Grieving Family Seeks Assistance

Relatives of Zenon Bernardino, the mute man killed by gang gunfire Saturday as he walked home from recycling cans, said they can’t afford to ship his body to Mexico for burial.

The Santa Ana family said it approached a neighborhood church, the Mexican consulate and a private social service agency for the $2,517 they need, without success.

Now, family members are going door to door, collecting change in Quaker Oats cardboard containers with a picture and a newspaper article describing Bernardino’s death.

His sister, Adela, and two nieces will accompany the body back to Mexico. They can pay their own fares, they said.

“Our air fare, we could handle that,” said Maria Martinez, Bernardino’s niece. “But we would like some help in shipping the body. Twenty-five hundred [dollars] is a big chunk of cash to go collecting door to door.”

Since Sunday, the family has raised about $180.

After Bernardino, 57, was killed, Adela Bernardino approached a priest at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church and asked if she could pass a donation basket. Father Bill Barman said no, but offered to negotiate a price with the funeral home for the shipment. He said his church, which is financially strapped, receives donation requests too often to help out financially.

“I get a request like that every three weeks,” Barman said. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the financial resources to do that. It’s a very painful decision not to be able to help every person who comes to me in grief.”

Refugio Mejia, president of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a social service agency in Santa Ana, said it also had no money to donate.

“If we had money, we would help,” said Mejia. “I tried to give them a little donation but I didn’t even have $1 in my pocket.”

So, the family has posted donation signs and boxes at a market and the local laundry, in addition to knocking on doors.

“We are hoping and expecting to collect the majority [of the funds] by Thursday,” said Martinez. “It has been a big economic stress on us. It came out of the blue. Nobody is expecting their uncle to die from one day to the next.”