‘I hope that they surprise us with a miracle’: Miami couple still missing
Oresme Gil Guerra grew up in a small neighborhood near Havana in the early 1960s.
His home was one of the more privileged ones — it was the only one in the neighborhood with a television. All the kids would come over and watch.
One of the regulars was Mario Gonzalez, a childhood friend of Guerra’s, who now lives just eight blocks from Champlain Towers South, the condo building that partially collapsed on June 24, leaving 159 people unaccounted for according to initial reports.
Guerra is among the missing along with his wife, Betty Guerra. The couple moved to the condo three months earlier and lived on the ninth floor.
His father was a judge and his mother taught Guerra and his sister English when they were still living on the island, before migrating to the U.S. in the late 1970s.
“In my family, my uncles called him ‘risita’ because that was always what he wore on his face,” said Gonzalez, 65, explaining the origin of the nickname, which roughly translates as “smiley” in English.
Guerra has two children, Michelle and Michael, and one grandchild, Gonzalez said.
Guerra was a mechanical engineer by training. He married Betty in 2017 and they shared several properties together including a cosmetic store they owned, his daughter Michelle, 26, told the Daily Beast.
“I think they worked so they could travel. They loved to travel,” she told Daily Beast.
As children, Gonzalez and Guerra hung from the branches of tall trees in front of his house and played basketball. They picked mangoes and threw stones in standing water.
“He was a person that transmitted happiness and optimism,” he said. “He showed how one should always have to fight to obtain what you want in life.
“I hope that they surprise us with a miracle because they have both earned it,” he added.