Obituary: Maria Elena Montellano, flamboyant owner of Alviso’s popular Mexican restaurant, dead at 47 [San Jose Mercury News, Calif.]

July 04--When Maria Elena's Restaurant in Alviso had finally expanded as far as it could go short of opening a dining room in the bay waters, the business office was relocated directly across the street. And every morning, as her staff prepared for the Mexican restaurant's standing-room-only lunches, Maria Elena Montellano stopped by the office long enough for a little work, and to put the finishing touches on the entrance she was about to make.

Maria Elena was only 5 feet tall. But between the towering high heels she wore constantly and her enormous black lacquer hairdo, she topped out at about 5 feet 6 inches. To this she added gold bracelets and chains, giant hoop earrings and meticulously manicured nails, which she liked to wear long and sometimes purple.

"She would tell me, 'I'm going to go over to scare the employees now,' " recalled Brittney Hernandez, the office assistant and Montellano's niece. "Then she would cross the street, and all you would see was this little stick with big hair."

The street was like a proscenium arch, and the restaurant that bore her name was Maria Elena's stage. She avoided the crosswalk, preferring to stop traffic with theatrical flair. When she died at age 47 of a heart attack last week -- following surgery in a Mexican hospital for complications of scleroderma, the autoimmune disease from which she suffered -- a sadder show went on without her at Alviso's homiest municipal gathering point.

Montellano's

family, most of whom seem to work at the restaurant, learned of her death shortly after it occurred Tuesday, and spent the rest of the week consoling not only one another but also the legions of loyal customers who have become their extended family. At a recent lunch, Hernandez was summoned to the table of a man who could not stop crying. He said he'd been coming to Maria Elena's since the day it opened 22 years ago.

"It's very shocking," said Dick Santos, a member of the Santa Clara Valley Water District board and a longtime friend. "We still believe she's going to come walking through that door."

A gold mine

Family and friends gathered at the restaurant Saturday, one day after Maria Elena was due back from Mexico. She had gone there for surgery because her health insurance had been rescinded because of what her American insurer deemed a pre-existing condition. "Her body just gave up," said Lupe Hernandez, Montellano's sister.

When their father, Guadalupe, brought Maria Elena to the wilds of Alviso as a young woman, all she saw were dirt roads and empty marsh. When she asked him why he wanted to open a restaurant there, he replied, "Look, mija, look. You don't see it? This is a gold mine, right here." It's no accident that years later, Maria Elena's grand entrances came as she swept across Gold Street.

But street theater never distracted her from the real work she had come to do. Early and often, she supported the Santa Visits Alviso program for needy kids. And she was instrumental in establishing the Downtown College Prep (DCP) middle school not far from the restaurant.

"She leaves an important legacy," Santos said. "People come to Alviso because of Maria Elena. When other people let us down, she never did. This community is going to miss her very seriously."

So generous

Maria Elena encouraged the kids from DCP to stop by after school, and soon they were there every day, lining up for food. She never charged them for anything, and closed down a section of the restaurant for them. The employees weren't always delighted with the boss' generosity.

"The kids from DCP would come in and give you attitude," said Mario Charles, who married Maria Elena's daughter Vanessa and works at the restaurant. "But you couldn't tell them anything without her getting in your face. She was always saying, 'These kids are going to change the future.' She was a mother to the whole community."

One of the kids she took care of was Pablo Charles, now 20, who first encountered Maria Elena when he and some friends crashed one of her parties when he was 14.

"Even though we were uninvited, she still accepted us," he said, his eyes filling with tears. "Whatever we wanted to eat, it was all good. When she said she wanted to see us come back, that she wanted to do something for us, I remember thinking, 'Look at this crazy lady.' I didn't know then what her word meant. For somebody to just do that, and actually follow through, I owe my life to her."

Contact Bruce Newman at 408-920-5004.

funeral arrangements

The public is invited to pay respects to Maria Elena Montellano from 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Oak Hill Funeral Home, 300 Curtner Ave., San Jose. Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Sacred Heart Church, 325 Willow St., San Jose. Burial at Oak Hill Memorial Park will follow.

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