Consider This from NPR - The mystery of a missing father leads to an unmarked grave, new family members

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

For this holiday episode, we're bringing you a story from the Radio Diaries podcast, The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island. Hart Island is a narrow strip of land in New York, off the coast of the Bronx. More than a million people are buried there in mass graves, with no headstones or plaques. Annette Vega never met her biological father. She had been searching for him for decades. That search finally led to Hart Island. Along the way, she found the family that she never knew. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Heart Island is a narrow strip of land in New York off the coast of the Bronx. More than a million people are buried there in mass graves with no headstones or plaques. For this holiday episode of Consider This, we're doing something different. It's a story from the Radio Diaries podcast about a woman searching for a father she never met, a man missing for over 30 years. Her search leads her to Heart Island, and along the way, she finds the family that she never knew. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Thursday, November 23rd. Happy Thanksgiving. It's Consider This from NPR. Since 1996, Radio Diaries has given people recording equipment and worked with them to report their own personal stories and histories. Radio Diary's new series, The Unmarked Graveyard, tells the stories of people who were buried on Heart Island,

America's largest public cemetery. Many of those people have gone unidentified. In this episode, a woman's decades-long search for her biological father leads her to Heart Island. Oh my God, that's the island. It's crazy. It's not a lot of land for that many people to be buried. At first I thought it was eerie, but it's kind of pretty because the fog just like erases the city. It's just so beautiful. It's nicer than I thought. My name is Annette Vega. I'm a registered nurse.

I am 52 years old. I will be 53 this month. I grew up in the Bronx. I lived with two of my younger sisters and my mom and my dad. Looking back, it was a great childhood. So, when I was about seven or eight, I found out that my dad wasn't my biological father. That's the first time I came to know that there was someone else out there. This is a picture of my biological father, Angel Garcia. He looks like he's in his 30s, and he has a long mustache and a DA, hair that's kind of brushed back.

And I'm like, who was this person? Why hasn't he been in my life? Could he be looking for me? I just felt a persistent urge to find out. Hello? Hey, Mom. I just felt a persistent urge to find out. Hello. Hey, Mom. Hi, Annette.

Hi. So I wanted to ask you some questions, if you don't mind. Yeah, go right ahead. Okay. The questions are related to Angel Garcia, who's my biological father. No kidding. No kidding. All right, mother. So what do you remember about him? He was very sweet. He was good to me. He knew he was good looking and he would show off himself and who knows. He had this cologne. Oh my God, it was the best cologne ever. He left that cologne in my drawer and I prayed.

My mom had me at 16. It was a mistake. Not a mistake, but you know. I was in a planned pregnancy, you know. She was a teenager growing up in the Bronx, and there was a young man. Everyone called him Machu. You know, they had a little summer romance. He'd be working in the auto body shop and she'd go home happily with

grease on her backside of her shorts. And I'm like, Mom! He used to love to drive. He used to steal cars. And I think he used to steal cars just for the fun of it. Wow. He was a bad boy.

So I guess maybe I was into bad boys. Who knows? Aren't we all? Do you remember the last time you guys saw each other? I'd seen him after I gave birth to you. We hooked up again and then he used to pick you up and talk to you

and we used to go on car rides with you and everything like that. And then he disappeared one day and I went to his job and they told me no, that there was another woman looking for him and all that. So I never went back and I never looked for him again.

I remember my mom telling me he was kind of a tough guy and she thought that he was in a gang. The South Bronx, one of New York City's roughest neighborhoods. And since the mid-60s, home to an outlaw motorcycle gang who call themselves the Chingalings. I remember hearing about the Chingalings. They were a notorious motorcycle gang that people were fearful of. I thought, they might be with them. So what does it mean to be a Chingaling? The religion we got

is a Chingaling religion. That's the only religion we have. Ride our bikes, party, hang out. This is like a family thing. So I literally walked up to the Chingaling's house in the Bronx. It's like painted in black and, you know, motorcycles all around. And guy comes out looking rough. He comes over, he talks to me and I tell him, I'm trying to find my father. They call him my chew. He has green eyes. Oh, I haven't seen that dude in years. Another woman comes out and she's, you know, out on the stoop having a cigarette and she goes, I remember him. I remember one night we were partying really hard. I got so messed up and he helped carry me upstairs to the bedroom. That man could have done anything to me. And he put me in the bed and put a blanket

on me and left. Nice guy. They wished me luck. They said, I hope you find him. I felt kind of silly looking for so long without a real reason as to why I was looking for him. I didn't need him to be my father, but I still really wanted to find him. There were thousands of questions. Where's his family? Do I have brothers? Do I have sisters? Do I have a grandmother? Do I have aunt? Do I have sisters? Do I have a grandmother? Do I have aunt? Where's his people? It was late January. I got a message from someone on Ancestry who gave me names.

I used the white pages, I used Facebook, and I sent them messages. That evening, my phone rings. I hear this woman crying, emotional. She said, Annette, mi sobrina, mi sobrina. Tanto tiempo, tanto tiempo que te estaba buscando. All this time, my niece, I've been looking for you. I was like, you have? You know about me? Hi, Titi. So I'm here, arrived at my Titi's house. My Titi, Miriam, my father's sister. This is a really pretty home.

I don't need to get a seat back here? Okay. My name is Miriam, Miriam Garcia. My brother is Angel. Angel was your brother. He was younger than you or older than you? My brother was younger. In school, he wasn't. Her younger brother. He only went to sixth grade, Younger than you or older than you? Mi hermano menor.

Her younger brother. He only went to sixth grade, but there was something about him that he could just pick up things. He learned how to work on cars. He could take a car that was destroyed and make it look like new. Angel was a good man, but he had a really, really hard life. There was issues in the home growing up because their father was an alcoholic. And my father went to the streets, and he started using drugs at the age of 13.

He was arrested and in prison from selling drugs. But it wasn't like a traditional prison. It was like a camp. So she said in 1985 or 86, police came to the house to tell them that he escaped. They don't know how he did it. Someone had to have helped him. She received a phone call from him in the summer of 1989 that he was very sick with pneumonia and he wanted to come home.

Her and her husband went to New York. They walked through the streets looking for him. But she never heard from him again. She hasn't seen him in 30 years. She said, I don't think he's alive. Okay, so this is what I find out. I received an autopsy report, and I actually have it with me.

And it says, Angel Garcia died August 3rd, 1989 at 11 p.m., 37 years old. Immediate cause of death, pneumonia, due to AIDS as a consequence of chronic intravenous narcotism. Ivy drug abuser. It says he was buried in a place called Heart Island. People are buried there, people with no ID on them, people who haven't been claimed. And then I spoke to Titi Meriam. We went through it together, and she put it down, and she said, This is him.

You found your father. Hi. What's up? Hi. Nice to finally meet you. Nice to meet you. I can't believe I'm standing here with my brother. Look at his smile. He's so cute. Look at him. meet you. Nice to meet you. I can't believe I'm standing here with my brother. Look at his smile.

Look, he's so cute. Look at him. Thank you. I'm like, it was so nice. So I found out that I had a brother named Angel. I've never met him. He also didn't know where our father was. Clock 201, section 3.

Right there? 201, grave 27. So this is the plot where Angel was buried. Our dad. Wow. I was always his biggest fan, like rooting for him. Yeah. I must have been like seven years old. And we went to the prison to visit him. He gave me like a boat made out of like wood. And that's the last time that I seen him. Well, now I know where he's buried. The people that loved my father, whether it's my brother, my aunt, my cousins, everyone talks about how he was such a good guy. I think they were afraid to tell me the bad stuff, whether it's being in a gang or being in prison, being an IV drug abuser. You know, Angel was not an angel, but it's who he is. I mean, it's not a complete

story without all of it. I'm putting flowers here at his grave, just planting and marking, Because he's here. He's not lost. I'm happy to see where he lays. And to tell him, like, yo, Annette found you, she found us, and we're here. And now we know where you are. That was Annette Vega and her brother Angel Garcia. And a final note, after more than a century of Heart Island being mostly off-limits,

the New York City Parks Department began hosting public tours this week. This story was produced by Nellie Gillis of Radio Diaries. Hear all eight episodes of the Unmarked Graveyard series on the Radio Diaries podcast. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.