“I know I can work, but I am old,” Mr. Mayorga said, pausing as if admitting a weakness. At 65, he already has one full-time job in a kitchen prepping meals for a chef. “People probably think I can’t do what I can do, but I can do any level of work.”
Mr. Mayorga needs the extra work because after raising their own family, he and his wife, Maria, are taking care of their grandchildren, Ashley, 9, and Joshua, 7. The Mayorgas have been raising them since 2001, when their daughter Linzay was killed by her husband, who then killed himself.
Speaking of the crime still brings Maria Mayorga to tears as she sits in the kitchen of the family’s three-bedroom apartment, which is part of an old house in Port Chester, N.Y. The children share one bedroom, and the third is occupied by the Mayorgas’ daughter Patricia, 43, who is mentally retarded. A small yard behind the house is crammed with toys and is home to a turtle and a duck.
“My daughter was good mother; she was a good woman,” Mrs. Mayorga said, wiping her eyes with a tissue. A photo of Linzay rested on a nearby shelf. The two grandchildren played in the small backyard.
After the deaths, the Mayorgas navigated the maze of the state courts to take custody of their grandchildren. Mrs. Mayorga, who speaks little English, was shuttled from one office to another. She recalls a helpful court officer pointing her away from one courthouse, saying, “This is the court for the living; you need the court for the dead.”
The Mayorgas have raised the children since then, even though it is often difficult to maintain the household on Mr. Mayorga’s pay of $10.85 per hour.
“Nobody is going to take away these kids,” Mrs. Mayorga said.
Mr. Mayorga arrived in the United States in 1983. A tailor in his native Ecuador, he left when he could no longer find work. Now a United States citizen, he remembers his illegal crossing into the country as an ordeal, crammed into the back of a tractor-trailer for hours, unable to sit and often barely able to breathe.
He arrived in New York City knowing no one and unable to speak English. (Even now Mr. Mayorga is not comfortable in English; interviews with him and his wife were conducted with the help of an interpreter.) Within three days, Mr. Mayorga had a job at a clothing factory in Manhattan’s garment district.
He started as a porter, but an impromptu display of tailoring on a pair of pants won him a promotion. Mr. Mayorga spent years as a tailor at the factory, earning $14 an hour; but in the early 1990s the factory closed. Garment district jobs had become scarce, he said, forcing him to look for other work.
Mr. Mayorga now works six days a week in a restaurant, but the money often does not stretch far enough. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of the organizations that receive support from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, has helped the Mayorgas with money toward the rent and sometimes for food.
Mrs. Mayorga worries that as her husband ages, he will find it harder to work. Social Security would not be enough to provide for everyone.
Mr. Mayorga insists that he is able to work, provided he can find employment. He said his greatest hope was for his grandchildren’s education.
“I don’t want them to work like I did. I want them to be professionals so someday they will be sitting at a desk in an office,” Mr. Mayorga said. “I hope that I am going to have enough time left in my life to see that.”
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