San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Neighbors mourn loss of grocer to COVID
Beloved merchant an anchor to many residents of Castro
San Franciscans have lost a lot since COVID19 pandemic shuttered our city one year ago. Jobs disappeared. Beloved businesses shuttered. Classrooms closed.
Despite the hardship, San Francisco is blessed with one of the lowest death rates of any major American city — 445 lost to COVID19. That means many of us avoided the greatest loss of all. We didn’t lose someone we loved.
But that good fortune ended for many Castro residents on March 7 when the neighborhood’s anchor passed away. That’s when Sami Bsisso took his last breath in a South San Francisco hospital bed.
If ever there was an essential worker, 65yearold Bsisso was it. He owned Noe Hill Market at 19th and Noe Streets, but he offered far more than groceries. He gave neighbors the sense
they lived in a small town in the middle of this big, frustrating city.
He kept everybody’s spare keys in a basket in case they got locked out. He knew everybody’s car and phone number and called to warn if the streetsweeping truck was rumbling past. UPS and FedEx drivers left neighbors’ packages with him for safekeeping.
Kids couldn’t walk past his shop without scoring a Popsicle or ice cream cone — on the house, of course. Dogs couldn’t pass by without earning a free biscuit. He was always up for a chat. Or just a big smile and a wave if you were in a hurry.
“He loved this neighborhood,” said his oldest child, Said, 29, as he crouched on the sidewalk outside his dad’s store the other day, looking distraught. “The people were all family. This ain’t a business. It’s his second home.”
In January, during San Francisco’s most recent coronavirus surge, Bsisso started feeling sick. He couldn’t breathe deeply, he developed a cough, and he lost his appetite. He tested positive for the coronavirus. His family doesn’t know where he picked it up, but the store is a good guess.
A few days later, he was feeling so bad, he went to the hospital. He wanted to get the COVID19 vaccine, but it was too late for him by the time grocery store workers became eligible in late February. Thirtyfive days after entering the hospital — 25 of them on a ventilator — he died.
His three children couldn’t be with him. His wife could see him only through his room’s window.
Journalist Kara Swisher, who lives near the store and counted Bsisso as a friend, posted a long thread about him on Twitter.
“He was the very quintessence of the word essential, but in the end — the very end — was sacrificial,” she wrote. “This pandemic has taken so many with so many similar dreams who deserved so much more from a country that let them down terribly.”
The store closed for the first time ever, just for two days, so Bsisso’s family could grieve. Customers piled flowers outside his store, and they keep coming. The family takes them to Bsisso’s grave in Half Moon Bay, which is covered in a thick blanket of petals. Customers placed scores of lit candles along the shop’s wall. They wrote messages on