58 Varied Lives End in Tragedy on Doomed Jet

Oscar Pena had visited Guadalajara for the first time since he left Mexico a dozen years earlier, and on Sunday he was on his way back to Los Angeles.

The Van Nuys man had vowed that he would not return to Mexico until he could openly fly back into Los Angeles International Airport, and not creep across the U.S.-Mexico border. And just before noon Sunday, with his wife and two daughters, Pena was indeed flying back in triumph, his friends say, with the new green card which, he had laughingly told them, would make him “a gringo .”

But the Penas--Oscar, Maria, and their daughters, 16-year-old Christina and 11-year-old Elizabeth, a California-born U.S. citizens--were killed Sunday when their Aeromexico jet collided with a small plane, and plowed upside-down into a Cerritos neighborhood.

Before they left for Mexico, their friend Margaret Ramirez recalled, “Maria had said, ‘Everything is going so great--we’re so lucky now we’ll probably hit the lottery!’ ”

Among the 58 passengers who died aboard the jet, the Penas’ tale is multiplied by the dozens: stories of relaxing weekends in Baja, of a final family holiday before the start of school--all of them ending in an exploding inferno of airplane wreckage and burning homes.

From a computerized list of names of the dead, Mexican and American, the stories of human beings emerge: a wealthy Mexican family bringing their teen-age son to an exclusive Anaheim military academy, a West Covina allergy specialist traveling with his two young sons, an entire Whittier family who were expecting their third child, a Woodland Hills couple who had kenneled their prize-winning terrier so they could enjoy a Baja fishing holiday.

“We can’t believe it,” said Kathy Walsh, 27, whose father, Richard, 55, of Upland, was killed with his fishing buddies Robert Crosno, 44, of La Verne, an engineer with Southern California Edison Co., and his father, Howard, 73, of Yucaipa.

“We still want to know how it happened--why in broad daylight two planes collided,” Kathy Walsh said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Walsh’s wife, Betty, had learned of the crash from a grocery-store checker. “Oh yes,” she said, stunned. “My husband’s on that plane!”

The trip to Loreto was a belated Christmas present from Crosno to his father. He promised his wife, Sammie, and their 12-year-old son that the next time, it would be their turn to go.

Last Wednesday, Kathy Walsh’s father woke before dawn, “whistling” at the prospect of going on the trip. He and Robert Crosno had fished there the year before, and Walsh “was thrilled to be going.”

On Monday, at a hotel less than a dozen miles from the crash site, 23 Mexican adults and children, wealthy people from the close-knit town of Navojoa in northern Mexico, sat stunned that a planned weekend of play before leaving their children at private school here had turned tragic.

They had been waiting for four of their friends to arrive--Carlos and Guadalupe Lopez, their son Carlos Jr., 13, and Dinorah Gonzalez, 17. Dinorah was to be a senior at Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, and Carlos would have been returning to St. Catherine’s Military School in Anaheim.

But all four were killed on Flight 498, and instead of a weekend at Disneyland and the beach, the Mexicans were grieving at the grisly interruption of a Navojoa tradition: “We have boys from Mexico whose fathers and grandfathers graduated from St. Catherine’s,” said school administrator Sister Mary Menegatti, who had joined the families at the hotel.

The boy, known at school as “Charlie,” was short for his age, and had been assigned as officer in charge of “E Company,” the second-, third- and fourth-graders dorm, Sister Menegatti said. “It says a lot about Carlos that he was deemed responsible for that position,” she said.

There had been a send-off party for the boys Friday night in Navojoa, and Alfredo Santini, a 14-year-old at the school, recalled tearfully that he and his friend Carlos planned to meet up here. “I was coming up on Saturday, so instead of ‘Goodby,’ I said ‘See you Sunday.’ ”

Aeromexico officials say 47 of the 58 passengers were U.S. citizens.

Among them was a Santa Monica man, Robert Kaptowsky, 34, whose neighbors said they heard “second hand” that Kaptowsky, who had lived there for 11 years, was going scuba-diving in Baja.

Dr. Donald L. Wong, an immunology and allergy specialist in West Covina, died with his two sons, Jason, 13, and Stefan, 12, on their way back from the Baja resort of Loreto. Neighbors said they recognized the doctor by the personalized license plate on his Mercedes and saw the two boys setting out the trash at curbside every Monday morning.

Two other passengers were Raymond and Gloria Navis of Woodland Hills, a “wonderful, down-to-earth” couple who operated their own executive-search firm and who “just took a trip to get away,” said neighbor and friend Helen Asmus.

Last Wednesday, they boarded their beloved, prize-winning white West Highland white terrier, Benz, whose trophies and ribbons filled the Narvis condominium, and headed south.

“Ray loved to fish,” said Mrs. Asmus, and his wife accompanied him “because she felt he needed the relaxation. They did everything together. . . . They both lived for each other. That’s about the only consolation I can think of--at least I know she was with Ray.”

At the Whittier home of George and Diana Sicairos, their cousin, Leonila Munoz, who lived with the couple and their two children, said the phone never stopped ringing after the crash--family, friends and co-workers calling to confirm news that was too horrible to believe.

Yes, Munoz told them, the entire family had perished: George, 32, an engineer with Fluor Corp. in Irvine; Gabriel, 10, Ricardo, 7, “Ricky” in the family, and Diana, 27, a nurse who was four months pregnant with the couple’s third child--”a very happy family together.”

“They wanted to take a family vacation before the start of school,” Munoz said, and they left last Wednesday for Loreto, one of their favorite resort towns.

Munoz was having lunch with a friend when she heard on TV the news of the downed jetliner. They rushed to Cerritos--ironically, to check on her friend’s parents, who live near the site.

“After we saw that they were OK, we parked the car and saw some of the wreckage. It never dawned on me that they (the Sicairoses) might be on the plane.”

And an hour or two after the crash, Diana’s mother and stepfather, who had been vacationing in Puerto Vallarta, flew into Los Angeles. The news of the crash was waiting for them when they arrived.

For Oscar Pena, his first trip back to his homeland was his last.

Margaret Ramirez, whose husband is a cousin of Pena’s, said they helped Pena get his job here. For nearly a dozen years, he worked at the El Torito restaurant chain, was promoted from busboy to waiter and had recently been working at the chain’s newest restaurant in Valencia.

Both Penas worked hard to keep their daughters in private school; Maria was a housekeeper at the rectory of a Van Nuys Catholic church.

“He was very, very happy,” said Ramirez, “and he kept saying, ‘When I come back I’m going to be a gringo .’ ”

Contributing were Times staff writers Louis Sahagun and Steve Emmons.

Aeromexico has set up these telephone numbers for relatives of victims of Sunday’s crash.

(213) 646-0316

(213) 646-0317

(213) 646-0309.