Woman’s Silent Sojourn Ends in Happy Reunion

Maria Arevalos is no longer missing.

The 34-year-old Mexican woman--deaf and able to speak only a few words in Spanish--was reunited with her common-law husband Thursday in an Orange County shelter for the disabled, which had taken her in eight days earlier.

The reunion at Hearth House in Garden Grove came about because Arevalos encountered any number of kind and caring people--and because of 48-year-old Jose Herrera’s persistence in searching for the woman he loves.

Herrera had been looking for Arevalos since May 1, when two Immigration and Naturalization Service agents removed her from an Amtrak passenger train in Oceanside for questioning about her citizenship.

Herrera, who has permanent resident status in the United States, had brought the woman across the border from Tijuana and was taking her to Fresno, where he has lived and worked for the last five years.

He said he tried to explain to the agents that Arevalos could not respond to their questions because she could not hear and could not speak. But, he said, the INS officials ignored him and took her away.

Herrera believed that the INS would simply return Arevalos to Tijuana, but it did not happen that way.

It was sometime later that he learned that the INS had taken Arevalos to its San Clemente office and there, after failing to establish her nationality, gave her a ticket and put her on a bus for Los Angeles.

Meantime, Herrera had begun his long and sometimes discouraging search. He traveled to Fresno, then to Tijuana and then to Los Angeles. Finally, he contacted Peter Schey, executive director of the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights Inc. in Los Angeles. Through Schey, Herrera told his story to The Times on Wednesday.

He said he feared for Arevalos’ life, but hoped she would find someone “who showed some kindness.”

On Thursday morning, workers at the Dayle McIntosh Center for the Disabled in Garden Grove, which operates Hearth House, read the story and recognized Arevalos from an accompanying photo. They called the newspaper and, a few hours later, Jose and Maria fell into each others arms in a classroom at Hearth House.

“We are very, very happy and grateful for all the help everyone gave us,” Herrera said afterward. His sweetheart’s dark eyes conveyed the same message.

Exactly what happened to the deaf woman in the first few days after the INS agent put her on the bus probably never will be known. She simply had no way of recounting the experience.

It is known that Maria encountered the first of many kind strangers May 6 in Costa Mesa. He was Police Officer Harlan Pauley, a 19-year veteran of the department.

“When I first saw her, she was on Newport Boulevard and she was trying to flag down cars, looking very upset,” Pauley recalled Thursday.

The officer quickly realized that she was deaf and could communicate only in gestures and a few Spanish words. He was able to establish that her first name was Maria.

Put Up for the Night

For the next five hours, Pauley said, he tried to find out more about the obviously desperate and confused woman. The officer said he phoned the INS in Los Angeles, but was told it could do nothing unless he could show that she was in the country illegally. Finally, he contacted the Orange County Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa, where she was put up for the night.

The next day, Arevalos was taken to Hearth House, which shelters homeless, disabled people by night and conducts classes in sign language for the deaf during the day.

Lisa Marion, the facility’s communications director, said Arevalos was able to communicate--through a crude form of sign language--that she had been on a train, that she had been on a bus and then that she had been walking for several days before Pauley found her. She also indicated that she had been sleeping in parks.

“That first night, she was very sad,” Marion recalled Thursday. “She kept crying, crying for ‘Momma.’ ”

But she quickly fit into the shelter’s routine, doing chores cheerfully and enthusiastically joining in sign language classes conducted by Joan MacDonald.

“She has been doing really well,” MacDonald said. “She is a fast learner and very intelligent.”

After the initial excitement of the reunion--the tears of joy and glad sounds and embraces--MacDonald urged Herrera to enroll Arevalos in a sign language school in Fresno when they settle there. Herrera promised that he will.

‘Regularize Her Status’

Later, in the Los Angeles office of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights, executive director Schey also made a promise. He said that although Arevalos is an undocumented alien, he will make every effort to “regularize her status, get her a green card so she can be a permanent resident. We will fight to keep her in this country.”

Herrera tried to explain it all to Arevalos--and she seemed to understand, alternately smiling and crying in her happiness. Then he turned back to Schey.

“I was thinking that I might never see her again,” he said softly. “Thank God, I was given help. Without all the help, I probably would never have found her.”