Nanny gives weary city a lift: ‘Exactly what you would think of when you think about a hero’
Sometimes heroism comes like a bolt out of the blue.
One act of valour that can raise an entire city’s spirits, and certainly, hunkered down in pandemic gloom and grumbling, this city could use a bit of collective uplifting right now.
I give you Jillian Mendoza. When the 29-year-old nanny left her midtown residence on Wednesday morning, pushing her two young wards in a double-stroller, she had anticipated a trip to the park, and safely home.
Then a vehicle jumped a curb on a busy street, brakes screeched, glass shattered, and the world turned sideways in the blink of an eye. Mendoza lying broken and bloodied on the sidewalk. Yet with the kind of strength and will that seems often a mythic trait of mothers protecting their children, and despite the fact that these two little boys were not born to her, Mendoza pushed the stroller out of harm’s way, the carriage pinned within a narrow wedge between the car and the front wall of a hair salon.
“She was seriously hurt and still trying to push the kids to safety,” Toronto Police Duty Insp. Michael Williams tells the Star, admiration in his voice. “Exactly what you would think of when you think about a hero.
“Part of the bumper had squeezed the stroller against the wall. She kept pushing it with the children still inside.”
Thinking instinctively only of the kids, not herself. Possibly, in that moment of collision, saving their precious lives.
Some luck, some quick thinking.
“When initial responders got there,” adds Williams, “they were concerned for her life.”
Mendoza suffered several fractures. Rushed to emergency, she underwent three surgeries on Wednesday and another on Thursday.
And still she told her friend, Anna Gonzales, over the phone: “I’ll be OK. I’m fighting. Please tell everyone my gratitude.”
Grateful for the donations that have poured into a GoFundMe page Gonzales had established immediately. By Thursday evening, more than $43,000 had been collected. The goal is $50,000.
She’ll need it. Mendoza is from the Philippines, among the thousands of Filipinos working as nannies in Canada. The women who care for our children as if they were their own.
“I’m not surprised that she was so brave,” says Gonzales, like Mendoza a Filipino nanny, part of the network of caregivers, for youngsters, for the elderly, who’ve befriended each other in what is, for them, an alien universe. “I know how she loves the boys. She would do anything for them.”
A single mother, Mendoza left her own young daughter, Ohana, in Manila, with grandparents, for the opportunity to work in Canada. A nurse by profession, Mendoza realized she could earn more money as a live-in nanny in Toronto than a nurse in Manila, sending home almost her entire wages every month.
“She’s the single provider for the family,” says Gonzales. “She lives paycheck to paycheck. I know how much she misses her daughter, but she’s doing this for her daughter.
“She’s just building her dream. She gave up her career in the Philippines just to come here and build a better future for her daughter.”
A future which, Mendoza fervently wishes, will eventually include permanent residency for herself and the ability to sponsor her family to Canada. The thread of hopefulness that has sustained so many immigrants in a country built on the shoulders of newcomers.
Gonzales also spoke on Thursday to Mendoza’s mother and sister. There’s hope they can use some of the funds to travel to Toronto as soon as possible, if permitted on compassionate grounds to sidestep the COVID-19 border restrictions. Because it will be a long recuperation period.
“They’re all in shock right now,” says Gonzales, who initiated the GoFundMe campaign to support her friend through the coming weeks and months.
Money coming in mainly anonymously, and mostly in $20s and $50s, suggesting that many of the donors may be women like her, caregivers in a foreign land, separated from family, with little to spare, but anxious to help.
Another friend of Mendoza, a woman named Cheryl Catricala, heard the awful news that a woman and two kids had been hit by a car in the vicinity around 11:30 a.m. Immediately her worried thoughts went to Mendoza and the boys.
“I tried to call Jillian because I know the way she goes through the streets. When Jillian didn’t answer, I called the (hospital) many times and they didn’t answer. I kept calling to see if Jillian was that one. It’s terrible what happened.
“Jillian is an amazing friend. Before quarantine, the kids come over to the house to play with my daughter. When the virus came, we stopped seeing each other. We would just call each other.
“She saved two lovable kids.” Insp. Williams dashed to the scene on St. Clair Ave., just west of Dufferin St., concerned as well that there may have been more to the incident that a traffic accident. “After the van attack, you have to think about these things.” (The April, 2018, rampage along north Yonge Street, was a deliberate assault that killed 10 and injured 16, some critically.)
There was no malice involved here, just an inexplicable and very nearly tragically fatal accident. A Nissan Pathfinder, driven by an 82-year male motorist, that had apparently reversed while “attempting to park and mounted the curb,” Williams told reporters at the collision scene. The SUV had taken out a parking meter before striking Mendoza.
“She actually sounds like she is a hero, possibly pushing this stroller out of the way of the vehicle,” said Williams. “Everybody here is thankful she took the actions that she did.
“It was the worst accident I’ve ever seen.”
The children, aged two and four, reportedly, received only minor injuries and were taken to the hospital.
When Williams got home, he wondered to his wife whether anyone would undertake a GoFundMe campaign for the severely injured woman.
“You hear about so many GoFundMe’s for ridiculous reasons. I was hoping that the community would step forward for this woman.”
Among those who’d rushed to assist was dentist Dr. Gary Klein, along with his office manager, after a patient burst into the office. “One of my patients said there’d been a terrible accident outside.”
Klein saw to Mendoza while his office manager saw to the children, who were still strapped in their stroller.
Williams says he was particularly heartened by strangers pitching in to help before professionals arrived.
“These days, you see so much (footage) from people just standing around taking videos with their cellphones instead of actually doing anything to help.”
The driver, who was also treated for injuries, is co-operating with the investigation, says Williams.
Police are looking at why the accident occurred, whether the age of the motorist is a factor, and, if, perhaps, a medical crisis for the driver had contributed. Investigators are also collecting video surveillance footage from businesses in the area.
No charges have been laid at this time.
Police are looking for anyone who might have witnessed the accident.
Mendoza is in stable condition.
“I told her about the GoFundMe support and all the kind words and the prayers that people are sending to her,” says Gonzales.
“She kept saying, ‘Thank you so much.’ ”
A family and a city says thank Jillian.
“I’ll be OK. I’m fighting. Please tell everyone my gratitude.”
JILLIAN MENDOZA
WHILE IN THE HOSPITAL