‘Her story was just getting started.’ Globe-trotting daughter died with Cuban father in Surfside
Father and daughter duo Miguel and Michelle Pazos, world travelers and dedicated professionals, died when the Champlain Towers South collapsed in Surfside, Florida, on June 24.
Michelle had traveled to Miami with her best friend from college, 24-year-old Anastasia Gromova. Pazos’ father, 55-year-old Miguel, had an apartment in the oceanfront Surfside tower condo. The friends wanted a vacation together before Anastasia moved to Japan to teach English and travel the region.
The bodies of Miguel and Michelle were found on July 8 and 9, respectively; Anastasia was among the last victims to be found, recovered on July 18.
Miguel Ángel Pazos, who was Cuban, attended Vladimir Ilich Lenin Vocational School near Havana during the 1970s. At the secondary boarding institution, colloquially known as “La Lenin,” Pazos was a popular student leader who took his studies seriously, classmate and friend Rafael Gutierrez said.
“I remember one time that he had a fracture, and when he returned with his cast, everyone started applauding,” Gutierrez, who is a freelance translator for McClatchy, which owns the Miami Herald, recalled.
After graduating from high school, Miguel went to the Soviet Union to study nuclear engineering. He fell in love with a Russian woman, Elena, who would later become his wife. The couple moved to Canada and had two children.
Michelle Pazos, 23, was the youngest of Miguel’s two kids. She was born in Burin, a small town in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. She had one older brother, Allan.
“Michelle was the sunshine of my life,” her mother told the Canadian Broadcasting Company. “She was everything to me.”
Michelle grew up across continents and countries, shaped and molded by the different cultures. She moved to the Mexican port city of Veracruz as a young child.
“I was four, learning Spanish and how to break piñatas along the way,” a young Michelle wrote about living in Mexico.
The Pazos family moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2006, where Michelle attended the American School in Dubai. In the international city, Michelle wrote in a school blog, she lived in an apartment for the first time, traveled to countries “she would have never dreamed of seeing,” and picked up ice skating again, spending countless hours at the Al Nasr Leisureland Ice Rink.
She was an active member of her high school community, which she called “her favorite part of Dubai.” She was involved with multiple extracurriculars, including
Track and
Field.
She also iceskated competitively.
“Both are very logical activities to do in a desert,” she once joked.
Michelle still holds multiple school and regional athletic records, including in “200-, 400-, and 800- meter dashes, hurdles, relay, and long jump,” the school’s alumni page said. She was named MVP multiple times.
Teachers, school workers, friends, and former students have mourned the loss on social media.
“I remember Michelle as she was friendly, kind and lighted up the HS office when she came by,” wrote one person.
“To be in her presence was to know that she loved life and invested herself in making a difference in the lives of others,” wrote another.
Dwain Confer, a former ASD English teacher who taught Michelle and was also her coach for Academic Games — a school trivia team — described her as a “massive personality” who was “only small in stature.”
“She was just wickedly smart and quick-witted and sharp-tongued,” said Confer. “And wasn’t afraid to wrestle ideas or other people’s ideas. If I challenged her, she totally rose to the challenge, the academic challenge, the personal challenges.”
Pazos went to New
Delhi with the Academic Games team, where she stayed with a host family of students from a sister school. She was the shortest in a group of 6-foot-tall teenage boys.
“I’m like, oh my God, she’s going to be completely run over by these boys,” the educator said, laughing. “It was the absolute opposite. She just corralled them and managed them.”
Borrowing from Walt Whitman’s poem, the team dubbed her “Oh Captain! My Captain!”
“As soon as she joined, it was like, of course, she had to be captain,” said Confer.
Michelle graduated from the American School in Dubai in 2015 and moved back to Canada, where she attended
McGill University in Montreal. In college, she was an honors student who studied marketing management and business.
Michelle and Anastasia met during their junior year, on a multi-country trip in Asia. As they traveled across Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore and others, the young women bonded.
“They came together and became the best friends ever,” said Larisa Gromova, Anastasia’s mother. “After they returned to Canada, they were always together, always smiling, always going somewhere.”
After graduating from college in 2018, the pair of friends stayed in Montreal. Michelle worked at Accenture, a multinational consulting firm, according to Canadian media.
Michelle’s loved ones stretched the globe, from Asia to North America. Along with Anastasia, she traveled to Miami in midJune to visit her dad for Father’s Day.
Miguel was looking forward to seeing his daughter. He had gone to Miami to reconnect with family and friends. Gutierrez had lost contact with him for 30 years until Miguel resurfaced in Miami less than a year ago, and soon he and his old classmates from La Lenin were getting together to share birthdays and meals.
“He was very generous and loving as if the years hadn’t passed,” said Gutierrez, adding that they had gotten together again two weeks before the collapse.
Confer and Michelle stayed in touch over social media over the years. He loved following what his former student was up to from afar.
“I teach literature,” he told the Miami Herald. “And I always think in terms of stories. ... Her story was just getting started.”
Syra Ortiz-Blanes: @syraortizb