A Tragedy in Queens

Framed photos of Bessy Velásquez are arranged neatly above the television stand in the home where she lived with her two daughters. Her apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn remains spotless, just as she liked it.

Velásquez’s daughters, 17-year-old Bessita and 14-year-old Kimberley, still reminisce about how they used to call their mom "Doña Perfecta" because of her obsessive cleaning—a name they got from one of the Spanish-language soap operas they used to watch together.
"She was so headstrong," Bessita said, recalling the mother who raised two teenagers kept the house meticulously clean, worked and who once took classes at New York City College of Technology hoping to run a day care center one day. But after separating from her husband, Carlos Velásquez in 2000, Velasquez stopped going to college and focused full time on working to pay the bills.

Velasquez grew up in a middle-class family in Tegucigalpa, the youngest of five daughters. Her parents ran an inn and sent all five daughters to private Catholic schools. At 17, Velásquez decided to follow her heart to be with her future husband, Carlos, who had already gone to New York. Her sister Danny Lee Arroyo, then 18, also wanted to start fresh after breaking up with a boyfriend in Honduras. Together, the two sisters started a new life in the U.S. Velasquez’s closest sister in age, Arroyo, today 43, says the absence of her sister is still palpable.

"I still try to dial her number," said Arroyo, who lives in Boston. "We would talk over the phone all the time, especially at 4 or 5 a.m. I would keep her company via cell phone."

Arroyo’s last conversation with Velásquez was on Saturday at 5 a.m., the morning before her death. Bessy was working when she called her sister to tell her she was going to a workshop for parents of children who are going to college. Her daughter, Bessita, is graduating from high school in mid-June.

After three months of working at both LaGuardia Airport and Myrtle Car Service, Velásquez decided to dedicate more time to her daughters and work exclusively at the cab company since it was close to her home. With the base a block away, she could frequently check on her daughters or stop by to prepare them dinner.

Her cab, a black Lincoln, was like her second home, with pictures of the two girls and her favorite bachata CDs. From her car, she would call everyone she knew."She'd call me like five times a day,even when I was in class,just to say ‘I love you,’" said Bessita, who would often confide in her mother about school, gossip and boys that she liked.

Once, when the girls went to a Christian summer camp in Pennsylvania, Bessita remembers she opened her journal to write in it, only to find a note from her mother that read: "I love you. I hope you have fun. I'm miserable over here." Then, when Velásquez picked them up a week later—the longest they had ever been away from her—she brought them yellow roses, tinged with orange.

On the eve of the accident, the girls' last conversation with their mother was very much like most they had with her. They were visiting their father in the Bronx, and she was impatient to see them soon.

"When are you going to come back?" Velásquez asked. "Ma, it's only been a day," Kimberley replied.

Before that night, Bessita had only once begged her mother not to go to work. That afternoon four years ago, while driving on the job, a bullet had grazed Velásquez's shoulder when a jealous husband following his wife shot at the cab where both women were riding.

Even though Velásquez didn't have much time on her hands, she made a point of being very involved in other people's lives."She always surprised me," said Edgar León, her boyfriend of eight years. One night, when they were sitting in the car chatting, León casually mentioned he would like to see Albany. Before he knew it they were on the highway. "Where are we going?" he asked her. "To Albany," she responded. "Let's go now. If we think about it, we will never go."

León, a 36-year-old Myrtle cab driver, said that even his family in Ecuador took a liking to Velásquez. "She won the love of my family, without ever meeting them," he said.

"Few people in life can shine with such pleasure," said Dagoberto Marín, the owner of Myrtle Car Service, where Velásquez worked for 12 years.

"Number 125," Velásquez's cab number, received a great number of requests from customers asking specifically for her because they enjoyed her cheerful attitude, said Miriam Marín, the owner’s daughter and manager of Myrtle Car Service.

Velásquez would always go to the cab company's soccer games, and sold water and drinks on the sidelines to make some additional money. And she rejoiced the day their team won the city cab company tournament last October, Dagoberto Marín said.

Soccer was also the subject of the last exchange of messages between Velásquez and her ex-husband Carlos, 65, who she had met in Honduras and later married when they reconnected in New York. On the night before the accident, Velásquez phoned him five times but never got through. She left messages, though.

"The Red Bulls won! The Red Bulls won!" she excitedly told him in her first voice message.. That same Sunday, when the national soccer team of Honduras stunned the heavy favorite Mexico, she left another one. "We will beat Mexico now, and we will go to the World Cup!" she said. .Carlos transferred the messages to tape so that he could listen to them whenever he wants to remember her voice.

Nelly Tamayo, one of Velásquez's close friends, was waiting for a call from her on that Sunday morning. They had planned to meet to attend services at the New York City Church of Christ in Park Slope.

"I waited until 9 a.m. but she never came," Tamayo said. “I never yelled so hard when I found out. I fainted."

Velásquez often went out of her way to bring Tamayo, who is blind, anything she needed, even though Tamayo is able to take care of herself.

On the day of the funeral, a procession of 150 cabs departed from Myrtle Car Service for the Ortiz Funeral Home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and the drivers parked in two rows surrounding the entire block. They also raised $2,700, which they gave to the daughters.

The pews at the church were packed as family and friends walked by Velásquez's open casket.It was hard for Velásquez's family to recognize her. "We had to study her hands to make sure it was our sister," Arroyo said.

"It gives me so much grief that a person like this is enjoying his life," Arroyo said of Omar. "He destroyed not only three lives, but three families."

Bessita gets choked up at the thought of her mother not being at her high school graduation in June.

But she has taken on the role of her mother by staying positive and remembering the importance of keeping the family connected. She is unsure whether to accept her upstate college offers or study locally because she doesn't want to leave Kimberley alone.

"She's only 14," Bessita said, while looking at her younger sister with sadness in her eyes.

-Andrés Bermúdez Liévano, Elizabeth Henderson, Kristina Puga

(Published in The Columbia Journalist)