Santa Rosa boxing coach Danny Rizzo lost the battle of his life to COVID-19

Noise once bounced off the walls inside the Danny Rizzo Pro Boxing Gym on Santa Rosa Avenue.

Against the rhythm of sparring gloves and music, the loudest of all was Danny Rizzo, a big-spirited coach booming commands for situps, pushups or burpees. You have to work hard if you want to be a champion.

Rizzo died Feb. 22 at Kaiser Santa Rosa Medical Center after a nearly three-week battle with COVID-19, his family said. He was 47.

The gym was a cacophonous and humid refuge for troubled kids and serious boxers alike. Now, it is quiet.

“I haven’t grieved yet. I’m still thinking he’s going to walk into the gym,” said his close friend and gym partner, Oscar Espinoza, 46, of Rohnert Park. “He left a lot of things undone, and a lot of stones unturned.”

Rizzo is among at least 306 Sonoma County people known to have died from complications of COVID-19 since the virus first emerged one year ago in the community. More than 530,000 people across the United States have died after getting the virus, each death an enormous loss, an interrupted future, an empty half of the bed.

Rizzo dreamed about finding a champion to represent Santa Rosa in the ring, but would die before he could fulfill that mission.

“Boxing was full time,” said one of his daughters, Danise Rizzo, 14, of Santa Rosa. “He loved that gym more than anything.”

Rizzo was born in 1973 in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. His parents were Alberto Rizzo and Jilma Alvarado.

The exact details of his childhood vary depending on who is recounting his stories — but boxing is a constant. He started training at around 7 years old, cleaning shoes to earn his place at the gym. One of his heroes was the 1960s Nicaraguan boxing champion Alexis Argüello.

Rizzo came to the United States when he was about 12, joining his mother who was already living in San Rafael, according to his first wife, Jackie Alvarado, 46, of Santa Rosa.

Rizzo had a rough adolescence and early introduction to fatherhood.

Rizzo was 16 when the eldest of his eight children, Deborah Alvarado, was born. He met her mother at their San Rafael school. They would have a second daughter, Ashley Rizzo Alvarado, eight years later.

Rizzo became an avid fighter at a gym in San Rafael, traveling across the country for tournaments and bouts.

“He was very strict. He wanted everything right, and he would correct you,” Alvarado, 30, of Santa Rosa said of her father’s coaching style. “He loved to joke around, that’s for sure. That’s what I’m going to miss about him.“

Rizzo told stories about the pummeling he once received from Chiquita Gonzalez, a champion boxer from Mexico. He traveled across the state, the country and sometimes the world for matches, his family said.

A little over two decades ago, he moved into a house on the Rohnert Park property of Carol and Bob Sissa, a move that brought him into the fold of the Sissa family. Rizzo helped the Sissas with their heifers. He and Bob Sissa, who died in 2004, watched boxing matches together. They celebrated holidays together and called one another family.

“It ended up that he called me Mom and that was fine with me,” Carol Sissa, 85, said. “He just was such a kind person and a generous heart and so helpful to me. He was part of our family.”

He shifted from fighting to coaching after doctors warned him that boxing was taking a toll on his body.

He started his boxing club in the backyard of the Santa Rosa home he shared with his wife, Dayra Carlos, 32, who he married about 14 years ago. They built a gym at the Flower Avenue home, but the unpermitted structure burned down in 2012 and they couldn’t rebuild it. They found a new and permanent gym across the street in an old muffler shop.

Danise Rizzo recalls going from car to car in Walmart and Target parking lots, putting flyers about her father’s boxing club on windshields.

When the pandemic first hit one year ago, Rizzo had to close his gym, but he would still go there every day, his family said. Espinoza said they started quietly letting people come back, afraid to let their business dissolve completely.

They tried to be safe by opening with hand sanitizer, but Rizzo wasn’t convinced the pandemic was a true threat, according to Espinoza and Alvarado.

Several family members came down with COVID-19 in January. Late that month, Rizzo traveled to Los Angeles to coach a boxing match. Back home, he told his family Feb. 4 his throat had started to hurt, they said.

Then the fevers started. He still refused to see a doctor, knowing his family couldn’t come with him to the hospital, they said. His wife called for an ambulance Feb. 9 when it became too hard to breathe or walk.

Rizzo’s penchant for taking photos and videos didn’t stop once he was in the hospital. He posted a video as he lay prone on a hospital bed, a ventilator mask covering his face, asking friends to pray for him.

“No se olviden de mi, por favor,” he said. Don't forget about me, please.

He spoke with family every day, but he at times became despondent. His Facebook Live videos show him struggling to breathe, in obvious discomfort.

On Feb. 22, the hospital let his wife, Dayra Carlos, and his oldest daughter, Deborah Alvarado, into his hospital room. Rizzo’s chest rises and falls with the forced oxygen of the ventilator during a live vigil they held for him on social media. His wife puts her hand on his chest.

“He’s fighting, he’s fighting,” Alvarado said to the camera, holding her father’s hand.

He held up his boxer’s fist.

He would die that night.

Rizzo is also survived by his children Joseph Barela, Antonio Barela, Daniela Canett, Vidi Martinez and Danilyn Rizzo.

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