Jose Angel Garibay Every day, so help me god, I will post at least one of these stories.

Three men in uniform knocked on Simona Garibay's door in Costa Mesa early Monday, walking past U.S. and Mexican flags proudly planted in her front lawn.

At first she was mystified that these strangers were asking for her by name.

"I didn't know who they were," she said, too upset to say much more. "Then they told me the horrible news."

Her 21-year-old son, Marine Cpl. Jose Angel Garibay, had been killed in combat in Iraq, the Marines told family members. Late Monday, the Department of Defense confirmed that Garibay was one of seven Marines killed in action Sunday near Nasiriyah, Iraq, in some of the heaviest fighting of the war to date.

[...]

He wrote to this mother often and sent money home almost every month, family members said. In his last letter, which arrived from Kuwait on March 11, he asked for a package of his favorite Mexican candies and a CD of popular ranchera singer Vicente Fernandez.

Until that day, his mother, a housekeeper at a Costa Mesa hospital, was unaware that he had been shipped out to the Middle East. Garibay didn't want her to know. In his letter, she said, he desperately tried to keep her at ease.

"Mom, may God bless you, and don't worry about me. I'll be OK," he wrote in Spanish.

Posted March 25, 2003 01:32 PM | Comments (98)