Emma Patiño
84, Hayward
Birthdays and Christmas were special to Emma Patiño, who would craft handmade blankets and pillows for her many grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. She’d add superheroes or cartoon characters or other interests from their lives. One year, Emma made her grandson Jaime Patiño an Elvis Presley blanket — both of them were fans.
“She didn’t have much money, but she had time and she knew how to sew,” he said. “Those meant more than any gifts you could buy at a store because they were made by her. She took the time because she cared.”
Emma, 84, died of complications from COVID- 19 on April 13 at Kaiser Permanente in San Leandro. She’s survived by her three children, five grandchildren and 11 great- grandchildren.
The daughter of a sheepherder, Emma grew up in a large, close- knit family in Del Rio, Texas. When she was 20, she married Ricardo Patiño.
Emma worked different jobs in Del Rio, and her husband took up seasonal work in the East Bay at the old Hunt’s fruit- packing cannery. When the cannery offered Ricardo a full- time job, Emma agreed to relocate their family of five to Union City in 1960.
“She said, ‘ Yes, we’re poor here in Del Rio, at least we’ll have a chance over there,’ ” said Jaime Patiño, a city councilman in Union City. Though neither Emma nor Ricardo finished high school, they watched the next generations graduate college and earn advanced degrees. The couple divorced years before Ricardo’s death in 2004, but remained on good terms, Jaime said.
Emma was a soft- spoken woman who enjoyed visits from her loved ones — when she’d insist they sit and eat something even if they weren’t hungry — and her TV novelas.
In October 2018, Emma moved into the Gateway Care & Rehabilitation Center in Hayward. She had been diagnosed with dementia, but still remembered her relatives and details about her family, and she seemed to be happy there, Jaime said.
Five days before she died, Jaime went to see his grandmother after learning that there was a COVID- 19 outbreak at the facility. They communicated silently through the window of her room; Emma waved at him to come inside, unaware of the halt on visits. A few hours later he went to see her again through the window, this time with his daughter.
“Just within two or three hours, she started having a cough,” he said. She became the 10th resident at Gateway to die of complications from the coronavirus, in an outbreak that killed at least 18 others.
She died just before her 85th birthday. To celebrate her birthday last year, the family took her to a Mexican restaurant in Fremont. It was the last time the entire family was able to gather around her. In one picture, she’s surrounded by her great- grandchildren.