More than statistics, the hidden stories of Sonoma County residents lost to the COVID-19 pandemic

A Petaluma man who built decks with true craftsmanship. A Santa Rosa native with a big, boisterous family. A Sebastopol woman who taught her children, then grandchildren, to gaze at the night sky.

Sonoma County has lost more than 100 people to the COVID-19 pandemic that has taken more than 900,000 lives across the globe, a staggering toll from a novel virus first detected in December that arrived locally just six months ago.

Public discussions about the deadly virus often deal in statistics, age brackets and risk factors. Behind the data are unique people whose lives were rich with experience and who made indelible impacts, large and small, on those in their orbits.

Here are the stories of just three of the 105 Sonoma County residents reported to have died from complications of COVID-19, and the reflections of family members left to bear the burden of losing a beloved person to this historic pandemic illness.

Virginia Bruno

Born in 1926, Virginia Bruno grew up on the Palos Verdes peninsula between Los Angeles and Long Beach at a time when horse pastures and farmland were still signature features of the landscape and abalone were plentiful in the waters off Catalina Island.

As a girl, Bruno explored Yosemite and California’s wildlands with her family. They traveled to England in 1936 to join the throngs celebrating the coronation of King George VI after his brother’s abdication.

She graduated from UC Berkeley and earned advanced degrees in zoology, ecology and library science from the University of Michigan and Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles in an era when there were obstacles for women seeking a higher education.

By the time Bruno died Aug. 12 at age 94, already in hospice care with declining health and dementia at Primrose Post-Acute skilled nursing facility in Santa Rosa when she contracted COVID-19, she had charted a long path through life. She married Gordon Bruno after the pair met while she taught middle school science. They raised five sons near Silverlake in Los Angeles and then lived in San Luis Obispo before moving to Sebastopol in the 1980s.

“My mom had a telescope. We’d look up on a starlit night when the moon was in its darker phases,” said one of her sons, Lee Bruno of San Francisco. “There’s nothing like a night in Sebastopol looking at the sky. You see a couple planets, and you see the dog star and Orion’s belt.”

Bruno learned a deep reverence for nature from her parents, especially her mother, Ruby Field, who also had telescopes and taught Bruno and her two brothers to gaze into the galaxy.

Bruno witnessed history. She lived through World War II and cultural revolutions. She tracked the plight of the coho run in her tributary to Green Valley Creek and the Russian River.

Bruno was both intrepid, traveling across the globe even late in life, and deeply devoted to family.

“She tried to impart that in all of us,” Lee Bruno said. “Follow the things you’re passionate about. Try to make a difference.”

Bruno’s health had been declining and her family was anticipating her death. But like so many people who have lost loved ones during the pandemic, they could not have predicted being kept away from her in her last six months of life. While Bruno may not have completely comprehended the isolation due to her condition, her family experienced the heartbreak of separation.

“These are people who are such an intimate part of your life and you lose that intimacy,” her son said. “It is so hard on families.”

In addition to Lee Bruno, Bruno is survived by four additional sons: Louis of Escondido; Ned in New Zealand; Kim of Washington, D.C.; and Alan near Yosemite, as well as 12 grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.

Otoniel Azañon Alvarado

No te preocupes, yo te ayudo. Don’t worry, I’ll help you.

Otoniel Azañon Alvarado’s eldest daughter, Noemi Azañon, can hear her father saying those words. She has not heard his voice since late July when he was rushed to the hospital, never to speak with his family again.

“However he was able to help, he’d do it,“ said Noemi Azañon of Petaluma.

A Petaluma resident, master deck builder and father of four, Azañon Alvarado died Aug. 31 at age 48 at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital after a nearly six-week battle with COVID-19.

Born in 1971, Azañon Alvarado grew up in Retalhuleu on Guatemala’s west coast with five brothers and six sisters on the family farm. They grew corn and watermelon and he was taught to work hard and contribute to the family.

Azañon Alvarado earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at a university and worked on appliances for businesses, plus countless electrical repair favors for neighbors. He left his native country to seek new opportunity in California as a young father in the mid-1990s.

He did electrical work and other manual labor jobs until he found his niche as a skilled carpenter. For more than a dozen years, he worked for Sebastopol-based Deckmaster Fine Decks, mentoring his sons to match his precision and dedication to timeliness.

“If it was raining, he’d get it done,” his daughter said. “He was a hardhead. He wanted it to be done and it needed to be done on time.”

From his arrival in the North Bay about 25 years ago until about last year, Alvarado coached or played with his brother, Rolando Azañon, on San Rafael soccer team La Zanahorias, or carrots, named after their orange uniform T-shirts.

It was only after he collapsed at work July 22 that Azañon Alvarado was diagnosed with COVID-19. The Sunday before, he had been with family at Noemi Azañon’s Petaluma home to participate in a virtual Jehovah’s Witness meeting.

“He looked tired. That, I remember,” his daughter said.

Years earlier, Noemi Azañon recalled asking emergency room nurses treating a laceration on her father’s leg to also give him shots for flu, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, anything, because he was unlikely to seek care on his own.

He came to California without legal paperwork, had no health insurance and was a stoic, careful man.

Noemi Azañon guesses her father never knew he had type 2 diabetes, a condition his family learned about after he was on oxygen and then intubated within the first day or so after he was rushed to the hospital.

He understood some English but could only speak a few words. His family told hospital staff to call him by the names his family used, Pa and “Muco” for strong. She suggested they say familiar phrases, simple things like la paletas, popsicle, or list all the family members who were missing him even the family cat, Pinpi.

“I would ask, ’Can you say these words to him, so he knows his family is with him?’ ” Noemi Azañon said.

She recalled standing outside the glass doors of the intensive care unit at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, watching a nurse touch his cheek and forehead, something she would never be able do again.

The virus nearly took Azañon Alvarado’s favorite sister, Avela Azañon, 62, of San Rafael, whom he called tia, aunt. She grew up helping their mother cook for the family of 14, and was a master at tamales and other dishes.

Noemi Azañon said Avela Azañon was discharged from a Marin County hospital Friday. Several other family members also contracted the virus but were either asymptomatic or had mild illness.

Azañon Alvarado dreamed about moving to Alaska, but he never got the chance to travel there.

“He said he loved the cold, the wildlife, the ocean,” Noemi Azañon said. “He said I can survive just eating fish.”

In addition to Noemi Azañon, Azañon Alvarado is survived by his other children Josue Azañon, Alexander Azañon and Raymundo Ayala, as well as his one grandchild, Aryana Delgado.

Becky Blair

Becky Blair grew up on Leo Drive in Santa Rosa’s Roseland neighborhood with her parents, John and Patricia Blair, her two sisters and three brothers.

She graduated from Santa Rosa High School 1974 and eventually found her footing in the assembly department at Hewlett-Packard in Santa Rosa, operations that eventually shifted over to Agilent Technologies.

“She was the typical’ baby of the family,’ one of her older sisters, Michelle Blair-Weeks, said with fondness. ”She was allowed a few more freedoms than the rest of us were.“

Blair was very social and gregarious. She didn’t drink alcohol, according to her sister, and instead sipped water at the bar of the Nutty Irishman on Piner Road just to be with friends.

“She just was a lot of fun,” her sister said.

About two years ago, Blair experience major complications from diabetes that led to the amputation of one of her legs, according to her sister. She was determined to overcome the challenge of learning to move and regain independence with just one leg. She put her mind toward recovery when she developed a life-threatening infection, leading to a rushed emergency amputation of her remaining leg, her sister said.

Finding herself a double amputee, Blair at first struggled to overcome this profound setback. But she again put her mind toward recovery. Her sister said that she had just begun the process of learning to walk with prosthetic legs earlier this year when the pandemic forced her skilled nursing home facility, EmpRes Post Acute Health and Rehabilitation in Petaluma, to end outside visits.

The isolation was hard. Blair kept in touch with family through frequent phone calls.

“She missed the socialization and being able to get out,” Blair-Weeks said.

She was hospitalized mid-July for an infection and was later diagnosed with COVID-19. She died Aug. 1 at age 64.

Blair-Weeks said it was hard to wrap her mind around the fact that this virus striking communities worldwide had taken her sister. Her sister seemed to anticipate her end.

“Becky had said before she was ever sick that if she ever got COVID, she probably wouldn’t survive it,” Blair-Weeks said. “She said this matter-of-fact.”

In addition to her sister, Blair-Weeks, Blair is survived by her sister, Sharon Farr of Hanford, and brothers Terry Blair of Ukiah and Ron Deghi of Sebastopol.

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