Salvadoran Granted Visa to Visit Dying Son

The mother of a dying leukemia patient was granted an emergency visa Tuesday to come here from El Salvador to visit her son at his hospital bed, and the family said she probably will arrive Sunday.

A friend of the sick man, Fernando Pedrosa, 25, will fly to El Salvador to accompany the patient’s mother, Adela Lopez, back to California.

“I called her at 4:30 a.m. (Tuesday) and told her to get ready because I had a feeling it was going to be approved,” Pedrosa’s cousin, Isaias Lopez, said. “I feel good and happy she’s coming.”

Pedrosa has been holding onto life hoping for a last visit from his mother, whom he has not seen since he left for the United States 3 1/2 years ago. The eldest of six children, he was working in an auto body shop earning money to send to his family, Isaias Lopez said.

Pedrosa was found to have leukemia nearly a year ago and underwent chemotherapy at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. He was moved to Flagship Health Care in January.

Doctors have said he probably has a month to live, Isaias Lopez said.

And 30 days is the time allowed to Adela Lopez on the visa.

“It’s up to the family to get the mother to our consulate office in El Salvador and get her a boarding letter, which would allow her to get on a plane to come here,” said Rico Cabrera, spokesman for the Los Angeles district of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Adela Lopez was denied the visitation document by the U.S. State Department in November because she did not have sufficient resources to ensure her return to El Salvador, according to Cabrera.

The family will know by Saturday exactly when Adela Lopez will arrive, the cousin said. She will arrive at Los Angeles International Airport on Taca International Airline.

“We’ll take her straight to him (Pedrosa),” Isaias Lopez said.

Family, friends and workers from Community Hospice Care, which serves dying patients, have been trying for more than a month to reunite the dying man with his mother.

On Friday, local INS officials recommended approval of a 60-day visa and sent the recommendation to the INS’s Office of International Affairs in Washington.

Relatives here are trying to relay the good news to Adela Lopez, who lives several hours from the nearest phone. She and the rest of Pedrosa’s immediate family reside in the small village of Amatio near the Honduras border.

When Isaias Lopez first learned that his cousin was terminally ill, he had offered to pay his way back to El Salvador, he said. But Pedrosa was too sick to endure the flight.