‘She Never Wanted to Go to the Pool’

Water always had terrified Juana Recendiz Nieto. The 23-year-old hotel housekeeper didn’t even own a swimsuit. Despite living in an Aliso Viejo townhouse complex with a pool, she had been coaxed into the water only once before.

Once before Saturday, that is, when Recendiz’s lifelong fear was proved tragically prescient. That’s when the young mother and her 4-year-old daughter, Blanca Barrueta Recendiz, decided to splash around in the community pool, possibly seeking relief from the Memorial Day weekend heat, their family members speculate.

“She never wanted to go to the pool so I don’t know why she went yesterday,” said Moises Barrueta, 28, who is Blanca’s father. He and Recendiz, his companion of six years, had lived at the complex for almost nine months with their daughter, his mother and four brothers. Barrueta said the only time Recendiz ever ventured into the pool, he practically had to drag her.

The mother drowned and the daughter died that evening in a hospital, despite a neighbor’s efforts to rescue them from the water and resuscitate them.

Recendiz was dead on arrival at the hospital; Blanca lingered on life support until Saturday night.

On Sunday, family members were left with their grief and unanswered questions about why mother and daughter even entered the pool.

Authorities didn’t have any ready answers for them. So far, they don’t know the circumstances leading up to the tragedy, although some neighbors said they saw the two playing alone in the pool a little while before they were found.

The small community pool across from the basketball courts and playground was closed on Sunday. Flowers, candles and pictures drawn by children lined its edges. A red sign posted on the gate to the pool explained, “In memory and respect of Juana and Blanca, the pool is to remain unused [until] Tuesday.”

A short distance away, relatives gathered in Barrueta’s living room. Chicago relatives who had just arrived from the airport were taking turns comforting Blanca’s grandmother, Aurora Gomez, who sobbed inconsolably in her bedroom.

Barrueta had been shopping for a car Saturday afternoon. When he arrived home, he saw police officers and police dogs and, strangely, some flowers near the pool gate. Still, he thought they were looking for drugs. Soon after, two police officers appeared at his apartment door. They told him somebody had died and asked: Do you have a wife and child?

“They said, ‘Can you recognize their clothes and shoes?’ ” He did. His daughter had been wearing a bathing suit; Recendiz, a T-shirt and shorts.

Barrueta said he temporarily ignored his grief over Recendiz’s death to focus on his daughter, who was still alive at that point. He kept vigil by the girl’s side at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center.

“I was 100% sure they were going to save her. I was very convinced.”

As the hours wore on, however, his little girl took a turn for the worse.

She died about 10 p.m., with her father at her side.

Recendiz and Barrueta, natives of Amealco and Guerro, Mexico, respectively, met at work more than six years ago. Barrueta had moved to California 10 years ago for a better life, and much of his family followed.

Barrueta described Recendiz as his wife, although the Orange County coroner’s office said her next of kin live in Mexico.

The couple doted on Blanca, their only child, Barrueta said. She dreamed of becoming a model one day.

With her vibrant smile and long, brown hair, Blanca was the star of the complex, where many members of her extended family live. She would twirl around the house, mimicking the late tejano singer Selena and enlisting family members as her backup band. The bubbly, affectionate girl loved to watch the novelas on TV and knew all the juicy plots.

Her grandmother took great pride in Blanca’s ability to write her name at such a young age. “She was very intelligent,” Gomez said.

“She loved to paint her fingernails,” Gomez said, smiling. “When I was sick, she would ‘cure’ me.”

Recendiz, a housekeeper at the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, woke early and worked long hours for her family here and in Mexico. Family members said it was rare for Recendiz to have a Saturday off, and they wondered why she had changed shifts. Perhaps, they speculated, to spend the day with her daughter.