No chance to say goodbye
It is a legacy any patriarch would be proud of: four children, 18 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Indeed, Salvador Castañon’s descendants are so numerous that they can hardly squeeze into the living room of his daughter’s north Stockton home.
And yet, as crowded as the room seems, there is a gaping hole in its center. Salvador himself is not here to see his own family flourish. He was murdered while talking a walk more than 12 years ago, an utterly gratuitous act of violence that robbed an entire generation of the chance to know him and learn from him.
So often in Stockton it is young people who are mourned and buried by their parents and grandparents. Salvador was 76 years old and had lived a good life. But his death is no less tragic. It’s entirely possible that he still would be alive today, cracking those corny jokes, taking the hand of a great-granddaughter for a quick dance in the hallway, or slipping “grandpa money” into a great-grandson’s pocket.
“There was really a lot of life in him,” said grandson Jose Gloria, who was 13 when his grandfather died. “He was just a very happy person.”
A native of San Antonio, Salvador brought his young family to Stockton where he got a job cutting lumber. As if his own family wasn’t large enough, he spent years after his retirement working as a mentor for troubled youth.
When he wasn’t doing that, he could be found walking to McDonald’s for a cup of coffee. He walked just about everywhere, which is why he was in such good physical condition for a man in his mid-70s.
He was walking, in fact, on April 26, 2005, when two people approached him near Bianchi Road and March Lane. They simply could have demanded money, his family says, and Salvador would have given it to them. Instead, they beat him so severely that he lapsed into a coma.
When Salvador didn’t wake up after three weeks, his family let him go.
Arrests were made and punishments rendered. But nothing could change the fact that Salvador was gone.
“We never got a chance to say goodbye,” Theresa Castañon, his daughter, said.
The family carried the burden long after news coverage of the attack had ceased and the rest of the city had forgotten. Theresa Castañon already was struggling with depression. Then her father died. Three years after that, her son, Anthony, died in a firearms-related accident.
Her depression deepened. She said she contemplated suicide.
“I needed my Daddy there with me when I lost my son,” she said. “I needed him to tell me that things would get better for me and that my son was in a better place.”
Salvador’s children struggled to explain to their kids what had happened. No longer would they be able to sneak up behind grandpa and turn his ball cap around. There would be no more spontaneous dancing and no more grandpa money.
There was, in a sense, a loss of innocence. Some family members felt compelled to worry more about their own welfare. Granddaughter Liliana Martin, now 29, found herself less trusting of the world.
“I don’t walk alone anymore,” she said. “That’s something I don’t really do.”
Even the joyful moments never were the same. Each new birth in the family carried with it a tinge of sadness. Salvador’s last grandchild arrived a few months after his death, and he never did meet any of his great-grandchildren.
The stories about him live on, of course, and some of the grandchildren have Salvador’s curly hair. One even has the same dimpled chin.
More than a decade later, the family is stronger, more protective of each other. Many of them speak openly about their pain, saying it helps them heal.
But the passage of time has not made their loss any less tangible.
“It’s a shame he’s not able to enjoy his great-grandkids,” Cecilia Shanabrook, his daughter, said. “Because I know, just by looking at them … Oh, he would have loved just being around them.”
