Community Reformer Faces New Struggle
The house that Hollywood and hope built still stands like a Southwestern palace in this Southeast Heights neighborhood of modest duplexes and small apartment buildings.
Nearly five years ago, the ABC TV show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” moved that bus to reveal the two-story, five-bedroom stucco home, plus a matching duplex and the refurbished exteriors of two existing structures, all built in the space of a week.
It was both a reward and a miracle for the man and his family who already had been hard at work on their own makeover of Albuquerque’s Trumbull Village neighborhood, once infested with crack houses, gangs and blight.
Gerald Martinez had gone looking to set up his ministry, Joshua’s Vineyard, in the roughest part of town, and he found that at Grove and Bell in 2002. Neighbors and city officials credit him with helping to turn around the area and bring people
together.
But now Martinez needs a makeover of his own. He needs another miracle. “He is literally fighting for his life,” sister Georgia Martinez said this week from his bedside at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, where he was rushed from Albuquerque Sept. 12, unconscious, unable to breathe on his own and bleeding internally, his liver diseased with cirrhosis, his body full of toxins.
Gerald Martinez, 62, was brought to Aurora in the hopes that he could be made stable enough for a life-saving liver transplant as soon as one became available. But on Wednesday he was removed from the transplant list, too sick to withstand the rigors of the procedure.
Still, friends and family say Martinez has faced hard times before and pulled through. Faith, they say, remains strong and so does hope.
“Gerald is a fighter,” said Perry Floyd, who served as Martinez’s associate pastor at Joshua’s Vineyard for six years. “There has never been a challenge he was not willing to take on.”
In previous media interviews, Martinez has spoken frankly about his tattered past. He was a high school dropout and drug user, a broken, shiftless young man until he found religion. It’s why he decided to spread salvation to those who were most like he had been.
It’s why he moved his wife, Liesa, and five children to Grove and Bell and opened up Joshua’s Vineyard in a maroon warehouse on nearby Zuni SE.
“I figured if I’m going to minister to them, I should live with them,” he said then.
Martinez bought several condemned duplexes for $320,000 and began renovating with about $60,000 and a lot of volunteers. He also began working with the city, police and neighbors to help weed out the crack houses, the beer cans and graffiti that had marred the community.
“That made him popular with the cops and the neighbors, but not so much with the gang members,” Floyd said. “There was one time when he was beaten up pretty badly by gang members with bottles.”
Slowly, the neighborhood began to heal. Crime rates receded and Martinez’s church grew, the faithful attracted by his charismatic personality and his generosity of spirit.
“He started this whole thing,” said Liesa Martinez, a woman who like her husband is gregarious and spiritual. “The target has always been the next generation, making things better for the future. We’ve got future leaders in this community. We nurture their dreams.”
After the “Extreme Makeover” crew did their TV magic in 2008, Martinez’s mission remained the same, only in even nicer surroundings and with a national spotlight.
The spotlight has dimmed. The grapevines planted on the Martinez property flourish, but the church Martinez founded is gone. And so is he.
Liesa Martinez said her husband started to become too sick to carry on the mission about two years ago.
“He was always so tired,” she said.
He was diagnosed with cirrhosis, caused by undiagnosed and untreated Hepatitis C, the result of his wilder days.
This week, he was placed on dialysis after his kidneys shut down. His breathing is assisted by a tube; another tube helps bypass his esophagus, weakened and prone to bursting and bleeding. He is sedated in an almost coma-like state.
Until his condition improves, he is ineligible for the liver transplant. Without the transplant, he could die.
Liesa Martinez is left to keep things running. She is trying to revitalize the church with the help of her children and some new young believers. She is trying to pay the $1,700 mortgage for the church and the $1,200 for the home (yes, “Makeover” did not pay that off) with jobs from the family’s painting business.
“Right now, we’re just down to nothing,” she said.
An adult son from a previous marriage has been at Gerald Martinez’s bedside in Aurora since he was moved there. On Thursday, Liesa packed up the kids — ages 14, 16, 18 and 20 — and drove up to join them.
When I talked to her as she drove away, she still didn’t have a clue where she and the children would stay or for how long.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” she said. “God always has the answer.”
And maybe, with hope and a little faith, he may have another miracle for the Martinez family as well. UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.