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