Partner: Good Samaritan killed on 101 was always helping people
31-year-old was his friends’ first call for a car problem or a ride
He was everyone’s first call. Whenever friends had a flat tire, they could count on 31-year-old Jose Garcia Aguilar to show up in his gray BMW, ready to change it, anywhere, anytime. He offered buddies rides to appointments or to work without a second thought.
The odd thing is Aguilar wasn’t even that handy, said his longtime partner, Olga Bautista. He was just that kind of person.
“If somebody needed something, if I needed something — he just wanted to do that,” Bautista said.
But when that impulse extended to strangers on a dark highway last week, tragedy befell him.
At around 2 a.m. Feb. 21, Aguilar was driving home to San Carlos on Highway 101, near Third Avenue, when he saw a three- car pileup, according to the California Highway Patrol. A blue Scion xB had crashed near the center median, followed by a Ford Explorer and a Mercedes.
Aguilar pulled up behind the Scion to check on the three drivers, flashing his BMW’s hazard
lights before getting out of the car. But as he headed toward the pileup on foot, another vehicle struck him — and fled the scene, leaving him to die on the roadway.
At home in San Carlos, Bautista figured his phone had run out of power. She usually waited up for Aguilar to chat about the day — what specific havoc their 6-year- old-son Ethan had wreaked, funny tidbits from her part-time job at Home Depot and his as a carpet cleaner.
“I just wanted to know he was fine. I never got any answer back,” she said.
She fell asleep with her phone by her side. Around 6 a.m., after frantic calls to Aguilar’s friends and his father, Bautista got a call from police officers and then the coroner.
Now she’s left remembering all the times she urged caution when Aguilar headed out to do a favor for a friend.
“I’d always tell him, ‘ Be careful, look where you go, where you park,’ ” Bautista said. “He listened, but he was like, ‘I just feel like doing it.’ … He never thought about something happening to him.”
The couple first met at Raison D’etre Bakery in South San Francisco in 2012, where Aguilar got a job shortly after moving from Tlaxaca, Mexico. Bautista had already worked there for a year, packaging up specialty loaves and cookies.
The duo became fast friends, and then more.
About a year and a half into dating, Bautista found out she was pregnant with Ethan, and they moved in together in San Carlos along with her mother.
Weekends were spent trekking to the Great Mall in Milpitas, so that Ethan could jump around in the Bounce-a-Rama, or watching action movies at the Capitol Drive- In in San Jose. Bautista teased Aguilar for his not- quite-perfect English; he talked back by reminding her she was almost two years older.
He was a little shy, but that didn’t stop him from talking to every homeless person he met and offering a few bucks, his partner recalled.
“He was always telling them, you know, ‘ Keep it up,’ ” Bautista said.
The California Highway Patrol has counted a handful of deaths similar to Aguilar’s recently, said CHP Officer Ross Lee. Authorities say that anyone involved in a crash — and passersby — should remain in their cars with the seatbelt fastened. But it’s easy to forget.
“If you want to stop and help, it’s very noble — but the best thing to do is call 911 and report the information and tell us there’s a hazard,” Lee said. “People have an expectation a lot of times that drivers are going to see them, but they don’t, especially at nighttime.”
Bautista wishes she could ask Aguilar what was going through his head when he stepped out of the car. She wishes she could talk to the person who drove away in the blue or green SUV who’s still at large. She wishes she could explain the pain she’s feeling right now and that it’s not going to go away tomorrow or in a month or forever.
But she has a small kernel of strength to hold onto.
“That’s how I’ll remember him, the kind of person that he was, and that he did something good that I’m going to be proud of all my life,” Bautista said.