Salinas family shares story of father who died from COVID-19
SALINAS, Calif. (KION) Patricia Saldaña's family is devastated after losing her father to COVID-19. She’s urging the community to take this virus seriously to protect vulnerable people, like her father who was almost 75-years-old when he lost his battle with COVID-19.
“It was hard to believe. I still don’t believe it that he’s not with us. I still feel that he’s working,” Saldaña said.
It’s the words no family wants to hear: their loved one has died from from COVID-19. Saldaña and her family got the news that her father, Ramon Quintero, passed away on July 18. He contracted the virus just a few weeks earlier.
Even when Quintero was in the hospital, they had faith he would pull through, but things took a turn for the worse.
“Even he thought that he would be discharged, because he didn’t feel that bad, but, like I told you, he got worse and worse,” Saldaña said.
She told KION her father ended up on a ventilator and passed shortly after.
“The worst thing is that when this happens, you cannot see them, you can't even touch them, you can't even support him the way you want because of the restrictions in the hospital, and we totally understand that, but it was a very hard situation for the family,” she said.
The family will remember him as a strong, positive person and a hard worker. He was a bus driver for an agriculture company and took workers out to the fields. Now, Saldaña also worries for them as the pandemic continues.
They don’t know exactly where he contracted the virus.
“I know that they work outdoors, but still, you’re close to other people and you never know, you need to take precautions,” Saldaña said.
2,386 ag workers in Monterey County have contracted the virus since the pandemic began. The county reports more than 760 new cases within just the past month.
United Farm Worker’s Regional Director Lauro Barajas told KION people's worries are going down, even though the pandemic is still very much here.
“Now we have people who have been positive and they’ve recuperated,” Barajas.
But he says it’s still important to take the proper precautions.
“I think very important is when somebody start feeling like sick to report and start doing the test right away,” Barajas said.
Saldaña is encouraging everyone to do their part to minimize the spread of the virus to, in turn, protect your parents, grandparents and the community as a whole.
