"Caregiver’s Death Leaves Questions," The Bronx Beat, 5/2007 -- NEW YORK

Just two days after arriving at John F. Kennedy airport from Manila, Gabriel Garcia stood a few feet from his mother's casket in a funeral home in Greenwich Village, his face twisted in grief. The oldest son representing a family thousands of miles away, he rose from the first row, facing a room filled with Filipinos who had come from Queens, New Jersey and the Bronx. The crowd spilled out into the hallway.

First, he apologized for his lack of English.

"Pasensya na," he said in Tagalog. "I'm sorry."

Then, he began to describe the life of his mother, a life that began in the Philippines and ended in the Bronx, three years after she immigrated.

In the early morning hours of March 14, Felisa Garcia, 58, a caregiver for an elderly couple, died in her apartment in Riverdale, leaving three sons and a daughter in the Philippines. Police ruled the death a suicide by hanging. But the Garcia family is now calling for a new investigation, citing a note left by Garcia that alleged abuse and harassment by one of her employers.

"We still don't know what really happened," said Gabriel after the funeral. He looked around at the packed hallway, dazed in the barrage of media and supporters that greeted him on his first trip to the United States.

"I didn't know there would be so many people," he said.

Garcia's death comes at a time when the Philippines is increasingly dependant on overseas workers to keep its economy running. Last year, workers abroad sent a record $12.8 billion to families back home, according to the Central Bank of the Philippines. Two-thirds of the 65,000 Filipinos in the city live in Queens, but the population in the Bronx has doubled since 1990 to its present number of nearly 5,500.

Garcia's death set off a torrent of emotions across the city among the Filipino community.

"That's the sad situation," said Cristina Godinez, an attorney based in Manhattan who represents immigrants. "The Philippines is actually pursuing an economic policy of exporting its human resources."

The phenomenon, while bringing needed prosperity to some, can come at a price for families divided by great distances. Garcia's death brought two of her sons more than 8,000 miles to claim her body, while leaving her two other children back home to await their mother's arrival a full month and a half after her death.

"They are all scattered and isolated from each other," said Godinez, of the city's domestic worker population. Meanwhile, jobs in the Philippines, she said, are limited. "There's no policy to build an internal economy."

The case has become a flashpoint for the media in the Philippines, with television news programs featuring regular updates on the developments and emotional interviews with Garcia's children in Batangas, her native province, just south of Manila. Her situation has hit a nerve with an audience that is familiar with a series of documented cases of abuse of overseas workers. But the specifics remain murky.

A community group representing the family, Philippine Forum-KABALIKAT, based in Queens, said it plans to send a letter to Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson's office asking for an investigation. Garcia did have a green card and, like many Filipino immigrants, had a professional background in her native country. She was a teacher and also worked in a government office in the Philippines, according to her family.

"We feel so sad and shocked," said a friend of Garcia's, who declined to give her name because she felt an investigation may still be reopened. The woman, who worked with Garcia during the past year at a nursing home, sat at a park just a few blocks from where Garcia died, motioning with her hand toward the apartment.

"The last time I saw her she had her hair trimmed with brown tips," said the woman, who spoke with Garcia a week before her death. "I said, 'Oh, you're blooming! Maybe you have a boyfriend.' She said, 'I wish!'"

News of Garcia's apparent suicide baffled other Filipinos in the area, said the friend.

"It's a mystery," she said. "Only she knows why."

After the funeral, Gabriel Garcia walked across the empty room to a poster filled with letters to and photographs of his mother. He pointed to a picture of his mother, who sat on a bed, smiling into the camera. She had seen her share of hardships in life, he had said earlier during his speech.

2008 Copyright by The Bronx Beat and the author. All rights reserved.