Coronavirus devastates Azusa household, kills family patriarch

AZUSA, Calif. (KABC) -- The novel coronavirus has hit one household in Azusa especially hard, sickening several members and killing the family patriarch.

Emotions are still raw for Luciana Ramirez. She lost her husband Guillermo to COVID-19 earlier this week.

"I'm really sad," Ramirez said. "I've been with him 30 years every day since I was 16 years old, and now I don't have him."

"I didn't even get to say goodbye," she added.

Guillermo was the patriarch and provider for a large family. Twelve people spanning three generations under one roof, and all of them tested positive for the virus.

The family says they wore gloves and masks, and washed their hands and even groceries, but it wasn't enough.

Ramirez said she started feeling unwell April 10 and thought she had the stomach flu.

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One by one, they would get sick. The younger children never showed symptoms, but the adults did. On consecutive days, Ramirez watched as her son, her husband and her mother were taken away by ambulance.

Early Tuesday morning, doctors called and told her to rush to the hospital.

Ramirez's daughter, who lives elsewhere so she hasn't gotten sick, drove her to the hospital to be with her dying husband. Ramirez was in the backseat to prevent spreading the virus.

They didn't get there in time.

"She sat down and was crying and said, that's it, your dad is gone," said Guillermo's daughter Alexia Ramirez. "Your dad is gone. And I couldn't even hug her. I had to just watch her cry."

They are now devastated. Guillermo worked as a truck driver as the family's sole provider.

"Nothing's going to be the same without him," Alexia said. "He was our backbone. He supported our whole family. He worked hard and he loved to work."

"He literally would give you the last dollar out of his pocket," Luciana said.

The virus has already taken so much from the family, and it won't allow them to properly mourn.

"We can't even bury him," Luciana said. "We can't be together, we can't hug each other. It's devastating."

"I can't stress it enough that people take it serious," Alexia said. "I'll never see my dad again."

Guillermo was 47.

A GoFundMe page has been established to help the family.