CEC co-workers remember Ernesto Santana(1)

By J. Alfredo Santana

Sue Tang remembers her friendship with Ernesto as close to her family, because he guided her two children to the Pasadena’s main library the day she almost quit her job for lack of help.

Tang, a math tutor at the Community Education Center of Pasadena City College said she clearly recalls July 26 of 2007, date her husband signed for mandatory workshops to be eligible for work at the CEC.  She wanted to follow his steps, but with minor children at home the task was almost impossible.

“It was late in the day, and I told him I couldn’t do it because of the kids.  Ernesto encouraged me to sign for the workshops, and offered to take care of the children most of the day, and he took them to the downtown library,” Tang said. “After that trip, my kids often asked me to take that trip. They said they learned how to push a wheelchair.”

Tang said this behavior was typical of Ernesto Santana, a language, computers and English as Second Language tutor at CEC whose sixth anniversary of death will be remembered Nov. 2, 2013. He was 36 when an Access Paratransit minivan where he traveled en route to UCLA rear ended another car in the interstate 5 freeway, causing legs and ribs fractures he couldn’t survive.

Ernesto lived with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), a disability that causes brittle bones, which easily snap if a person is moved or jerked without caution. The OI Foundation has posted on its website that about 50,000 people in the United States live with this congenital condition, for which there is still no cure.

Former co-workers and his boss still remember him as a unique tutor whose positive attitude motivate students, and earned him hundreds of friends at PCC, campus located a few miles south from the San Gabriel Mountains, in Pasadena, California.  

“He was so amazing, even in his wheelchair. He asked me if I needed help when I needed him most,” Tang said. “When we went to his wake, my daughter told me she knew he was gone, but she didn’t want to see him, because she said if she saw him there she would know it was a done deal.”

Instead Tang’s daughter played music on her viola to remember him. Her son plays piano.

Danny Hamman, education coordinator at the CEC, said Ernesto’s friendly attitude toward work and personality earned him respect and admiration from staff and students, who looked for him whenever they faced trouble with ESL homework, failed to operate the school’s network of computers, or needed assistance with English essays.

“Ernesto worked with ESL students, in adult basic education and with high school students. He worked with anybody and everybody. They are the core group,” Hamman said. 

Please read CEC, Part 2.