A Tragic End for Beloved Figure on Bromley Street

The little old lady down the street walked fast and with purpose, stopping at every driveway to dig cans and bottles from the recycling bins. All the neighbors knew her--her stoic, sun-creased face lighting up with any chance to chat.

But few in her La Puente neighborhood knew what kind of independence the cans brought Lorenza “Lenchita” Ruedas.

The money she made recycling helped the 77-year-old woman buy groceries, and even pay for her husband’s permanent resident status in the United States. And soon, if she could just save a little bit more, Ruedas would become a resident herself.

But this week, her hard-set self-reliance led her into a fatal blunder. As she crossed Amar Road at 10 p.m. Monday, her bag of cans in tow, she was struck and killed by a truck.

Police say she was walking against a red light.

“She walked quickly,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Gonzales. “Evidently, she just got caught by the light or she didn’t push the button.”

Ruedas’ death has devastated her husband, a companion of 35 years who relied on her for everything. He says he has awakened during the last two nights imagining he hears her coming through the front door.

“What am I going to do? There is no Lenchita here,” Antonio Ruedas, 75, said Wednesday.

Neighbors, too, were struck by the news. “Oh, I can’t believe it,” said Catalina Brizuela. “She was so nice--always in a good mood.”

For 11 years, since they emigrated from Mexico, the Ruedases have lived on the 1100 block of Bromley Street with the family of Antonio’s son from a previous marriage. While her husband had arthritis and could walk only with a cane, Lorenza was always restless. She would not rely solely on her son-in-law’s small income from delivering meat, relatives said.

So for the last 10 years, on garbage days twice a week, she ventured into a world that family members said sometimes unnerved her, one of stucco strip malls and boulevards, so different from the adobe villages where she spent most of her life.

She made $3 to $20 a week, and diligently stowed most away. Sometimes she bought her step-granddaughter presents. Last year, she paid more than $1,000 for her husband to get his residency card.

Ruedas recently set her mind to do the same for herself.

Her family speculated that she was out late Monday because there were extra cans strewn about after Memorial Day weekend. The relatives could never stop her. On occasion, she wouldn’t even notice them pass on the street because she was so focused.

“She just says, ‘I’m going now. I can’t stay home any more,’ ” said stepdaughter Rosa Ruelas, whose last name is different because of an immigration mistake. “She’d get restless and be gone for five hours.”

Ruedas’ self-sufficient spirit was instilled a long time ago in the small village of San Pedro de los Pozos, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, and cultivated by a hard life that eventually brought her to La Puente.

Her father died before her birth and her mother when she was a child, Ruedas’ husband said. As a teenager, she went to Mexico City to work as a nanny. Over the years, she saved and eventually owned a home on a cooperative farm.

When she met Antonio Ruedas, she was running a small restaurant out of her kitchen. He soon rented a room and they became friends. She took care of him, keeping him from drinking and getting in trouble. He called her jefa, mother.

They were friends for more than 20 years. But when Antonio said he was moving to California to live with his son, she asked to come with him. They got married soon after they moved to La Puente.

Although she was out of her element in Southern California, she became a beloved fixture in the neighborhood and always at the center of family affairs. On Wednesday, the family paused from its grief to laugh about her quick wit and the frequent jabs at Antonio.

“I don’t want to cry too much,” said Rosa Ruelas. “If we cry, maybe she won’t go to heaven.”