GUADALUPE ZAPATA

Glades family spends first Christmas without dad

Guadalupe Zapata comforts her crying son Gaspar Ambriz Jr. Her husband, Gaspar Ambriz, was killed in an attempted robbery earlier this year.

By CARLOS FRÍAS
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

On the days when Guadalupe Zapata lets her 11-year-old son spend the day at her sister’s house, she holds her breath as night arrives.

Each time, she hopes he will play happily with his cousins and want to spend the night, a sign that he is healing into a normal, healthy little boy again. But as the sun sets — as it did on the night in April when his father left and never came home — her phone always rings. It’s her sister, telling her Gaspar Ambriz Jr. is getting nervous and wants to come home to be with her.

“He is just really scared,” Zapata said.

That night of April 26 — the day after Guadalupe’s daughter turned 8 — her husband, Gaspar, went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and was shot in the head and killed by two men who tried to rob him. He was 36. The suspects are awaiting trial but the Ambriz family has been left shattered.

Gaspar Jr., a boy who loved to play soccer outside with his friends, moves like a phantom to a chair from inside the single-wide Belle Glade trailer left tattered by storms, never venturing far.

The family holds a photo from Christmas 2010, just 4 months before Gaspar Ambriz was killed.

“He used to say he wanted to die so he could see his dad,” said Zapata, who would love to see her son enter the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Explorer program.

Zapata’s daughter, Yiuricsia, 8, is the strong one who has snapped back more readily and likes to have her girlfriends over. But the sight of a Suburban like their father used to drive, going by the house, is enough to bring them to tears. The family had to sell both of their vehicles to pay for Gaspar’s funeral.

“I can really feel what they’re going through,” said Zapata, whose own father died when she was 9. “And I know it’s hard. I can see the pain they’re going through.”

Both children are in therapy, but it’s an especially tough situation for a woman grieving the loss of her husband of 13 years while remaining strong for her children.

“It’s a double pain,” said Zapata, 32. “It’s hard to raise them alone, but I have to be strong, because they only have me.”

She has been a seasonal worker since 1997, grading beans. But two freezes last year destroyed many of the local crops, so she was not able to work long enough to become eligible for unemployment. She receives food stamps and relies on local food pantries. She returns to the fields next month, with her children struggling and their future uncertain.

GUADALUPE’S WISH
Guadalupe needs extensive repairs to the family’s trailer and help with bills, as well as a new vehicle, since she had to sell the family car to pay for her husband’s funeral. She also could use gift cards to pay for food and household items. What she wishes for most is for her 11-year-old son, traumatized by his father’s death, to enter the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Explorer program. The boy would enjoy a video game system and a television on which to play it. Guadalupe’s daughter, 8, loves bouncing on a friend’s trampoline, and would love to have her own at home.

NOMINATED BY: The Farmworker Coordinating Council of Palm Beach County