Woman mourns ‘love of her life’ killed in stabbing
Widow who lost daughter to cancer says she will continue to help others
SAN JOSE >> Friends say Esmeralda Garcia had already endured a lifetime’s worth of family heartache after she lost her teen daughter to cancer a decade ago. It made them ecstatic when she married “the love of her life” in Rodolfo Lopez.
For the past three years, the couple was blissfully happy. Garcia, who has it encoded in her DNA to help others, even donated a kidney to a friend going through renal failure last year.
But fate still landed another devastating blow to Garcia, when the 31-year-old Lopez was randomly stabbed and killed by an erratic knife-wielding man
Sept. 8 while waiting for his food outside a South San Jose taqueria.
“She had already met her sorrow capacity for her life,” said Delfina Castellanos, Garcia’s longtime friend and whose sister Elisa Nieblas received the kidney. “It’s difficult for us to comprehend the checks and balances of it all.”
The man charged with killing Lopez, 40-year-old Alan Christopher Gaeta, is being held without bail in the Santa Clara County Main Jail on one count of murder using a knife while lying in wait, and a count of attempted murder using a knife in the subsequent attack of a fruit vendor who ultimately called police.
Garcia, 44, is in mourning. Despite everything, she voices faith in the future, to the point where Castellanos said Garcia is actually propping up and “coaching” her family and friends — including her three sons and four grandchildren — who are supposed be doing that for her.
“Sometimes I feel like I lose strength. But I understand this is part of life,” Garcia said in Spanish. “While I have life, I understand there is more for me. I like to help people. That is my purpose, and God gives me strength so I can keep helping.”
Remembering Lopez
Part of that devotion is now channeled toward keeping Lopez’s memory alive. Like how Lopez first asked Garcia out on a date after selling her a mattress at Hank Coca’s Downtown Furniture store in San Jose, a transaction he stretched out to a comical length so that he could keep talking to her. And the time when, barely a month into their relationship, he bought her a car when her old one broke down. Or their February 2014 wedding at La Playita, the Mexican restaurant in Almaden Valley where Garcia has worked for 17 years.
“We were very compatible,” Garcia said. “He was always watching out for me, making sure I was OK.”
Sept. 8 was like any other day for them. Well, almost: Lopez had gotten some dental work done that made his teeth sensitive, so Garcia said she surprised him in the middle of his shift at the furniture store to bring him rice pudding.
But because she made the impromptu trip downtown, there was no dinner ready at their home off Senter Road not far from Hellyer County Park. So they decided to get tacos at a local eatery.
According to San Jose homicide detectives, around 6:30 p.m., Lopez was sitting outside a taqueria at Senter and Coyote roads about a half-mile away from his home. Suddenly without warning, Gaeta approached Lopez from behind, grabbed him with his left hand and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest with a steak knife he had in his right hand.
Lopez — who police and family say had no connection to Gaeta — was left mortally wounded in the gruesome attack captured by video surveillance in the area, according to a police statement of facts submitted to prosecutors.
Garcia had been waiting in the car when she saw a commotion in the rearview mirror, then her husband lumbering toward her clutching his arm and wrist.
“I was stabbed,” she recalled him saying, and when he unclasped his arm, blood poured from a wound.
Garcia remembers it clearly because of the panic in her husband’s voice. He was usually so easygoing that the fearful tone was startling. They fumbled to call 911. A few moments later, he collapsed, and later died at the hospital.
Police say Gaeta got into his black 2000 Nissan Maxima and drove to Hellyer Avenue and Palisades Drive, where he reportedly slashed at a fruit vendor, who ran away and avoided injury, and took a cellphone photo of Gaeta’s car, which had a distinct red flame sticker in the rear window.
Gaeta resurfaced a few hours later around 2:42 a.m. on Sept. 9, when a Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputy on patrol near the San Jose-Cupertino border spotted his car at Bollinger Road and Johnson Avenue, 17 miles west of the knife attacks. The deputy followed the car for about a half mile and pulled him over at Bentoak Lane, and Gaeta was arrested.
A steak knife was seen on the driver’s side floorboard, and Gaeta was still wearing the same clothes he was seen in at the time of the attacks, police said. Investigators contend that during a police interview, Gaeta admitted that both he and his car were at both crime scenes.
‘A life of hell’
Gaeta was a familiar face among homeless advocates who visit encampments around Silicon Valley. Pastor Scott Wagers of CHAM Ministries said he’s known him for 15 years.
“He came to my church, both him and his brother,” Wagers said. “They weren’t living in the shelter; they were looking for God.”
Wagers said he officiated Gaeta’s wedding 12 years ago and that he and his wife have “three incredible kids.” He added that Gaeta had been getting on track after he’d been “living through a life of hell,” including getting shot in the legs in a retaliatory gang shooting years ago.
“He came to church hundreds of times,” Wagers said. “He can be a real devoted man — he doesn’t look like it but looks can be deceiving. But Alan kept slipping back into the streets.”
Gaeta declined a request for a jailhouse interview. Wagers said he and others who knew Gaeta have been trying to figure out what happened. He fears Gaeta began using drugs again.
Meanwhile, Garcia and others who loved Lopez are working to ensure he is remembered more for his life than his death. A memorial service is set for Thursday.
“He was a dreamer. He always strove for bigger and better,” Castellanos said. “And then those dreams stopped, because someone took that from him.”