Desperate measures
BEFORE THEY ENTERED THE EMERGENCY room in San Antonio in September, Randy Hinojosa turned to his wife of 26 years and assured her that they’d both get better and see each other again.
“I said, ‘We came together. We leave together,’” he recalls.
Five weeks later, Hinojosa had recovered from his bout of COVID-19, but Elisa Hinojosa had not. On Oct. 25, she died of the disease.
Faced with a $15,000 bill for funeral expenses, Hinojosa, 52, paid it without hesitating, even though his own four-day hospital stay had set him back $5,000 and the pandemic had hurt his business as a self-employed contractor.
“I knew what I had to do as her husband and as her best friend,” he says. “I said I don’t care if I have a penny to my name. I’m going to make sure she has something nice that she deserves.” When their three children grew concerned that he would deplete his savings, Hinojosa turned to GoFundMe, where a total of 114 people donated more than $9,000.
“I didn’t even want to
