Word: izquierdo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...York City, first heard of Elisa on Feb. 11, 1989, the day of her birth. Her mother was a crack addict whose addiction was indirectly responsible for her pregnancy: she had lost her apartment, and in Brooklyn's Auburn Place homeless shelter she began a romance with Gustavo Izquierdo, who worked at the shelter as a cook. As her pregnancy progressed, Awilda was so lost in the pipe that relatives managed to wrest custody of her first two children, Rubencito and Kasey, from her. The social workers at Woodhull Hospital took one look at Elisa's tiny, crack-addicted body...
...ELISA IZQUIERDO LIKED TO DANCE, WHICH IS ALMOST TOO perfect. Fairy tales, especially those featuring princesses, often include dancing, although perhaps not Elisa's favorite merengue. Fairy-tale princesses are born humble. Elisa fit that bill: she was conceived in a homeless shelter in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn and born addicted to crack. That Elisa nevertheless had a special, enchanted aura is something the whole city of New York now knows. "Radiant," says one of her preschool teachers, remembering a brilliant smile and flashing black eyes. "People loved her," adds another. "Everybody loved her." And, unlikely...
Fairy-tale princesses, however, are not bludgeoned to death by their mothers. They are not violated with a toothbrush and a hairbrush, and the neighbors do not hear them moaning and pleading at night. Last week, two months before her seventh birthday, Elisa Izquierdo lay in her casket, wearing a crown of flowers. The casket was open, which was an anguished protest on someone's part; no exertion of the undertaker's art could conceal all Elisa's wounds. Before she smashed her daughter's head against a cement wall, Awilda Lopez told police, she had made...
Perhaps to his own surprise, Izquierdo--who had emigrated from Cuba hoping to teach dance--turned out to be a wonderful father. At first there were panicky calls to female acquaintances about diapers and formula, but eventually he mastered the basics. Every morning he would iron a dress for Elisa and put her beautiful hair into braids or pigtails. When she was four, he rented a Queens banquet hall for a party marking her baptism. Says a friend, Mary Crespo: "She was his life. He would always say Elisa was his princess...
...through her father's efforts that the princess found her prince. Izquierdo took parenting classes at the local ywca, and he enrolled one-year-old Elisa in the Y's Montessori preschool. She was a favorite pupil. Says the school's then director, Phyllis Bryce: "She was beautiful, radiant. She had an inner strength and a lot of potential for growth." So fond of both father and daughter were the Montessori staff members that when Izquierdo fell behind on tuition, they recommended his daughter to Prince Michael of Greece...