COVID-19 VICTIM REMEMBERED FOR HIS KINDNESS, HUMOR
Suzette Palmer still is dealing with the grief of losing her son to COVID-19, but she also remembers the many laughs he brought her.
“He was a jokester,” she said. “He would call me and say, ‘Hey, Mom, what are you doing?’ I’d say, ‘I’m just watching TV and sewing up a hole in Romy’s (her husband) pants. Then I’d say, ‘Hold on, there’s someone at the door.’”
And it would be her son, Trinidad McGee, standing at the door, a phone in his hand and a grin on his face.
“I fell for it every single time,” Palmer said. “He would love to play jokes on me.”
McGee attended Sweetwater High School and grew up in National City, and was living in East San Diego when he died April 8 just days after testing positive for the coronavirus.
Palmer said her son was rarely seen without one of the baseball caps from his large collection. He also collected comic books and Chargers memorabilia, having stuck with the team even after they moved to
Los Angeles. When his aunt swore them off, he acquired her discarded collectibles, including signed footballs from players from the 1960s, Palmer said.
His mother said he started working when he was young, taking a job making plastic pencil holders when he was 17, and then got a job at Target.
Focused and determined, McGee took a job as a dishwasher at St. Paul’s Villa retirement community and worked his way up to the wait staff and then prep cook. Palmer said the person who was the food service manager took him under his wing and led him to become a chef.
“He had a natural aptitude for it,” she said, adding that all his colleagues loved working with McGee.
He was employed at Atria Senior Living, a retirement community, when a staff member tested positive for the coronavirus in late March, Palmer said. Then McGee tested positive, as did his wife and son.
“Trinidad wasn’t showing any symptoms,” Palmer said. “He had the chills and went to bed that night.”
His mother said it had been just four days since he tested positive. She recalled his wife, Jesse, had said she had made him some fresh ginger tea in the morning of April 8 and tried to wake him, but he didn’t look right. When she returned later and tried to shake him awake again, he was stiff.
Palmer said McGee would have been 49 on Sept. 16, and his family had a birthday celebration in his memory. She said the loss has been very hard, but she is thankful for the memories.
“I’m so blessed to have a clip of his voice on my computer so when I have one of them hard days I listen to his voice and it will give me strength,” said Palmer, who also talks to a photo of him every day.
He is survived by his wife, sons Adrian, Joshua Ty and L.J, daughters Liz and Victoria, three grandsons and one granddaughter.
“Everybody he met, he always put a smile on their face,” she said about her son. “He never a bad word to say about anybody.”
If you have lost a loved one to COVID-19, the San Diego Union-Tribune would like to hear from you to share that person’s story. Contact us by emailing gary.warth @sduniontribune.com.