Isabel: More Than Meets the Eye

The photo I used to head this story is of my mom in 1964. She was 27 years old. She was preparing to let me hold my baby sister. I was one month shy of five.

She was not only exquisitely beautiful, she was also intuitively intelligent, trustworthy to the core, an unselfish giver, and a great mom who loves all three of her children and her grandson unconditionally. Family has always been central in her life. She has always felt safety and security within the heart of her family—from when she was a little girl living in extreme poverty in Bakersfield, California, up to being an elderly woman in the advanced stages of dementia living out her last years in her comfortable million‑dollar home in the suburbs of Orange County.

She has achieved much in her life. Not because she was visually beautiful, but because she was internally beautiful.

In 1955, at the age of 18, she left high school—with only a few months left to graduate—to work at a local electronics company, Transonic, Inc., which served as a key player in the United States’ defense and aerospace booms. She had no experience in this field but excelled from day one. This was the beginning of her climb out of poverty, a feat that is almost impossible to achieve in this day and age.

In April 1960 she moved to Santa Ana, California with me, her 3½‑month‑old son. She took a big risk. Throughout the 1960s she worked with various electronics companies, including Babcock Electronics Corporation. By the mid‑1960s Isabel was promoted to a lead position and was responsible for a team of assemblers. By the end of the 1960s she had become an engineer. During that time period it was rare for women to hold such a position—a woman who didn’t even have a high school diploma, a woman who was Mexican. But my mom conquered all these perceived setbacks with her intelligence and her optimistically down‑to‑earth, easy‑to‑get‑along‑with personality.

In 1978 Isabel quit her career in electronics to work with the Corvette Autobody shop her husband Ed (my stepfather since the age of three) had started two years earlier. Over those two years Isabel held the family financially while Ed worked on growing the business. Now she was giving up her steady income to join Ed in developing what became a well‑known staple of the Orange County business community. Ed was the master craftsman in the back garage, widely known among Southern California Corvette clubs for his meticulous fiberglass repair, custom body adjustments, and paint matching on classic C1, C2, and C3 Corvettes. Isabel was the backbone of the entire operation—running the front desk, managing the office, handling the books, and dealing with clients and parts suppliers. They were the team that brought the business to soaring heights. They accomplished this together.

In 2001 my parents sold the body shop. My mom retired and decided to do volunteer work at the local senior center. She worked with the On‑Site thrift shop. The proceeds of the thrift store funded the center’s hot midday meal program, home‑delivered meals, and low‑cost recreational activities like bingo.

Throughout a good portion of the 2000s into 2010, my mom used to visit Mary’s Kitchen often. She always arrived with boxes of food and clothes. She would sit with the homeless people during lunch and talk with them. They loved my mom because of her unassuming sense of humor that never failed to garner a chuckle.

In 2005, as her eyesight began failing, she began taking the bus or a taxi to the center because the DMV did not renew her driver’s license. By 2009 her eyesight deteriorated so much that she had to give up her volunteer work. By 2010 my dear mom completely lost her eyesight. She had been diagnosed with glaucoma in 1980.

I asked her in 2018 if it bothered her that she was blind. At first she said it didn’t bother her. After about a minute she said, “At first it did bother me. I was scared. But then I learned how to accept it and got used to it.” In the spring of 2021, less than a year after the dementia started, she was having a good time bonding with one of the female caregivers. They were in the family room and I was in the kitchen when my mom experienced a moment of vulnerability and told the caregiver, “Sometimes I really miss my eyesight.” Hearing this broke my heart. I was highly vulnerable at this time, having gone through 20 radiation treatments for prostate cancer seven months earlier, and my brother passing away at the beginning of 2021. After his death I quit my job to take care of my mom. I have been caring for her for 5½ years now.

I have an immense amount of respect for Isabel, for many good reasons. But the one that stands above the rest is that she has always believed in me and has never given up on me—even to this day in 2026. Buried deep in her mind, beyond the dementia, is a love that continues to grow.

Thank you, Isabel, for the encouragement and love.

Someone once said to me that they respect that I have put my life on hold to take care of my mom. My response back was, “I have not put my life on hold. I am enriching it.”

With Love, RHC ❤️