A Final Wish : Bone Cancer Victim Sees President Bush as His Last Hope

As DiMaggio Velasquez lies in a hospital bed dying of cancer, he is calling upon President Bush to help him fulfill his final wish--to see his father again.

“I’ve been waiting for him for a long time,” said Velasquez, 18, who fled Nicaragua to seek sanctuary in the United States six years ago and has not seen his father since.

During the last seven months, in a bout with bone cancer, Velasquez has lost his left leg and most of his hair, while his muscular, 160-pound physique has withered to a bony 90 pounds. Still Velasquez continues to hang on to life at Presbyterian Pacific Medical Center, so that he might see his father one more time.

But political differences between the United States and Nicaragua are keeping Velasquez’s final wish from coming true. Constantino Velasquez, DiMaggio’s father, has failed repeatedly to obtain a visa through the U.S. Embassy in Managua.

In desperation, Velasquez’s doctors sent off a letter to one of the President’s advance men on Monday during his brief visit to the Bay Area.

“We’ve tried everything. I think President Bush is our only hope,” said Dr. Eliana D. Delgado, Velasquez’s doctor and chief resident at San Francisco General Hospital.

Because President Bush has been traveling for much of the week, however, there has so far been no response from the White House.

Through the aid of Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae), Velasquez’s mother, Maria Milagro Velasquez, arrived in January in time to be with her son during his surgery. But with her visa expiring May 3, Maria Velasquez nervously hopes that she can buy some more time to be with her son.

“It’s a very sad case,” said Beatriz Rogalski, an aide to Boxer who has been trying to secure a visa for the father and an extension of the mother’s visa. Since the Sandinistas’ expulsion of the U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua last July, the U.S. Embassy there has denied all visa requests by Nicaraguan nationals, she said.

State Department officials say the U.S. Embassy is not issuing temporary visas to Nicaraguan citizens because of severe staff shortages. “We’re down to a skeleton crew just to keep the embassy open,” said Francis Jones, Bureau of Consular Affairs spokeswoman.

But Velasquez’s bitter plight has not been without some measure of good fortune. The high school senior made local newspapers and fulfilled a lifelong dream when he sought out and met his namesake, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, a San Francisco native.

“It was my forever dream come true,” said Velasquez in a voice made soft and sleepy by pain medication. “I was named after him, you know.”

In February, the extremely private DiMaggio, 74, paid a visit to Velasquez, who was recuperating from major surgery. DiMaggio was touched by the former high school third baseman’s insistence on wearing the number 5, the Hall of Famer’s own number.

Baseball, in fact, has been the one passion that has kept Velasquez going for much of his tumultuous life.

At age 13, Velasquez left Nicaragua for the United States with his grandmother and older brother to escape from persecution under the Sandinista government. Velasquez said he and his family suffered because his grandfather and uncle had served under Anastasio Somoza, the dictator ousted by the Sandinistas in 1979.

After securing political asylum in the United States, the three settled in San Francisco in a crowded one-bedroom home with an aunt.

Despite missing his parents, Velasquez said, his spirits remained buoyant, because he could play baseball again. At Mission High School, Velasquez made the varsity in both baseball and football in his junior year.

“On the field he was a definite inspiration for the other players, always at practice, always trying hard,” said Mission High School baseball coach Mitch Benjamin.

Velasquez set his sights on becoming a professional baseball player. “If I practiced and everything, I’m sure I could’ve made at least to the minors,” he said.

But last September during football practice, Velasquez slipped and broke his femur bone. When he returned to the hospital a month later for a checkup, doctors discovered a burgeoning tumor in his left hip.

In January, doctors removed a cantaloupe-sized tumor and estimated that the young man had about three months to live. Since then, cancer has spread to his lungs and throughout most of his body.

But Velasquez remains hopeful. He says he plans to go to college at San Francisco State University to study business administration.

“Sometimes it seems nothing works out,” he said, interrupted by a fit of coughing. “But I can’t give up.”