‘All he wanted to do was work’
Hundreds attend service for UPS driver killed in shootout
They came here for a better life but never lost sight of what was left behind. Frank Ordoñez, who came to the U.S. from Ecuador with his family, believed opportunities here would be endless for him and his two daughters if he worked hard. And he did work hard, those who knew him at UPS said Monday evening.
Co-workers, friends, family and even strangers drawn to pay their respects packed into a Miami funeral home to say goodbye and to comfort one another.
Ordoñez, a UPS driver, was taken hostage by armed men fleeing police after a jewelry heist in Coral Gables on Thursday. He was killed in a public shootout with police.
Word that a hostage was killed, possibly by police, has spread, leaving people in disbelief and angry. They are deeply saddened to lose the 27-year-old Ordoñez.
Young women cried while clutching onto one another at the front of Ordoñez’s casket at the Vior Funeral Home in Miami. Ordoñez was dressed in a light blue dress shirt, his hands were crossed in front. Draped over the side of the casket was the colorful Ecuadorian flag.
“He came here for a better opportunity to live,” said Martha Hero, as tears filled her eyes.
Hero’s husband worked with Ordoñez before retiring. She’s still in disbelief. “I can’t believe it.”
Hero said her husband told her
that Ordoñez had a tremendous work ethic and was eager to please.
UPS worker Mike Alvarez agreed. “He was a hardworking kid. All he wanted to do was work.”
Alvarez said his phone started receiving text messages and phone calls Thursday when word go out that there was a carjacking and kidnapping of a UPS worker in Coral Gables. All he could do was wait as the long 20-some mile chase played out.
The police chased the carjacked UPS van along the Dolphin Expressway, to Florida’s Turnpike and up Interstate 75. The van ran through lights and went into the Century Village complex, making sporadic Uturns at times.
The van hit a logjam in rushhour traffic on the Miramar Parkway. Police swarmed the van. Gunfire rang out incessantly between the two robbers and at least 18 officers from four agencies.
Live television footage showed police taking cover behind cars amid the hail of bullets.
It also showed Ordoñez fall to the ground from the truck. Members of his family, including his stepfather Joe Merino, said they witnessed Ordoñez’s death on television. The FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are investigating. Among the unanswered questions is whose bullets killed the four people.
Ordoñez’s mother wonders if her son’s life could have been saved.
“Why couldn’t they think of something else,” Luz Apolinario tearfully said in an interview with Telemundo News. “People are so smart in this country. How could they not think before they started shooting? They killed him! They didn’t give him a chance.”
Apolinario called her son a family man who worked hard to provide for his two girls, ages 3 and 5. He planned on having a home of his own in a year.
“Every day since he started driving, he would come home so happy. Every day. I have no words to how I feel,” Apolinario said.
For years, Ordoñez had been loading packages for delivery at UPS. He only recently began driving for the company, working as a back-up driver and often operating a route in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood. On Thursday, Ordoñez was substituting for another driver on a Coral Gables route when his truck was hijacked.
The change in scheduled route had originally led Merino to believe the kidnapped UPS driver involved in Thursday’s high-speed chase wasn’t his stepson.
“It can’t be Frank. Frank drives Coconut Grove,” Merino remembers saying to family members as images of the boxy brown delivery truck being chased by a legion of police cruisers flashed across the screen.
But another of Merino’s sons, also a UPS driver, soon called to say that driver in peril on the evening news was indeed Frank Ordoñez.
“We’re heartbroken,” Merino said from his lawn.
The devastation was apparent Monday.
Alvarez said he and his fellow UPS drivers will continue to push on and work hard.
“We’ve got to keep working for him,” Alvarez said. “That is what he would want.”