Lopez Family - Medical and Funeral Costs

On April 30th, Carmen Lopez was at her home, alone, getting ready to leave for work when she suffered a severe stroke. She was alone, unconscious, for 3 hours before her daughter found her on the bathroom floor.
She was rushed to the hospital and had an emergency brain surgery that night. The family gathered and began to pray hoping for a miracle. The following days, all they could do is wait together since there was limited visitation due to COVID-19. Days turned into weeks bringing more challenges and the fact that there was limited visitation, was detrimental to her recovery. While she did show some ability to respond to commands such as squeezing the nurses hand when asked if she could hear them, she still was not able to wake up. On Mother's Day, visitation was not allowed which was heartbreaking for her family and children. A couple of weeks later, she had a tracheostomy which is a surgery to install a breathing tube in her throat and feeding tube in her stomach. She was then moved to a facility in Sebastopol as the next step in her treatment. After a couple days in the new facility, new complications surfaced and she was taken back to ICU where she took her last breath and passed away on May 30th.


Carmen has been through so much. She was a survivor of the Tubbs fire where she barely escaped the flames that demolished Coffey Park, and lost everything. Yet she remained positive. She and her husband Angel have been waiting for over two years for their home to be rebuilt. This caused her a huge amount of pain and stress and likely contributed to the hypertension that triggered the stroke. They were paying both their mortgage for their non existent home and the rent for the apartment. Trying hard to recover from the fires and support her family, she worked long hard days at Amy's Kitchen, taking the graveyard shifts, sometimes 6 days a week.


Carmen's joy in life was cooking for her family. She also loved to garden and had the most beautiful roses and fruit trees before it all burnt down. She was an incredibly strong and resilient woman with a huge heart. In the words of her son, "She was the nicest person I have ever met." And she was. She was a kind, generous, hard working woman who put her family above all else, even before herself.


I know there is a lot going on in this world, but if you could help this family with medical expenses and funeral costs, it would mean the world to them. They have lost so much and it’s time for their struggle to end and let them grieve, come together and move forward with peace.


We love you so much Carmen, you will forever be in our hearts.