Family’s odyssey ‘worst heartbreak of my life’
San Jose woman who died of COVID-19 was the ‘rock’ who held things together
Arcelia Martinez beamed as she sat in the hospital room, cradling the firstborn child of her youngest daughter. For the woman now affectionately known as “nana” to six, meeting her newest grandchild was as special as the first.
“She just loved being a nana,” recalled Maryann Martinez, one of her four daughters. “She made everything so special for them.”
But just 10 days after the birth of her sixth grandchild, the lives of Martinez and her family members turned upside down.
As she always did, Arcelia Martinez, 65, put on a tough face, so her family was almost entirely unaware of her symptoms, until it was too late.
On March 21, the San Jose woman — who had worked as a cashier at FoodMaxx
“I wouldn’t wish this on anyone else. My mom died all alone, for seven days by herself, and we can’t even give her the funeral she deserves.”
— Gina Martinez, Arcelia Martinez’s older daughter
in San Jose and was known for her big heart and unrivaled cooking skills — died of COVID-19.
Martinez had diabetes and was dependent on insulin, but no one thought her life would end this way. Just the day after meeting her newest grandchild, Martinez hopped on a plane for Los Angeles with her daughter Maryann and 9-year-old granddaughter Alyssa to celebrate Alyssa’s birthday with their yearly trip to Disneyland.
But the trio was only able to enjoy a few hours at the park on March 13 — coincidentally the same day that park operators announced they would be closing it due to concerns over the spread of coronavirus — before Martinez told them she was not feeling well and they decided to go back to the hotel.
The next day, they got a flight back home to San Jose.
At first, Martinez said she was merely feeling weak. Then she started coughing. And by the time she got off the plane, she was having trouble breathing. They immediately went to O’Connor Hospital in San Jose, where she spent the final seven days of her life.
After a CT scan showed signs of the disease, Martinez was tested for COVID-19. When the results of the first test could not be read correctly, she
was tested a second time, according to her family.
Four days after she first was admitted, on March 18, the results of Martinez’s second test came back positive.
Despite the troubling test results, Martinez’s family was given a far-too-brief glimmer of hope the following day, when she was approved for a promising experimental drug from Gilead, a Foster City pharmaceutical powerhouse.
But by 5 p.m. March 21, the drug still had not arrived. And, Martinez’s older daughter, Gina Martinez, received a phone call from the hospital informing her that she likely only had just 30 minutes to see her mom before she would die.
Making it with only three minutes to spare, Gina stood behind a glass window and watched her mom lying in a hospital bed in her isolation room as nurses donning protective gear and face shields hummed around the room.
“To be honest with you, I didn’t even know she had passed,” Gina said. “I was just watching her and then noticed one of the monitors went black.”
When the doctors told her that her mom no longer had a pulse, Gina broke down.
“It was the worst heartbreak of my life to know that I’m never, ever going to see my mom again,” she said. “It’s not real until it happens to your family, and then you see it totally different.”
After learning about Martinez’s coronavirusrelated death, FoodMaxx closed the store out of an “abundance of caution.” Although she had not worked there since March 6, the store was deep-cleaned and did not reopen until March 26.
The backlash came swiftly. The Martinez family said after news broke that an employee at the store died, they received vicious, verbal attacks on social media.
“It’s very hurtful what people are saying — that she spread her germs everywhere
around the store. She’s a person. She has a name. She’s not the coronavirus patient who worked at FoodMaxx,” Gina said.
Martinez’s family doesn’t know how she contracted
the virus, which has infected more than 4,000 Californians and killed at least 83 statewide, including 19 in Santa Clara County. But she was friendly and loving to nearly everyone she met,
they said, especially when it came to her cooking.
“That’s how she expressed her love for you,” her sister Bernadine Galinda said, noting the family favorite was her homemade lasagna. “She already had an apron on and she always was cooking — that was her thing.”
“It was pretty much like driving Miss Daisy around because she’s the one that brought life into the party,” her husband, Sam Martinez, said about their motorcycle rides.
Sam, who met Martinez while working at the Memorex cassette tape plant in Santa Clara, said goodbye to his wife of 38 years on March 14, the day she was taken back to a hospital room and first tested for the coronavirus. One of the last images seared in his mind was the look of sheer concern on her face.
“I just remember that look, not knowing that would be the last time I see her,” he said. “We have to play the hand we’re dealt, and in this case, it was a stacked deck.”
A couple of days later, Sam tried to drop off a teddy bear and a note to let Martinez know her family was thinking of her. He wasn’t able to make it past the lobby. So the medical staff took the mementos and promised to give them to her.
“Through this whole ordeal I kind of felt like a prisoner,” Sam said. “All I got was a phone call.
“It’s a real helpless situation finding out how dire it is and just getting pieces of information.”
The family — still reeling from the loss of their family’s “rock” — has scheduled a funeral for Martinez on April 13. But under guidelines from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, only 10 people will be allowed in the room — her husband, her four daughters and her five eldest grandchildren.
No spouses, no siblings, no friends. They can’t even have a priest in the room to deliver a service.
“I wouldn’t wish this on anyone else,” Gina said. “My mom died all alone, for seven days by herself, and we can’t even give her the funeral she deserves.”