speaker 3: Bengo today.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to ask you some questions. If you
Speaker 2: don't mind, yeah, go ahead, Okay. The questions are related
Speaker 2: to Angel Garcia, who's my biological father. No kidding, no
Speaker 2: kidd all right, mother, So what do you remember about him?
Speaker 3: He was very sweet, He was good to be. He
Speaker 3: knew he was good looking, and he was sure of himself.
Speaker 3: And who knows. He had this cologne. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: it was the best cologne ever. You like that cologne
Speaker 3: in minor.
Speaker 2: And I My mom had me at sixteen. I was
Speaker 2: a mistake, not a mistake, but you know I wasn't
Speaker 2: a planned pregnancy. You know. She was a teenager growing
Speaker 2: up in the Bronx and there was a young man
Speaker 2: everyone called him Macho. You know. They had a little
Speaker 2: summer romance. He'd be working in the auto body shop
Speaker 2: and she'd go home happily with grease on her backside
Speaker 2: of her shorts. And I'm like mom.
Speaker 3: He talked about where his family came from, he talked
Speaker 3: about the future when he got married, and he was
Speaker 3: a charble. Let me tell.
Speaker 2: Where there things about me that remind you of him?
Speaker 3: I think you looked like him a lot.
Speaker 2: You had green eyes, green eyes.
Speaker 3: You had very green eyes like he did.
Speaker 2: Remember my Mount to Carlo, my sixth cylinder that I
Speaker 2: would be driving fast and you'd be like, oh, you
Speaker 2: remind me of your father, And I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, yeah, cause he used to love to drive.
Speaker 3: She used to steal car and I think he used
Speaker 3: to steal cause just for the fun of it. Wow,
Speaker 3: he was a bad boy, So I guess maybe I
Speaker 3: was into bad boys. Who knows, aren't we all?
Speaker 2: Do you remember the last time you guys saw each other.
Speaker 3: I've seen him after I gave birth to you. We
Speaker 3: hooked up again, and then he used to pick you
Speaker 3: up and talk to you, and we used to go
Speaker 3: and car ride with you and everything like that.
Speaker 2: When's the last time you spoke to him? What was
Speaker 2: that conversation? Like?
Speaker 3: All I remember was I was insulting him.
Speaker 2: You were insulting him if I want.
Speaker 3: I told him that he was not your father, that
Speaker 3: he was only a father because he made you, but
Speaker 3: not because he raised you or supported you. I knew
Speaker 3: that that would hit him hard. And then he disappeared
Speaker 3: one day and I went to his job and they
Speaker 3: told me, know that there was another woman looking for
Speaker 3: him and all that. So I never went back and
Speaker 3: I never looked for him again.
Speaker 2: I remember my mom telling me he was kind of
Speaker 2: a tough guy, and she thought that he was in
Speaker 2: a gang.
Speaker 4: The South Bronx one of New York City is roughest
Speaker 4: neighborhoods and since the mid sixties, home to an outlaw
Speaker 4: motorcycle gang who called themselves the Chinga Links.
Speaker 2: I remember hearing about the ching Lings. They were notorious
Speaker 2: motorcycle gang that people were fearful of. I thought he
Speaker 2: might be with them.
Speaker 4: So what does it mean to be a China Ling?
Speaker 4: The relinear we got, it's a Chingling religion. That's the
Speaker 4: only religion we have.
Speaker 2: I had a bike's party hang out.
Speaker 4: This is like a family thing.
Speaker 2: So I literally walked up to the chin Lings house
Speaker 2: in the it's like painted in black and you know,
Speaker 2: motorcycles all around. And guy comes out looking rough. He
Speaker 2: comes over, he talks to me and I tell him
Speaker 2: I'm trying to find my father. They call him my shoe.
Speaker 2: Hees green eyes. Oh, I haven't seen that dude in years.
Speaker 2: Another woman comes out and she's, you know, out on
Speaker 2: the stoop, having a cigarette and she goes I remember him.
Speaker 2: I remember one night we were partying really hard. I
Speaker 2: got so messed up, and he helped carry me upstairs
Speaker 2: to the bedroom. That man could have done anything to me,
Speaker 2: and he put me in the bed and put a
Speaker 2: blanket on me and left. Nice guy. They wished me luck,
Speaker 2: they said, ope, you find them. I felt kind of
Speaker 2: silly looking for so long without a real reason as
Speaker 2: to why I was looking for him. I didn't need
Speaker 2: him to be my father, but I still really wanted
Speaker 2: to find him. There were thousands of questions, where's his family?
Speaker 2: Do I have brothers, Do I have sisters? Do I
Speaker 2: have a grandmother? Do I have aunt? Where's his people?
Speaker 2: It was late January. I got a message from someone
Speaker 2: on ancestry who gave me names. I used the White Pages,
Speaker 2: I used Facebook, and I sent the messages. That evening
Speaker 2: my phone rings. I hear this woman crying emotional missa, missabina.
Speaker 2: Don do diempo, don gando All this time, my niece,
Speaker 2: I've been looking for you. I was like, you have
Speaker 2: you know about me? Why high D's young?
Speaker 3: I think you don't want joke.
Speaker 2: So I'm here. I arrived at my Tity's house. My Tity, Miriam,
Speaker 2: my father's sister. It's a really pretty home.
Speaker 5: Oh, my name is Medium, Medium Gasia.
Speaker 4: My brother is Angiel.
Speaker 2: Angel is your brother. He was younger than you or
Speaker 2: older than you and her younger brother. He only went
Speaker 2: to sixth grade. But there was something about him that
Speaker 2: he could just pick up things, like he learned how
Speaker 2: to work on cars. He can take a car that
Speaker 2: was destroyed and make it look like new. Angel was
Speaker 2: a good man, but he had a really really hard life.
Speaker 2: What is that you saying. There was issues in the
Speaker 2: home growing up because their father was an alcoholic, and
Speaker 2: my father went to the streets and he started using drugs.
Speaker 2: At the age of thirteen, he was arrested and in
Speaker 2: prison from selling drugs.
Speaker 5: They don't see.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't like a traditional prison. It was like
Speaker 2: a camp.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, ok.
Speaker 2: So, she said. In nineteen eighty five or eighty six,
Speaker 2: police came to the house to tell them that he
Speaker 2: escaped sire from They don't know how he did it,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know what you're done. Someone had to
Speaker 2: help them, Mirah. She said she received the phone call
Speaker 2: from him in the summer of nineteen eighty nine, that
Speaker 2: he was very sick with pneumonia and he wanted to.
Speaker 5: Come home call me a Posso they put.
Speaker 2: Her and her husband went to New York and they
Speaker 2: walked through the streets looking for him. I don't know better,
Speaker 2: but she never heard from him again. Justin't seen him
Speaker 2: in thirty years. She said, I don't think he's alive. Okay,
Speaker 2: So this is what I find out. I received. Then
Speaker 2: all tap say report and I actually have it with me,
Speaker 2: and it says Angel Garcia died August third, nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: at eleven pm, thirty seven years old, immediate cause of
Speaker 2: death pneumonia due to AIDS as a consequence of chronic
Speaker 2: intravenous narcoticism IVY drug abuser. It says he was buried
Speaker 2: in a place called Heart Island. People are buried there,
Speaker 2: people with no idea on them, people who haven't been claimed.
Speaker 2: And then I spoke to Titi Merim. We went through
Speaker 2: it together and she put it down and she said,
Speaker 2: this is him. You found your father, all right? What's that?
Speaker 2: I can't believe I'm standing here with my brother like
Speaker 2: it's mother, Like he's so cute. I'm like God, it's
Speaker 2: so nice. So I found out that I had a
Speaker 2: brother named Angel. I've never met him. He also didn't
Speaker 2: know where our father was.
Speaker 5: She reached out to me and wrote me a letter
Speaker 5: telling me she was my sister. I was incarcerated. I
Speaker 5: was incarcerated. So at first I was like, what what
Speaker 5: the hell was going on here? She went into detail
Speaker 5: telling me who she is and how she went about
Speaker 5: finding me. So research paid off.
Speaker 2: I know I should be a private investigators. Yes, now
Speaker 2: we're gonna go see our father where he was buried.
Speaker 5: It's weird, like nobody knew where he was at all
Speaker 5: these years.
Speaker 2: Flocked to a boy three right there, to a one
Speaker 2: grave twenty seven. So this is the plot where Angel
Speaker 2: was buried our dad.
Speaker 5: Wow, I was always the biggest fan, like rooting for him. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I must have been like seven years old. And we
Speaker 5: went to the prison to visit, and he took us
Speaker 5: from the visiting room to like the dormitory. He introduced
Speaker 5: us all the dudes that was locked up with him
Speaker 5: or his friends or whatever. He gave me like a
Speaker 5: boat made out of like wood, and and that's the
Speaker 5: last time I seen him. Well, now I know where
Speaker 5: he's brother.
Speaker 2: The people that loved my father, whether its my brother,
Speaker 2: my aunt, my cousins, everyone talks about how he was
Speaker 2: such a good guy. I think they were afraid to
Speaker 2: tell me the bad stuff, whether it's being in a
Speaker 2: gang or being in prison, being an IVY drug abuser.
Speaker 2: You know, Angel was not an angel, but it's who
Speaker 2: he is. I mean, it's not a complete story without
Speaker 2: all of it. I'm putting flowers here at his grave,
Speaker 2: just planting. I'm marking because he's here, he's not lost.
Speaker 5: I'm happy to see where he lays and too like
Speaker 5: tell him like hell and I found you, She found
Speaker 5: us and we're here and now we know who you are.
Speaker 3: And the tact there's nothing, there's nothing anything,