The Search for Angel Alberto Garcia: A Daughter’s Journey to Find Her Father, Uncover His Past, and Connect with Her Long-Lost Family

Accident – Death – Obituary News : A search for a father has led Annette Vega to New York’s Hart Island, the subject of a series titled The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island by Radio Diaries. Annette Vega, now 53, discovered in elementary school that her father was not her biological father. However, she had a happy childhood and loving parents, so she didn’t think much of it at the time. But as she grew older and became a mother at 18, she started to wonder about her biological father. She set out to find him with little more than his name: Angel Alberto Garcia.

Vega’s mother, Jeanne Ortiz, met Garcia when she was 16 years old in 1969. Garcia worked at a local auto body shop and was known as “Machu.” The two spent time together, taking car rides through the Bronx, and Ortiz recalls that he was a charmer and talked about their future together. However, their relationship didn’t last, and Ortiz eventually told Vega that Garcia was not her father. After that conversation, Garcia disappeared, and Ortiz didn’t know what happened to him.

Vega began her search for her biological father online, using only his name and his mother’s name. With such limited information, she faced many dead ends. Eventually, she heard a rumor that Garcia might have been a member of the Ching-a-Lings, a predominantly Puerto Rican motorcycle club known for their outlaw behavior and involvement in drug dealing. She decided to follow this lead and found the Ching-a-Lings’ headquarters in the Bronx. She shared what little she knew about Garcia with the club members, but it was another dead end.

Despite the setbacks, Vega continued her search. She finally got a breakthrough when she did a DNA test and matched with a distant cousin on Ancestry.com. The cousin told Vega that Garcia had a sister named Miriam Garcia, who lived in Florida, just 20 minutes away from Vega’s home. Excited but nervous, Vega reached out to Miriam’s son on Facebook, explaining who she was and how she found them. Miriam called Vega emotional, saying she had been looking for her niece for a long time.

In April 2023, Vega visited Miriam at her home in Florida. Miriam shared stories about Garcia’s past, revealing that their family had a difficult childhood in Puerto Rico. Garcia left home as a teenager and lived on the streets. Miriam also mentioned that Garcia had been arrested on a drug charge and sent to a minimum-security prison called Campamento Guavate De Cayey. It was around this time that Garcia told Miriam he was HIV positive. Miriam recalled the day police officers came to their house, looking for her brother, and informed them that he had escaped from Camp Guavate.

Vega wanted to find out what happened to her father after that. She suspected that he might have died during the AIDS epidemic in New York City in the 1980s. To find answers, she turned to an online database run by The Hart Island Project, which contains records of people buried in America’s largest public cemetery, Hart Island. She found several entries for Angel Garcias but discovered one who had died at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens on August 3, 1989, at the age of 37. The dates matched up, and Vega requested and received a death certificate and an autopsy report that confirmed he had died from pneumonia due to AIDS.

Vega showed the documents to Miriam, who confirmed that it was her brother. On a foggy Sunday morning in the spring, Vega and her daughter went to Hart Island with her half-brother, Angel Garcia, whom she had never met before. They visited the mass grave where their father was buried, along with about 150 others. Vega brushed her fingers across the white marker and planted flowers. As they stood by the grave, Vega and her brother shared stories and memories.

When Vega first learned about Hart Island, she was disturbed that her father was buried there. Her brother expressed a desire to disinter him for a “proper burial.” However, their views seemed to soften as they stood by the grave. They embraced each other, and Vega found closure in finally finding her father and connecting with his side of the family. The search for her father led her to Hart Island, but it also brought her much more than she had expected..