‘I can feel him hugging me’: Mother of soldier killed in Iraq gets his restored car back

Veterans Day will never be the same for Candida Torre.

The Garden Grove resident stood speechless in the Huntington Beach Police Department’s helicopter hangar Wednesday morning. She watched with tears in her eyes, clutching her grandchildren as she saw her son’s 2009 Nissan Cube roll in.

Torre slowly approached the car, opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat.

“I can feel him in the car,” she said while choking back tears. “I can feel him hugging me. I always did whenever I sat in the car.”

The Nissan belonged to her son, Army Spec. Jose Torre Jr., a combat engineer who was killed in action on Jan. 15, 2011, when his unit was attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade in Baghdad, Iraq. The 21-year-old was on his second deployment.

The Nissan was his first new car, purchased with money he had saved while serving in the Army.

Candida Torre, 53, had been driving her son’s car since November 2010, when he was deployed to Iraq. But on June 2 this year, she was involved in a collision with another vehicle at Yorktown Avenue and Bushard Street in Huntington Beach. The Nissan sustained heavy front-end damage and was deemed a total loss by AAA, her insurance company.

Huntington Beach police Officer John Baggs responded to the incident that day. He saw that the Nissan’s license plate had a gold star, indicating that the driver had lost a family member killed in military duty.

Baggs had a gold star himself. His father, John Baggs Jr., served two tours in Vietnam and later joined the Air National Guard as a test pilot. He died in a plane crash while on duty on Veterans Day 1976.

Baggs said he wanted to do something for Torre, so a few weeks after the collision, he contacted AAA to see if he could buy the Nissan.

“They told me the car was totaled and that they closed the case,” Baggs said. “But once I asked them if I could buy the car and get it fixed, they donated it to me and the ball just got rolling.”

David Goldstein, senior vice president of operations for Caliber Collision in California, heard that Baggs was planning to restore the car and decided to provide the company’s collision repair services.

AAA and Caliber Collision are involved in the National Auto Body Council’s Recycled Rides program, in which insurers and repair specialists work together to restore vehicles for select community members.

The Nissan Cube was taken to Caliber’s Ladera Heights facility and restored in about two months. The collision center added a few special touches before giving it to Torre, Goldstein said.

“On the back windshield is a tattoo that [Jose Torre] and his platoon had, and there’s one on the dashboard,” Goldstein said.

Candida Torre said she had no idea this was being done for her. When her family told her they were going to the Huntington Beach heliport, she thought she was going for a helicopter ride.

“It all started making sense when [Baggs] started talking about the collaboration [between AAA and Caliber Collision],” she said. “I was looking around trying to find my family and I couldn’t find them, and then the car appeared and they appeared.”

Torre said she is grateful for what Baggs did for her and her family.

“It’s nice to know that there are people in the world that have a good heart and are willing to pay it forward,” she said.