New Mexico

Christopher Sarmiento, 33

Died February 19, 2021.

Vista Middle School, Las Cruces, NM

Obituary:

Christopher Jacob Sarmiento was born on July 17th, 1987 to Esteban Sarmiento and Maria Elena Sarmiento (Irrobali) in El Paso, TX. He was called to be with our Lord on Friday, February 19th, 2021 after losing his hard-fought battle to COVID-19.

He is survived by is wife Mary Sarmiento (Gamez), Daughters Marley, Mahaley, son Christopher Jr., mother, Siblings Joseph, Esteban (Anel), Marie, Johnathan (Vanessa), Richard (Norma), and Michael (Samantha), and nieces and nephews. He committed his life to the service of our Lord and along with wife and children attended Abundant Living Faith Center in El Paso, TX. Christopher graduated from Jefferson High School and went on to obtain his teaching degree from the University of Texas at El Paso.

Chris tutored ESL students at Bowie HS, completed his student teaching at Brown Middle School, worked at Anthony HS, and most recently dedicated his last two years to Vista Middle School in Las Cruces where he taught 6th &7th grade Social Studies and helped coach the 8th grade football team. Chris grew up without a father. Therefore, he made it his life mission to help mentor young boys that needed a father figure in their lives. He did not always make the best decisions growing up, so he wanted to help those boys make better decisions than he made. He coached football to help young athletes understand that, yes, the love of sports is important, but doing well academically is just as important. He wanted them to know that it is okay to make mistakes and wrong decisions; the important thing is that you continue to push forward and work hard for second chances.

His grandfather has a park named after him in Segundo Barrio, “Tula Irrobali Park”. It was named after Tula because of the work he did to help at risk youth get away from gangs by playing sports. Chris wanted to follow his example and honor his grandfather’s legacy through his own work with youth and sports. From his colleague: “Chris was truly one in a million and one of God’s special angels. He always took the time to make everyone that he encountered feel special. He was funny and joked with his students all of the time. I cannot tell you how many students, many who were not even in his class, would stop by during passing periods to see him. I used to tease him and call him Prom King because he always had a group surrounding him. I will truly miss his presence. He brought peace and calm to meetings, which we needed! It was wonderful to work with him. He told me about how your oldest played basketball and was so smart. He talked about your small daughter being full of life and so carefree and fun. He talked about how tired he was when your son was born and how much he loved his children.” He may have looked rough and tough on the outside, but on the inside, he had one of the biggest hearts ever known. He was selfless and always willing and ready to help. Devoted father, loving husband, caring son and brother, loyal friend, dedicated teacher and coach.

Elizabeth Placencio, 42

Died February 15, 2021.

Mesa Middle School, Las Cruces, NM

Film and Broadcast, Librarian

Local news:

The Mesa Middle School community is grieving the loss of one of its founding teachers who died on Monday.

Elizabeth Placencio, a 42-year-old media teacher at Mesa Middle School, passed away after spending nearly a month in the hospital battling COVID-19.

Placencio was a teacher with LCPS for more than 20 years, teaching film and broadcast at Mesa Middle since the school opened in 2010.

“She was the example and model teacher for our young teachers and veteran teachers because of her giving heart, she never thought about herself,” said Mesa Middle School Principal Steve Rodriguez.

Rodriguez said that Placencio was among the few remaining staff members who had been with Mesa since its founding.

“The culture that … our staff have created Mesa is a family culture,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not a weakness that we have that family culture at our school. But it definitely makes it hard to lose any of our staff … but it’s also our strength, because it’s what’s going to get us through this and knowing that she would want us all to continue with what we’re doing at our school.”

Placencio also recently became the school’s librarian as well as the media teacher.

Charlene Ortega, who teaches computer science at Mesa Middle, was Placencio’s friend for the past decade. Ortega said she has fond memories of Placencio working on fundraisers for the school, collaborating with club activities and volunteering at school dances.

“She just had this energy about her,” Ortega said. “(She was a) helpful, giving person …. At the end of the day, we would just look at each other, we were tired, we were exhausted …. Everything that we did it was … for the school and for the kids.”

Placencio built the school’s media production course from the ground up, giving students at Mesa Middle the opportunity to compete in Student Television Network, a national competition for school broadcast.

“She worked tirelessly,” said Casey Blazer, a physical education teacher at Mesa and friend of Placencio. “She made things happen for (her students) that they might not ever get another opportunity to do. She just always went above and beyond.”

Ben Serrano, a former media teacher at Mesa Middle said that the school will always remember Placencio and what she’s done for the community. He said he’s received messages from former students saying how much they were impacted by Placencio.

He encouraged any students or community members to reach out so everyone can support each other through this loss.

“She was one of our pillars that kept our community together, and was always visible for anybody, and available for them,” Serrano said. “We’re just taking it day by day now. She’s always gonna be a big part of Mesa Middle School, and a big part of our lives in general.”

Serrano and Rodriguez both fondly remember pranks they pulled on Placencio throughout the years, saying she was always a good sport and joking around.

“Her laugh was contagious,” Rodriguez said. “She brought joy to our school.”

The two also started a Go Fund Me to raise money for the Placencio family. Search for “Eliabeth Placencio” at gofundme.com to learn more.

Placencio is survived by her husband and daughter.

“We just want everybody to know what kind of person that she was, and how much she meant to everybody,” Blazer said. “She was a good friend, she was a good mom, a great wife, a daughter. She just was a magnificent person all around.”

Placencio is the fifth educator in the district who has passed due to COVID-19.

Jose Reyes Jr., 59

Died January 27, 2021.

Centennial High School, Las Cruces, NM

Special Education

Obituary:

In a lifetime, we come across people who put their mark on life. It is with the deepest grievance and loss of such an amazing man in the community, that we announce the passing of JOSE ISABEL REYES JR, age 59, on January 27, 2021. Jose was born July 16, 1961 in Morton, Texas to Florencia and Jose Isabel Reyes Sr. He was an amazing and loving husband, father, uncle, cousin, and to those who knew him in Las Cruces community as “Mr. Joe”. Jose was one of a kind, a man who was a coach, and educator in the Las Cruces Public Schools and softball coach and put many smiles on the people he interacted with. He was an incredibly positive figure in this community.

Jose enjoyed spending quality time with his wife, his beautiful children and family, with his nieces and nephews as well as his great nieces, great nephews, fellow colleagues, and students he helped. Being a softball coach was one of his rewarding times in his life.

Those left to mourn his passing include his loving wife, Christine Reyes of Las Cruces; his son, Jose I. Reyes III; a daughter, Juliana M. Reyes; two brothers, David Reyes, and Antonio Reyes; and four sisters, Olivia Tienda, Marylou Reyes, Irma Reyes Brackens, Mary Helen Myers, eleven amazing nieces and nephews, as well as nine beautiful great nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, and his beloved uncle Juan.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, capacity of attendees will be limited, and everyone is asked to please wear a mask. Thank you.

Recitation of the Holy Rosary will begin, at 1PM, Wednesday, February 3, 2021 at St. Albert the Great Newman Parish, 2615 S. Solano Drive. The Funeral Mass will be celebrated immediately thereafter with the Reverend Trinidad Cuevas, Celebrant. At his request, cremation will follow and Inurnment of cremains will take place at a later date.

Service arrangements have been entrusted to the care of Baca’s Funeral Chapels of Las Cruces, 300 E. Boutz Road, 527-2222. Your exclusive provider for “Veterans and Family Memorial Care.” For online condolences logon to www.bacasfuneralchapelslascruces.com

Philamena Belone, 44

December 16, 2020.

Wingate Elementary School, Fort Wingate, NM

Third Grade

CNN:

Even when she was hospitalized for Covid-19 and pneumonia for three days, Philamena Belone wanted to get home so she could resume doing what she loved most — teaching.

Belone led Zoom classes for behaviorally challenged students during the day and worked with those who had no internet at night via phone, her brother Phillip Belone told CNN. After the hospitalization, the third-grade teacher taught while wearing an oxygen mask from her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“I know that she kept wanting to go home to teach. She wanted to be with the kids that she was teaching,” Phillip Belone said. “She was actually on oxygen teaching when she would have been in the hospital, but her condition got to the point where she couldn’t physically breathe.”

Philamena Belone returned to the hospital almost two weeks later on November 28, her brother said. A week after that, she was put on a ventilator in a last-ditch effort to save her life.

But on December 11, the previously healthy 44-year-old passed away at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque. She leaves behind three children and one grandchild, as well as her parents, brother and sister.

The Belone family and many of the students the teacher served are part of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.

It’s a community that’s been hard hit by the virus. The Navajo Nation was a prominent hot spot for Covid-19 in the United States earlier this year. In May, it surpassed New York and New Jersey for the highest per capita infection rate.

The Navajo Department of Health reported 20,095 cases and 731 deaths as of Wednesday. It has a population of 173,667, according to US Census data.

Philamena Belone gave her heart to her students and she did everything she could to meet them on their level, her brother said.

“The most difficult students were given to my sister,” Belone said with a laugh. “She taught kids everyone gave up on but her. She never gave up on anyone.”

Belone was a teacher at Wingate Elementary School in Fort Wingate, New Mexico, about two hours west of Albuquerque. Her school confirmed her death in a statement to CNN.

“Her smile radiated throughout her classroom and her laughter could be heard echoing down the hallways,” Principal Eric North said. “She always had a kind word for others who came across her path, whether in the cafeteria, at the buses or on the playground. Her energy and sense of humor were contagious.”

During the pandemic, Philamena Belone taught virtual classes, her brother said. However, many of her Navajo students did not have access to reliable internet, he said.

As a result, Belone said his sister would drive to two hours each way every week and leave class materials at the school for her students.

She customized the materials for each one, he said. She created paper copies for some students, while others had laptops but no internet, so she made them flash drives that contained the materials. Other students could get online only from their parents’ phones at night, so she worked nights to meet their needs.

“She provided arts and crafts, little personal notes and mementos specific to each child,” Belone said. “She went above and beyond in teaching her kids through either phone calls, internet when it was available, and building the hard copies for all of her coursework for the week.”

Belone estimates his sister was working 70 hours a week. She did it because she loved the students and wanted to make each of them feel special, her brother said.

“A lot of the kids she worked with didn’t have the best upbringing, so she would always go on another level personally to engage with them and be a big sister or an aunt to them,” he said.

“My sister had some tough circumstances in her life also, so she had a special connection with behaviorally challenged kids,” Belone said. “She would love to connect with the kids and make them happy. That was her reward.”

Philamena Belone started feeling unwell November 12, her brother said. The symptoms were minimal at first, but a persistent cough landed her in the emergency room. Doctors diagnosed her with Covid-19 and pneumonia.

Doctors gave her oxygen and she stayed there for three days, but her yearning to get back to teaching was strong, her brother said.

She went home with an oxygen tank and mask, pushing to keep teaching until the end of the school term, her brother said. Her youngest son had been living with his mother but he left the house while his mother was quarantining.

Within two weeks, she had gotten worse and was taken back to the Albuquerque hospital.

Philamena Belone was a runner and someone who loved to exercise. Her brother found it unbelievable that she had to be placed on a ventilator December 6, he said.

The family also understood what the ventilator meant — Belone lost his aunt and uncle to the virus after both had been on ventilators, he said.

They thought Philamena Belone would be OK. “Prior to that she was a healthy and vibrant, good soul who we never expected would be in this situation,” Belone said.

She kept fighting and reassuring her family she would be OK, he said. Philamena Belone never wanted anyone to “fuss” about her and was a very private person, he said.

“We didn’t know that it came to such a dramatic circumstance until after she was physically admitted the second time,” Belone said. “I was under the impression that she was still going to be fine and the symptoms weren’t that bad. She hid all of that very well from all of us.”

The family said doctors found blood clots in her lungs and discovered she had a collapsed lung. She also went into kidney failure and required dialysis.

“I saw her at her worst but understood that she fought her heart out and she was ready to rest,” he said. Ultimately, her family made the heart-wrenching decision to remove her from the ventilator.

“After we made the decision … I was literally numb,” Belone said. “I had no feeling in my body. I didn’t know if I was dreaming or I didn’t know what was real.”

When she wasn’t in the classroom, Philamena Belone enjoyed horseback riding, hunting, crafting and traveling. She also loved to dance, spending time to teach her students some moves, her brother said.

But most of all, “she loved children,” her brother said.

Philamena Belone was a devoted, loving mother to three children.”Her children are absolutely devastated by the loss of their precious sweet mom,” Belone said.

Mekaile Belone, 27, Quionna, 22, and Dion Dotson, 19, are now missing their mother’s love and support. She also left behind a 4-year-old granddaughter, Mila.

The family created a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the cost of Philamena Belone’s funeral. They met their fundraising goal within 48 hours, her brother said.

But what Belone will miss most about his sister is her smile with her “beautiful dimple on her right cheek.”

“Everyone’s going to miss her big vibrant contagious smile. Everyone’s going to miss her laugh,” he said. “What I’m going to miss most about her is her willingness to make people happy at whatever cost it took.”

Belone said he knows he’s not alone in the loss he and his family have felt because of the pandemic.

“Philamena’s story is not unique,” Belone said. “We should be focusing on all the stories, all of the hundreds of thousands of people, all of the millions of people in our country who have been affected by this.”

If anything, Belone hopes that people can learn from his sister’s life of service and giving.

“She would have wanted everyone to love one another and not judge one another, to see the best in everyone and to do whatever they could to make the world a better place,” he said. “That was her legacy.”

Laura Escalanti, 69

Died November 21, 2020.

Pojoaque Valley Middle School, Santa Fe, NM

Spanish and Tewa

Local news:

They called her Miss Laura.

It was a term of reverence and resonance, befitting the quiet power of what one person could teach a community.

Laura Escalanti’s wisdom was imparted in classrooms through the strength of the Tewa language, said former students and northern pueblo community members who added that her time as a Spanish and Tewa teacher in the Pojoaque Valley School District can never be replicated.

Perhaps that’s why this has been one of the saddest weeks in a very sad year for those who knew her.

Escalanti, who spent 20 years as a teacher, imprinting the importance of culture on students in their formative years, died suddenly Nov. 21 of COVID-19 complications at Los Alamos Medical Center, said her daughter, Tree Escalanti.

Laura Escalanti was 69.

A beloved teacher who helped many Native American students connect with their culture through the Tewa language, Laura Escalanti’s contribution was critical in a school district that includes students from six pueblos.

“We lost a treasure,” said Joe Talachy, governor of Pojoaque Pueblo. “People like her are invaluable. It’s hard to find people with that kind of ambition, that kind of charisma and character that really gets through to our youth.”

Tree Escalanti said the community’s respect for her mother was never clearer than during a funeral procession from San Juan Pueblo to the church near her home in San Ildefenso Pueblo on Monday. Her body was accompanied by a police escort led by Talachy, with mourners standing on the shoulder of the roadway to honor a woman many in the community had known for years.

“It was just so amazing,” Tree said. “A lot of her students were lined up on the highway, there were staff [members from Pojoaque Valley middle and high schools], people from the community clapping for us. It was really amazing to see that.”

Tiffany Duran, who took Laura Escalanti’s Tewa class while she was in middle school in 2002, said she recalled the Friday feast days the teacher would hold, during which students wore their traditional clothing.

Laura Escalanti, Duran said, taught kids about their community’s culture through their language.

“Some kids, it seemed like they kinda wanted what we had because we had Miss Laura, who defended us and stuck up for us,” Duran said. “You’d catch the bus and nobody would put us down. … This is a hard loss.”

Duran said her son took Laura Escalanti’s class this year, and she credits the teacher with improving his self-esteem. Bullied for a time in elementary school because he had long hair, he’d made the decision to cut it short. But after being exposed to Laura Escalanti, he let it grow again, in part because of the pride he’d acquired through her teaching.

Still, there were limits, Duran said.

“Ms. Laura would tell him, ‘Pull those curtains aside. I want to see your face,’” Duran said. “She wanted to connect with you on a different level. She wanted you to understand our heritage and our language. If we don’t teach it to our children, we’ll never carry it on.”

Laura Escalanti came close to hitting that roadblock. She graduated from St. Catherine Indian School in 1968 and went on to the College of Santa Fe. But she dropped out when she was a senior to get married and moved to the Mescalero Apache Reservation. She lived there for the next 27 years before returning to Santa Fe in 1995 after a divorce.

Once back in the city, Laura Escalanti earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a master’s degree in multilingual/multicultural education. She taught at St. Catherine until 1998, then moved to Pojoaque Valley Middle School in 2000. She later earned another master’s degree in education administration from New Mexico State University.

“She really picked herself back up,” Tree Escalanti said. “To be able to tell that story about herself in front of kids, that’s what inspired them. That’s what made them want to show up for Miss Laura’s class. That’s why they stood on the side of the highway — they were losing their hero.”

Their hero was Tree Escalanti’s hero, too. She said watching her mother bed-ridden last week after being initially diagnosed with a sinus infection, crying in her arms, was devastating.

“It was very tragic,” Tree Escalanti said. “It has definitely shaken our school and our community. I still have parents emailing me about their kid because he won’t stop crying.”

Tree Escalanti said she is trying to remain strong because she sees how current students are taking Laura Escalanti’s death. She hopes she can be as much of a leader for them as her mother was.

“I try to keep that positivity when I think about my mother,” Tree Escalanti said. “And my heart remembers that it’s just a memory. I can’t get excited with her, but I am still going to be energetic and loud for her.”

Christopher Sarmiento, 33

Elizabeth Placencio, 42

Jose Reyes Jr., 59

Gloria Garza, 55

Damacio Bernal, 64

Philamena Belone, 44

Laura Escalanti, 69

Sylvia Garcia, 60

Leo Lugo, 56