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In Maitland, He Was Home Depot’s Paint Guy

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Orlando Sentinel

They called him Rigo, speaking in whispers and shock outside a Maitland home illuminated Wednesday night by television lights and sudden national attention.

To neighbors, he was a jogger, an immigrant, a bicyclist, a loving husband. He was the paint guy at the Home Depot, the man who always waved hello.

And to the frightened woman talking through a mail slot in a red door, Rigo was her “darling son-in-law.” She slid out his photograph, showing a smiling Rigoberto Alpizar against a star-filled background.

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In the hours after Alpizar’s name flashed across televisions and computer screens, friends, neighbors and family members struggled to understand how someone so nice could be the same man who authorities said claimed to have a bomb at Miami International Airport.

“I can tell you he was very proud to be living in America,” said brother-in-law Bradley Jentsch from Sheboygan, Wis. “He was very, very proud to become an American citizen and to vote.”

Alpizar moved to the U.S. about 20 years ago after growing up on a farm near Golfito on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, according to his in-laws.

He and Anne Buechner, his wife of more than 18 years, jogged and rode bicycles together through their neighborhood.

“He always said, ‘Hi, how is your day?’ ” said Alex McLeod, 16. “He was always nice.”

Reports from the Miami airport shortly after the killing that described Alpizar as mentally ill left longtime neighbor Louis Gunther doubting media accounts. The friend he knew never showed signs of a mental illness or aggression toward anyone.

An Orlando-area resident for more than 10 years, Alpizar worked at Home Depot, neighbors said. Home Depot spokesman Don Harrison said he could not confirm whether Alpizar worked for the company.

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Alpizar and his wife bought their four-bedroom house in 1998 on a Maitland street where houses now sell for $250,000 and up. They had no children.

As word of Alpizar’s death spread, TV crews, photographers and reporters filled the street in front of the house. Other than a couple of brief interviews through the mail slot, the woman who said she was Alpizar’s mother-in-law did not leave the house until about 9:15 p.m., when Maitland police escorted her out.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, Alpizar and his wife left on a trip sponsored by their church to work with children in South America, said Gunther, who was taking care of their house while they were away.

The couple first met in Costa Rica when Buechner, a social worker, was working in Central America. They regularly returned to his childhood home in recent years after the death of his mother, to spend time with his aging father, relatives and Gunther said.

The widow’s siblings, including brother Steven Buechner of Milwaukee, had not spoken to her by Wednesday evening.

“He was a very loving husband,” said Jentsch, calling Alpizar “Rigo,” a family nickname. “He loved to read, and he taught himself English by reading.”

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