Trying to prove their love
She was a brainy honors student bound for UC Berkeley. He was a chatty Glendale city bus driver who never missed Sunday Mass. He called her Chiquita — little one. She called him Pollo — chicken, for his skinny legs.
Her mother called him something else: El Viejito — the little old man.
When their romance bloomed in 2008, Ana Verdin-Hernandez was 22 and Gerardo Herrejon was 63. Ana’s friends and family were scandalized. How could she throw away her youth on a man with an eighth-grade education and three children older than her?
Two years later, Ana and Gerardo got married anyway and moved into Gerardo’s bungalow-style home in Cypress Park. Over time, their apparent devotion swayed many doubters. After all, Gerardo was spry and with his full head of hair looked much younger than his age. And Ana had always gravitated to older people, an old soul trapped in a young woman’s body.
-- Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times