HOUSTON — Benito Juarez Cavazos had come to Texas illegally from Mexico on his own as a young teen and was in the process 28 years later of getting his green card when he was swept away in the floodwaters left by Harvey.
Cavazos, 42, had recently received a work permit and Social Security card and was scheduled for an appointment toward getting permanent residency the day after he apparently drowned, his cousins said Friday at a memorial service for the auto body shop worker.
“When he received the Social Security card, he was so excited” because he felt it would prevent him from being deported, Maria Cavazos said. “That was his sense of protection.”
His close-knit family in the U.S. and friends mourned his loss and remembered him as a happy-go-lucky guy who was always smiling, never missed a party where beer was served and would give a friend his last dollar.
The service for Cavazos was one of the first for Harvey’s 42 known victims.
It’s been four days since volunteer rescuers Ben Vizueth and Gustavo Rodriguez went missing in Harvey’s murky floodwaters when their boat hit submerged power lines and everyone was pitched overboard.
The bodies of two other men on the boat at the time – Vizueth’s brother, 45-year-old Yahir Rubio-Vizuet, and 33-year-old Jorge Perez – were found floating in the water soon after. Two journalists for the British newspaper The Daily Mail were aboard and survived.
Vizueth’s wife, Perla Jaquez, trudged through a wooded area filled with downed trees and debris Thursday with other volunteers looking for the missing men.
“There’s still a lot of faith and a lot of hope that we can recover them,” she said in a Facebook Live video.
The funeral of 82-year-old Ola Mae Winfrey-Crooks was scheduled Saturday. She drowned when her car was swept off a farm-to-market road at the San Jacinto River near her home north of Houston. Authorities say it appears Crooks was trying to cross the bridge and the swift water carried her vehicle off the road and into the floodwaters.
A memorial also was being held Saturday for 58-year-old Ruben Jordan, a former football and track coach at Clear Creek High School who disappeared while driving during the storm.
Al and JoDell Pasek want to scatter the ashes of their son, 25-year-old Andrew Pasek, at Mount Rushmore, where they had long planned to take a family trip.
Andrew was on a mission to check on his beloved big sister’s cat when he stepped on the wire, then fell into a lamp post attached to the live wire. Pasek’s friend moved closer to help, but Pasek warned him away.
“He said, ‘Don’t touch me. I’m dying,”‘ said JoDell Pasek.
When news of Cavazos’s death spread through the small, tightknit and mostly Mexican neighborhood of Port Houston, friends were devastated, said childhood friend Rene Velez.
In a funeral home Friday, two singers and a guitarist sang hymns in Spanish as the body of Cavazos lay in a dark blue coffin. He was dressed in a red, white and blue plaid shirt and blue jeans.
His cousin, Olga Cavazos, commented while viewing his body that his ever-present smile was discernible.
Mourners sang along in the small chapel while dozens of others gathered in a nearby kitchen swapping stories.
Maria Cavazos said her cousin was dedicated to his job and insisted on going to work Tuesday despite warnings from his roommate and the blessings of his boss not to show up that day. His car got stuck in a ditch and his family thinks he was swept away by waters while crossing Interstate 10 on foot.
Cavazos was found dead in a parking lot after floodwaters receded Tuesday near a Houston freeway. His death was listed by police as a drowning or accident.
The car was found the next day. It was locked and dry inside.
Cavazos, one of eight children, had not been home to visit his parents in Montemorelos in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León since he arrived in the U.S. because of fears he wouldn’t be able to get back in the country.
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