A search for a father has led Annette Vega to New York’s Hart Island, according to a report from Radio Diaries. Vega, who discovered in elementary school that her dad was not her biological father, spent years trying to find him with little more than a name: Angel Alberto Garcia. After hitting a lot of dead ends, Vega heard a rumor that Garcia might have been a member of the Ching-a-Lings, a Puerto Rican motorcycle club with a reputation for violent behavior and drug dealing. She eventually found a distant cousin through a DNA test on Ancestry.com who told her that Garcia had a sister named Miriam Garcia, who lived in Florida. Coincidentally, Vega was living just 20 minutes away from Miriam. Vega sent a Facebook message to Miriam’s son, and soon after received a call from Miriam, who was emotional and thrilled to hear from her long-lost niece. The two finally met in April 2023 and Miriam shared stories about Garcia’s past. Vega learned that Garcia had left home as a teenager and lived on the streets, and he later told Miriam that he was HIV positive. Miriam last heard from Garcia in 1989, when he called from a payphone in New York City and was sick with pneumonia. Vega suspected he was dead, and after finding an online database of people buried on Hart Island, she discovered an entry for an Angel Garcia who died in Queens in 1989 at the age of 37. Vega obtained a death certificate and autopsy report that confirmed her suspicions. She and her half brother, Angel Garcia, whom she had never met, visited the grave on Hart Island, where about 150 people are buried in a mass grave. Although initially disturbed by her father’s burial on the island, Vega and her brother seemed to soften their views as they stood by the grave.
