Support the Quezada Family in Raul's Memory

Hello, we are the Quezada family. Our brother and son just passed away very suddenly and too young. His name was Raul Quezada; he was 43 years old. He died from an unusual heart attack. We still don't quite understand what happened because it was so sudden. His story just completely breaks my heart. I am his younger sister, Cristina Quezada. I have two other brothers, but Raul and I got along really well. He was my best friend and always made sure I was on the right track and helped me get on the right track if I wasn't.

Tragically, when he was in his 20s, one of our cousins was addicted to crystal meth, and my brother Raul just could not understand why the meth took control of his entire life and brain in a horrible way. Well, Raul was not very educated about drugs and said, "Watch me do it and not get addicted." Well, that was the worst decision he could have made in his entire life. He ended up, of course, getting hooked on it, but not just hooked on it; someone gave him bad stuff, and he started convulsing. When he got to the hospital (Sutter Health, in Tracy, CA), they put him in an induced coma. When they brought him out of it, he was extremely brain damaged. We did some research and found out that he could have possibly been left in a coma for too long and fried his brain. We lost Raul that day, but not physically. He became disabled and could no longer care for himself, but not completely. He was able to do a lot of things on his own; he was like a 5-year-old child except he was 25. My mom became his caretaker, quit her job, and took him under her care. Except we didn't have the money to care for an adult without an income.

You might ask, well, why didn't he just get on disability? Can a 5-year-old get on disability on his own? No, but the mother or guardian can do it for him, right? Well, not for an adult. The adult has to give consent or sign some kind of power of attorney. Well, my mom did not have that, and Raul would never sign one. He wasn't capable of understanding why it was so important to sign it, so he would always refuse. He never got the help from doctors to heal his brain nor the disability checks every month that were entitled to him as a working citizen he once was. There were a few times he did apply but would always get denied. He had such a huge heart and soul. He wanted to be a kindergarten teacher and started going to community college just a few months before his coma incident. I was not surprised to have heard from the medical examiner that his heart was very unusually enlarged for his age. I said to him, crying, "I told you he had a huge heart."

We are fundraising to cover the funeral expenses and support our family during this difficult time.