’You can go, Dad. I love you’: Santa Rosa family shares anguish after patriarch dies from coronavirus

The grip of the virus seemed more tenuous, its spread in Sonoma County much slower, when Hermasillo died in early May. The county had been under strict stay-home orders for six weeks, with many businesses closed, and the health department at that time had reported just over 250 confirmed cases.

But those numbers have risen dramatically since Memorial Day as commercial and civic life has reopened, fueling a surge of cases in late June, with a total of 1,703 reported COVID-19 infections by Saturday and 16 deaths.

Half of the deaths have occurred in the past two weeks.

The virus has taken its greatest toll on Sonoma County’s Latino residents. About 70% of local cases are among Latino individuals, although they represent only 27% of the county population.

Public health experts have said the virus is merely exposing existing socio-economic inequalities that make Latino residents more likely to work in essential jobs and live in closer quarters with family or coworkers — circumstances that have made it more likely for a person to become infected.

Hermosillo’s illness came on fast.

Two days before he became so feverish and disoriented that his family called an ambulance to his Barham Avenue home, he walked to a back shed on the property where he restored vintage bicycles, a hobby the nearly inseparable father and son shared.

"He brought me coffee,“ recalled his son. ”He said he was getting cold, he was shivering. I said, ’Let’s go inside.’ “

On April 26, a Sunday, the younger Hermosillo was called back to the home by a sister worried their father was seriously ill. Hermosillo insisted that he was fine, but his children knew he was not. His son thought his father was having a stroke.

After arriving in the ambulance at Kaiser Medical Center in Santa Rosa, doctors at first surmised Hermosillo had a kidney infection, but eventually on that first day at the hospital he was diagnosed with COVID-19, according to his son.

The younger Hermosillo wrote down every bit of information he could get from hospital staff: his father’s 103-degree temperature when he was admitted; the increasing amounts of oxygen being administered to him, starting at 3 liters per minute and eventually hitting 6. By the third day in the hospital, “they realized he had severe pneumonia” and moved him into the intensive care unit, the younger Hermosillo said.

His fever finally broke Thursday, five days after arriving at the hospital, according to his son’s notes.

For the better part of that week, Hermosillo was in near seclusion at the hospital where his care providers observed him through a window and monitored his condition with machines to limit contact with the highly infectious virus, his son said.

“You can’t just call and say, ’Can you check on my dad?’ ” the younger Hermosillo said. “They check on him once a day. He was just alone.”

Hermosillo was born March 12, 1954, in Mexicali to Manuel Hermosillo and Valentina Lozano. He was 14 years old when he and his brother, Mario Hermosillo, traveled north to work in the Healdsburg vineyards. Hermosillo became a U.S. citizen through the 1986 bill that, under President Ronald Reagan, granted citizenship to nearly 3 million people in the nation without legal documentation.

He started working at Fulton Processors in the early 1970s, according to his son. He married Marguerita Hardy and they had three children: Izzy “Tammy” Schilling, Celina Hermosillo and Jose “Manuel” Hermosillo. The couple later divorced.

Esquivel, the Tex-Mex Video proprietor, recalled how his friend, Jose Hermosillo, would come by the store, usually carrying young Manuel Hermosillo in his arms.

Hermosillo later had another daughter, Samantha Hermosillo, through a subsequent relationship and an adopted son, Sergio Lomeli.

Esquivel recalled decades of closing-time card games in the video store with his two friends, Hermosillo and Mendoza. They watched each other’s children grow up. Esquivel said he often kept Hermosillo company on overnight shifts at the slaughterhouse.

Last fall, when his only grandchild, Aleeysa Hermosillo, started kindergarten at the Santa Rosa French-American Charter School, Hermosillo started a new routine: He picked her up just about every day at the Sonoma Avenue campus. They would get something to eat, then go play at a playground.

“They had a really strong bond,” his son said.

Hermosillo taught his son to fix cars, and his son got his father interested in his hobby restoring vintage pre-war bicycles. Father and son rarely missed the monthly Alameda Point Antiques Faire, always stopping at the same taco truck near the Oakland Coliseum first.

Before he was hospitalized, Hermosillo stopped by Esquivel’s house, as he often did, especially after Esquivel’s wife died several years ago.

“He was always worried about me. He’d say ’Let’s go have something to eat,’ ” Esquivel said.

Esquivel recalled one of the last times he saw his friend, maybe a week or two before he received the call about Hermosillo’s death, news that would break his heart. The friends were being careful about going out because of the virus, but they would occasionally drive to buy fresh tamales.

On this day, Hermosillo called to say he wasn’t feeling well but he’d bring him something to eat. Comida.

“He didn’t want to go out,” Esquivel said. “He came over and called me outside, and said, ’I left you food.’ ”

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.