‘He is always in our family’s heart’: Cambria restaurateur, father of 6, loses COVID battle
It’s a story that’s been told more than 200 times in San Luis Obispo County since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: Someone dies from complications of the virus, leaving behind a grieving family, community and friends.
But when Nestor Hernandez, 51, of Cambria died on Feb. 8, among those also mourning the loss were his customers at Lombardi’s Pasta Familia restaurant, which he’d owned since 2004. Hernandez had worked there for about another decade before buying the cafe, according to wife Monica Melendrez.
She said he was known as being a hard worker who adored his family, a happy man who often sang as he worked his long shifts at the restaurant.
Hernandez “did it all” at Lombardi’s, according to Courtney Hartzell, a friend who works at Cambria’s Santa Lucia Middle School with the 35-year-old Melendrez.
“He was the chef, he did payroll, ordering, cooking, the schedules,” Hartzell said. “I can’t imagine how the family will manage without him. … She has a full-time job, four kids and now the restaurant.”
According to another friend, Suzanne Kennedy, Melendrez and the family will manage with the help of their strong faith and support from the Santa Rosa Catholic Church parish, their friends, a compassionate community, and family members who have lived in the area for decades.
But the sudden, devastating death of Hernandez brought with it funeral and other expenses that will drain financial reserves that have been depleted during the long pandemic, with its ever-changing closure requirements for restaurants.
It’s now a complex situation, Melendrez said in a Feb. 11 phone interview, and the future is up in the air.
“Everything, the house, the restaurant, it was all in his name,” she said, so there are intricate legal matters to solve at a time when everybody is reeling from the patriarch’s sudden death and dealing with their grief.
Meanwhile, Kennedy is turning to the community with a GoFundMe plea she launched late on Feb. 11, hoping for donations that will help sustain the family as they deal with their loss and uncertain future.
To donate, go to bit.ly/3d6rod4. The campaign has a $30,000 goal.
Restaurant owner fell ill in early January
The Hernandez-Melendrez family includes four children: Zahaira,15; Isai, 12; Xochitl, 10; and Itzael, 2. The restaurateur’s two older children are Nestor Hernandez III of San Luis Obispo and Naomi Hernandez of Reno.
Melendrez said all the children except the two adults also contracted COVID-19, although her husband’s symptoms showed up first and turned serious quickly. He did have the preexisting conditions of diabetes and high blood pressure.
But “for everybody else, the virus was like a bad cold,” Kennedy said.
However, when Hernandez got sick Jan. 10, he had “a fever, a tickle in his throat, which seemed kind of dry,” Melendrez recalled. He got his COVID test two days later and was informed on Jan. 15 that the test results were positive.
By the next day, Hartzell said, “he was climbing up the stairs in their two-story house and had to stop halfway, saying he was too short of breath.”
Melendrez said that they tested his blood oxygen level and discovered it had dropped to 62 percent, a critically low number. Ideal levels are 95 to 100 percent.
“We called the hospital and told them the number,” Melendrez said, “and they told us to bring him right in.”
So, they did.
He never came back home.
A difficult hospital stay
As is customary during the pandemic, Hernandez wasn’t able to see any of his family in person after entering the hospital.
Between then and when he went on the ventilator Jan. 19, he and Melendrez had frequently communicated via Facetime, she said, even planning her meals and “eating together” while apart.
“We had a family Zoom prayer for him every night,” she said, “praying for his health and for him to get better.”
As Hernandez was being prepped for the ventilator and a medically induced coma, he asked the nurse if he could Facetime with his family.
“He was on oxygen, so he couldn’t talk much,” Melendrez said with a catch in her usually happy, melodic voice. “He told the kids, ‘I’ll see you.’”
Tragically, that didn’t happen.
Slightly more than three weeks after being admitted to the hospital, Nestor Hernandez died.
“The virus had made his lungs really stiff and hard, not doing the pumping function they need to do,” Melendrez said. As she had told their children before his death, their dad “wouldn’t have wanted to live that way. He was always so happy, singing, his happy self.”
Lombardi’s restaurant continues, despite pandemic and death of owner
When Hernandez fell ill, the staff and his brothers, Carlos and Rene Hernandez, rallied to fill in, Melendrez said, with the night employees “doing double and triple duty. Nestor was usually there in the morning to do prep and cook, and then at night in his office,” so there was a lot to cover.
Once the restaurant owner’s test came back positive, she said, they had everybody else take the COVID-19 test and thoroughly sanitize the restaurant. Melendrez, the two brothers and Carlos Hernandez’s wife Mariana Hernandez tested positive; their symptoms “were mild, like a cough and body aches for a couple of days.”
They, Rene Hernandez’s wife Veronica Hernandez, Melendrez and the four youngsters all quarantined for two weeks, she said.
Now that they’ve recovered and their CDC-mandated isolation period is over, she added, the two brothers and the younger Nestor Hernandez have been helping as much as they can at the restaurant.
“I’m so grateful to them,” Melendrez said, “to them, the rest of our family, our church and this wonderful community.”
An private outdoor mass for the family is scheduled at Santa Rosa Catholic Church.
Family and friends remember Hernandez
After Hernandez died, Melendrez asked each of their children to write about their dad, an exercise that’s often recommended by grief counselors.
This is what five of them wrote:
Xochitl, age 10: “He is very loving because if we would get hurt, he would come up to us and massage it where we got hurt and say you are OK and that is what I love about him. He is the greatest dad that I could ever imagine because he was very noble to us.”
Isai, age 12: “My dad worked all day to give us what we wanted and to keep the house for his loving family. My dad is the best, and he cares about his family, and he is always in our family’s heart.”
Zahaira, age 15: “I love him and always will. This is a message for him: I love you, Pa, and finish watching ‘Supernatural,’ so when I see you again we can talk about it without you asking so many questions. I will also learn to dance so when you want to dance, I will dance with you for as long as you’d like.”
Naomi, age 25: “My dad has the biggest part of my heart. ... He made sure we had quality time together and our deep talks about what was going on in life and family. I now look at each of my siblings and see a little part of him in them, giving me peace. I’m truly blessed to have been raised by such a strong, caring, kind, giving, courageous, selfless individual that is my dad.”
A family friend reflected some of those sentiments.
Hernandez “was a very loving, good dad” who was often quiet and almost shy at school events, Hartzell said.
As far as she knew, he’d “never missed a basketball or volleyball game. He helped Monica with the PTA at the grammar school and was very involved,” despite his busy schedule of long days at the restaurant and of tending the baby while his wife was at work.
Hartzell said quietly that Nestor’s death was a shock for so many people who’d known him and the family, or known of them, for decades.
It was also a wake-up call for those who felt protected from the virus by the North Coast’s low case counts, she said. “This could happen to any of us at any moment.”
She recalled Monica telling her how, when one of their children was going through a rough patch at school, Hernandez had told his wife, “just tell her we love her, that she can make the decisions and we’ll be there to support her.”
Hartzell choked up and said that when she gets to that stage as a parent, “I’m going to remember that moment, and follow what Nestor said to do.”
This story was originally published February 14, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
