Marco Lazaro, stung to death by bees, his humanity nearly killed by mainstreet media et al...
Marco Lazaro, stung to death by bees, his real story overlooked by mainstreet media
(Marco Lazaro died June 16, 2010. His death and the news coverage of it raised many questions, all the more relevant today. As for the killer bees. They're baaaaaack, as reported by W.C. Varones at Enicintas Undercover. To wit: "Like the swallows returning to Capistrano and the flies returning to Del Mar, the killer bees have returned to Encinitas. Yesterday I drove through a swarm of them, then came home to find another bunch contemplating building a nest in the compost bin. Last year the killer bees arrived in late April and early May. Then in June they killed poor Marco Lazaro.")
Marco Lazaro, 54, died around 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 16 after he smashed a backhoe into a giant beehive at a property near the intersection of Manchester Avenue and Pacific Rancho Drive at Olivenhain.
Lazaro was clearing brush near San Elijo Lagoon when he suffered more than 500 bee stings as he ran from the backhoe to a nearby shack to avoid the attack, then collapsed there.
Paramedics took Lazaro to nearby Scripps Memorial Hospital at Encinitas where he was pronounced dead. He died of anaphylaxis, an allergic reaction to the stings, according to the San Diego Medical Examiner.
Experts who later investigated the hive said it was unusually large, containing 60,000 to 80,000 hybrid Africanized bees. The hive had sat undisturbed in the field for untold years, they said.
Lazaro was a refugee from the Guatemalan highlands who came to Olivenhain more than 30 years ago, living at the property as a caretaker and landscaper, according to sources.
Two aspects of this story struck me quite personally.
Bees and Me
Firstly, when I was about 10 years old attending summer camp, I horribly ran straight into a beehive and was stung 50 to 100 times. Since now I know experts consider 150 to 300 bee stings enough to immobilize a large person, I can thank my lucky star I wasn't more badly injured that day. As it were, it hurt like hell for a week, or so, and made me bee-shy for a long time.
I've gotten over that, and, in fact, love bees. After reading about bee intelligence, I'm impressed, not scared at all. In fact, I give them mad props.
For example, did you know bees have incredibly large brains for their size? Researchers believe bees are highly efficient, actually -- just like I pretend to be -- and work only a few hours a day at their appointed tasks. Then, they spend a lot of down-time relaxing, doing whatever they do for fun, and even daydreaming, according to specialists.
Oh, the humanity: Poor Marco Lazaro and the even poorer remnants of corporate journalism
That's all cool, but the second aspect of the story striking me squarely at its roots, was more disturbing. Marco Lazaro, the person, seemed more like a tragic bystander than victim.
Every, and by that I mean EVERY, local news source immediately shifted from Lazaro's death to lame, impersonal, by-the-press-release dissertations on the dangers of bee stings, adding cautionary warnings about what to do in bee attacks, the growth of the bee problem, and related generic nonsense.
Marco Lazaro, the victim? Sorry, Charley horses, nothing else to say about him; whether he was a good guy or hard worker, what people thought about him, what he might have accomplished in life, or not.
Despicable excuses for news coverage, which unfortunately was the way of much of the world up to today as journalism was turned into a cash cow to be looted by faux business types starting in the late 1980s. (Locally, you can just look at Gilroy-based Mainstreet Media, publishers of the Rancho Santa Fe Review-Del Mar Times-Solana Beach Something and the Coast News "Group" who may, or may not, still be in business at Encinitas.)
So, actual journalists were downsized, and then laid off, in the 2000s as the bottom-feeding, bottom-line non-journalist publishers sought to maximize their greed, a kind of journalistic shadow play of Wall Street and the real estate frauds.
Without actual journalists driving coverage, looking for the humanity inside the breaking story rather than its bottom line coverage, people such as Marco Lazaro, went by the wayside, yielding to the mediocrity illustrated by his ultimate story's coverage demise.
New digital media partnerships restoring responsible journalism
Thank goodness, then, for the Internet and the new digital media environment bringing together citizen bloggers and professional journalists in a responsive, and responsible, partnership.
The dinosaur corporate profit-mongering breed is on its way out the door with vastly hyper-bloated overhead costs and no reliable, or interesting, content, hemorrhaging money by the bank account-load. The lean, and not so much mean as appropriately resourced, models such as Ah-Ha Rancho Santa Fe are thriving.
With that said, we return to Marco Lazaro's real-life story. WaveBlog of New Encinitas ran the story the way it should have been run in the first place, talking about the man who was victimized by fate and a wrong turn of his backhoe, not the hype of "bee danger."
WaveBlog alone -- citizen journalists -- did the story right. What's left of "professional" -- substitute the word "corporate" -- journalism hyped the alarmist crapola, ignoring the humanity. WaveBlog was there with actual insight and compassion.
So, letting you know a bit more about Marco Lazaro, the man, we re-publish, and pass along, the WaveBlog story, which ran without a byline, even, well under the dying media radar, restoring the humanity somewhat to this overlooked, and most important, element lost in corporate journalistic translation. Long story short, please read on...
--- Dan Weisman
founder/editor
Ah-Ha Rancho Santa Fe
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WaveBlog
MY FRIEND MARCO, GUATEMALAN, STUNG TO DEATH BY AFRICAN BEES IN ENCINITAS
In 1989, my wife Sarah and I were expecting our second daughter; Molly Margaret, I was working for Noren Honda and Mike Doyle of Doyle Sports that retailed surf-wear in The Lumberyard on Highway 101, when I was first introduced to Marco Lazaro and his common-law wife, Rosa.
A mixed-non-marriage, Rosa from Central Mexico and Marco hailing from the Guatemalan highlands lived in a tin shack in a gully off a barranca on the property of Mrs. Rosemary Woods (Wiegand) on a ramshackle rancho squeezed between Encinitas Country Day School and the San Elijo Lagoon.
When the local temps dropped below freezing we always took new blankets purchased at clearance sales to Marco and Rosa. They could have a small fire in the shack to keep warm, but always had to leave the door open to the freezing wind to avoid asphyxiation.
Coincidentally, Rosa was a beloved cleaning lady for Walter Steidel who was the San Diego County Regional Retail Vice-President of Robinson’s Department Stores; that my wife, Sarah was a buyer for. There were several connections.
Marco was Indio, deeply red skinned and with the almost-Central American ability to build almost anything out of everything to achieve whatever it was you asked of him; as long as you didn’t care what it looked like; and he earned his money.
Marco was the most dependable person you ever met and was so cynical in his world-view that just a sour look and squinting of his Asiatic visage would make me break into uncontrollable laughter as I read his mind.
Especially when I would come upon one of his phantasmagorical creations tied onto the back of his truck combined with his ability to, somehow, transport everyone else’s cast-offs to Tijuana only to build an entire apartment complex in south-east Tijuana for his common-law non-married mother-in-law; Lourdes, who ended up inheriting a nearly new wheel chair when my own mother-in-law, Beth Lyon faded into the constant shifting mist of Alzheimer’s disease.
Then, in 1992, Marco’s mother became ill, and Marco felt duty-bound to travel down to say goodbye to her as she was near death.
Normally, I would see him every other Tuesday morning, but as he left to return to Guatemala, it was the last time I saw him for over two years.
In January of 1993, Rosa, her sister and mother-in-law (in the Lyon Familia wheelchair) arrived at our home across the street from Park Dale Lane Elementary (where I was the PTA President). Rosa had a bunch of federal paperwork informing us that Marco would not be allowed back in the United States; unless Rosa could prove that there was a job waiting here in Encinitas for him.
Thus began an incredible odyssey of California corporation creation, Mexican and Guatemalan Visas, work permits, federal investigators and even, an ex-girlfriend chick fight between Rosa and one of Marco’s former girlfriends…on my front lawn (Don’t ask).
Finally, in 1994, I convinced the Feds to allow Marco to travel back over the border and become my full time employee.
Marco arrived at my door and we had a little impromptu party as he recounted his adventures with federales, gun thugs, bureaucrats and his mother’s burial trip into the jungles.
This lasted for a week until Mrs. Woods rehired him back and having convinced Rosa of his faithfulness during his exile outside of Guatemala City for the two years, Marco was back home again and ready to work.
But the economy had changed (Euphemism) and we no longer could afford to have Marco garden nor Rosa clean and straighten.
Mr. Steidel, the big Robinson’s boss in La Jolla passed away and Rosa no longer rode the bus to La Jolla every Wednesday to care for the Steidel’s only child and plan her Quincenera.
Then, Rosa’s mother passed on; her sister, passed, and after a year without contact, Rosa, came by the house, emaciated with breast cancer she could not afford treatment for and feigning like nothing was wrong, I fixed tea while she and I reminisced about all the people we loved that have passed away and of the great ‘city’ that Marco had built in Calle Obregon, south of the border.
Six months later, walking out of the Cardiff By The Sea Post Office, I ran into Marco. (Photo) Tears came to his eyes as he recounted Rosa’s last days and he reached inside his truck for he wanted to bring some of the porcelain animals my daughters had made for Rosa at Carla’s Art Camp back a dozen years earlier to my girls; as one of Rosa’s last requests.
I snapped a quick photo of Marco so I could show my daughters that he was still alive and cooking, and then a week later I fell ill and before I knew it, I was in surgery.
I did not see my friend, Marco again.
Over the years, he’d helped me move several times, was a guest at my home, was Mr. Dependable at all times; had one of the keenest abilities to read people (Especially Noren ‘Napoleon’ Honda) and also had one of the trippiest naturally spikes of a hair for all time.
WEDNESDAY, June 16, 2010
I was at dinner with the Encinitas Fire Chief on Wednesday night, late, when the Chief was called by a Division Captain and informed that an Encinitas resident had been stung to death by bees.
We all shuddered at the table and asked for more morbid details.
The next morning, just before 5:00 a.m., I jumped on the computer and popped up the local daily and to my horror, slowly my disbelief became tears boiling out of my eyes and down onto my keyboard.
My friend Marco, who I had jumped through federal hoops to return my longtime friend to his common-law wife, Rosa, had died an incredibly painful and violent death.
Stung to death by 500 ‘Africanized’ bees on Mrs. Wood’s rancho.
Marco absolutely did not deserve to die the way he did and I am sure that somewhere today, maybe many places in Calle Obregon, many a candle is being burnt for Marco and Rosa; as we held our own prayer vigil for him with some smoking votives surrounded by the porcelain animals that Marco had returned to Amanda and Molly after his life mate had passed on.
Vaya con dios, mi amigo.
Yes, go with God.
Your very hard, very happy life is finally over. We hope you are at peace.
Marco, my friend...
...For more from WaveBlog, visit http://newencinitasnetwork.org/blog/?p=313
