By Nushin Rashidian and Alyson Martin
Jeannette Neumann contributed reporting
When Luisa Chan’s remains arrived at the Coney Island Memorial Chapel from Kings County morgue nearly three weeks after she died, Donna Lombardo, the chapel’s funeral director, knew her name, that she was 34 years-old and she had been born in Guatemala. She knew only one other thing: that Luisa would have a white coffin at the funeral. Luisa and four others died in a fire that destroyed two floors of apartments and a Japanese restaurant in Bensonhurst on Jan. 30. Luisa managed to help save her two children before she died; in her last words to her husband, Miguel, she asked him to take care of young Josias and Maria.
Luisa’s coffin would remain closed. She had been burned beyond recognition and her expression showed the anguish she felt the moment she died. Lombardo opened five coffins and placed a body bag in each. They weren’t named, but instead numbered. Luisa’s number was K1000527. K because she died in Kings County, New York. The number 10 because the year is 2010. The last three digits were 527 because Luisa was the 527th death in Brooklyn this year.
Lombardo reserved the entire funeral home space on a Friday evening for the service because many members of the Guatemalan community are day laborers who cannot afford to miss a shift. Most of the costs of the funeral, $5,425, including flights, were covered by the chapel.
Lombardo had served the Guatemalan community before and the Coney Island Memorial Chapel was trusted.
“It wasn’t about the INS,” Lombardo said, referring to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “No one was going to get deported here.”
With ease of mind, hundreds came to say goodbye to Luisa, Juan Itzep Barrera, Antonio
Ixtazuy Mendoza, Valerio Cupil Santos and Agustin Coyoy Lopez.
Miguel Chan, Luisa’s husband, had no special goodbye. He and the rest of the family and friends dispersed shortly after the service ended at 9 p.m. because the bodies needed to
be boxed up and prepared for travel. Chan was unable to obtain the visa that would have allowed him to return to Guatemala with his wife.
Luisa left the funeral home last Thursday on a Friday flight out of John F. Kennedy
Airport; she was to be placed on a Taca Airline flight bound for La Aurora International
Airport in Guatemala City.
Luisa traveled like cargo. The box, labeled “human remains,” weighed less than 500 pounds.
Just as Chan was embraced after his wife’s death, Luisa’s family in Guatemala found comfort in the time they spent together before and during the funeral. As the airplane from Guatemala City landed, Luisa’s body was met by 155 vehicles, full of some of the 5,000 people who lived in the same town. Luisa’s uncle, Pedro Ordonez Saquic, said he felt their strength.
It’s not surprising that so many would want to say goodbye. Luisa was known for her kindness and selflessness, Saquic said. He remembers when Luisa received a nursing degree and opened a pharmacy in the town to treat her neighbors.
“She fought for the people in her town,” Saquic said.
This past Saturday, Luisa’s coffin was taken to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church where she worshiped before she moved to Brooklyn. By Sunday, she was buried.
The town’s only cemetery, located at its center, couldn’t hold the nearly 3,000 people who attended Luisa’s Guatemalan funeral. There was little question of where Luisa would be buried after the family learned she had died.
“It’s our culture,” Saquic. “The family always wanted to be buried together in our town’s cemetery.”
Family and friends say they still feel that what happened to the mother of two was unjust. They want Daniel Ignacio, the man accused of setting the fire, to serve a long
prison term.
The Rev. Erick Salgado of Luisa’s Bensonhurst church, Iglesias De Evangelizacion Misionera Jovenes Cristianos, collected about $8,000 to go to the living relatives of the five fire victims, but most of that has been used to find permanent housing for those left homeless after the fire. Some community members have offered Chan money to support his Josias, 2, and his infant daughter Maria. Josias was lowered safely, but Maria suffered a severe head injury when she fell during the rescue from the third floor window at 2033 86th Street. Maria continues her recovery at a rehabilitation clinic in Westchester County, where she still struggles to use her right eye.
Luisa’s death leaves her parents and her eight siblings in Guatemala with very little money. Like many immigrant workers living in New York City, she sent money home. Her 63-year-old father has been suffering from a brain injury for 15 years and cannot work. Luisa’s siblings had become financially dependent because they have struggled to find employment.
Here in Brooklyn, Pastor Salgado said he felt a release knowing that Luisa’s body now lies next to Saquic’s mother, his brothers and cousins.
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