In this photo provided by Clifford Law Offices, Karina Aguilar, her husband, Temo Aguilar, and their son Felipe Aguilar attend a news conference on Aug. 3, 2021, at the office of ASI/NE Healthcare Services in Chicago. After Itza Pantoja's severely disabled son died at the age of 16, she made it her mission to ensure that the wheelchairs, beds and other equipment and supplies that had helped him got to others who needed them.
The head of the at-home care company that took the donation, ASI/NE Healthcare Services, said that just seeing the number of items that Dylan Yadriel Cruz-Pantoja needed made her emotional. “I used to make cookies and cupcakes,” Pantoja said. “I used to babysit kids while my husband was working two to three jobs in a week.”
The path that led the Pantojas to Chicago was a winding one. In the months after Dylan's death in November 2019, the pandemic began changing daily life and Pantoja had trouble finding a local organization that would take the donation so big it filled a garage.
Those masks are a joke. Theatre.