South Bend brothers with rocky pasts lean on each other now

Jan. 03--Danny Camarillo found his brother Alex walking unsteadily, limping down a street in downtown South Bend.

At the time -- November 2012 -- Danny, Alex and their brother Raymond had been out of touch. They had all become caught up in the personal maelstroms they had created for themselves.

Alex had just left prison, where he had spent more than a year after walking away from a dramatic car crash near the Indiana 19 bypass exit in Elkhart County. He and his girlfriend were drunk and arguing when the Jeep left the road at 80 mph and flipped at least 15 times. One of his girlfriend's feet was amputated. Alex spent just a day in the hospital. Because drugs were found in the vehicle, he ended up in Westville Correctional Facility.

There, Danny says he learned later from friends and relatives, Alex was quickly targeted.

He was wearing expensive glasses that somebody else wanted.

And he was a Camarillo, a name linked in local Latino circles with money and success.

Alex hasn't been the same since he was severely beaten there, Danny says. In hindsight, Alex was also already showing signs of the aggressive multiple sclerosis with which he would later be diagnosed.

So when Danny found Alex a couple of days after Thanksgiving in 2012, he was horrified. A distant relative had taken in his brother, who could barely walk, but forced him to make drug deliveries. Alex had eaten a frozen meal, alone, that Thanksgiving.

"It just broke my heart," Danny says. "For days, I'm like, 'What do I do?'"

Danny, by that time clean and rebuilding his own life in a two-bedroom apartment with his girlfriend and their baby, took Alex home.

'A household name'

Mateo Camarillo opened the first Hispanic business in the city when he took over a former Polish building on Western Avenue in 1972. The grocery specialized in food imported from Mexico, according to a Tribune article, and was called La Mexicana.

Mateo Camarillo had left his San Antonio home at 17, heading north as a migrant farmworker, he told a reporter in 1993. The young man worked in a factory for 17 years before heading to South Bend for the opportunity to run his own business, with his family's help.

Mateo attributed his success to hard work. He helped start Hispanic agencies, Danny remembers, and was generous in awarding scholarships.

"We were a household name," says Danny, now 44. "To this day, your name proceeds you sometimes."

But his sons remember parents who were also alcoholic. Tribune reports in 1985 and 1988 describe police responses to family "quarrels" involving Mateo that escalated into domestic violence incidents, one involving a SWAT team.

In hindsight, Danny thinks, perhaps it was not surprising that he and his brothers would be attracted to drugs.

Danny dropped out of Washington High School and has spent time in prison on drug charges, too. He later earned his GED, despite his drug use and alcoholism, and worked for his father until his death in 2001.

Danny says he successfully ran several businesses himself over the years -- until the alcohol, marijuana and cocaine took their toll in 2008, when he found himself homeless.

"It was touch and go for years," Danny says now. "I lost everything."

When you're doing drugs, everybody's your friend, he says. When you're not, sometimes you find yourself alone.

His "savior" was Samantha, the woman he married last year, he says. She helped him "try to get my life back and my mind right."

After Danny moved in, and then Alex, their brother Ray called. He was living in a rehab facility in Indianapolis.

He said, "I want to come home."

'Even in my dreams'

Ray Camarillo was already in trouble at 17. Because their parents were angry with him, Ray was living with 21-year-old Danny on that April day in 1994.

That day, Ray skipped school with some friends, smoking pot at Danny's house while he was at work, Danny says. Although police later said the fight appeared to be over a drug deal gone bad, it really started over a girl.

But the tragic result was the same: One of Ray's friends pulled out a gun and shot him in the face. The bullet entered under Ray's eye and traveled through a jaw and his throat before severing his spinal cord.

Although his brain was spared, Ray has been a paraplegic ever since.

Danny arrived home -- although he was just 21, the house was "bought and paid for," he notes -- to police cars surrounding his home. He was ultimately charged with maintaining a common nuisance.

Ray was in and out of the hospital for a while. He was eventually sent to rehab facilities.

After Alex, now 35, and Ray moved in, Danny learned how to apply for insurance, for nursing aides, for services. He schedules doctor's appointments and keeps up with their meds. It was two years before disability payments kicked in for Alex.

Until recently, an aide has helped Ray for eight hours, seven days per week. But in the off hours, the heavy lifting is left for Danny.

Ray is grateful for the help and companionship of his brothers.

He doesn't want to talk about that day when he was 17. He acknowledges he made mistakes.

He had a 3-year-old son, Brandon, when his life took such a drastic turn. Ray thinks his now-grown son has learned from those mistakes; Brandon graduated from Mishawaka High School and is in the U.S. Navy.

In 1994, doctors told Ray he would never walk again. He probably would not live to age 40.

Ray is 40 now.

In the last couple of years, Ray and Danny say, the hospitalizations have become more frequent and last longer.

Ray has come so close to death three times, once in a coma for 30 days, that a priest delivered last rites.

"It amazes me," Danny says of his brother. "He still fights."

Ray, who has a feeding tube, was in Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center over Thanksgiving. His immune system struggles to fight off infections now, and his stomach has been painful and troublesome for the last couple of years.

Danny planned a makeup Thanksgiving dinner for Ray and some extended family for Dec. 9, but Ray had to be taken back to the hospital that day.

Neither Danny nor Ray believed Dan would be able to leave his sixth-floor hospital bed for Christmas this year, but to their relief, Ray was discharged just in time for Christmas at their Granger home.

But the home care service that provided aides and nurses abruptly and without warning ended its services, Danny says, and he is now struggling to find a new company.

Although Ray can't move most of his body, he can shrug and move his head. His neck has been in continual pain since the shooting, he says.

"When I'm asleep, awake," Ray says, "even in my dreams, I feel it."

In his dreams, too, he is walking.

Then he wakes up. But he can't dwell on the past, he says, or the future.

"I think about what's right here, right now," Ray says. He thinks his body is closer to giving up the fight. "Nobody's guaranteed tomorrow, regardless."

The brothers are stubborn. They help each other just by being together.

"Everybody has been dealt their cards," Ray says. "It's just how you play those cards out."

'I'm not a perfect person'

Danny still goes to the gym every morning, wanting to stay strong for his brothers.

Now he needs to stay strong for himself, too: Last year, he was diagnosed with MS, by the same doctor who diagnosed Alex. The doctor said he'd never before met siblings who shared MS.

Then a few months ago, Danny was also diagnosed with lupus.

He and Samantha now have two children together, a 4-year-old daughter and an infant son, adding to Danny's now-grown kids. He's proud that they're responsible, productive adults.

Danny says he's close to earning a degree in business management. He intends to operate his own business again and still care for his brothers.

"My life is not over yet," Danny says.

Samantha, who's 27 and manages a local restaurant, says she married Danny in spite of his earlier demons.

"He's got such a good heart and he takes care of everybody," she says of the uncles her children adore. "I love that they're here instead of living in a nursing home, being with people who don't care about them."

Danny wonders, sometimes, whether the men's travails are related to their earlier transgressions, whether they're living some sort of penance. He sees the irony in giving up dependence on some drugs but now being dependent on other, legal drugs.

He hopes their story is a cautionary tale.

Danny takes his family to Granger Community Church on Sundays, and the brothers say they pray for guidance every day.

"God and faith have sustained me," Danny says. "I'm not a perfect person. But I'm not who I was."

Virginia Black

574-235-6321

vblack@sbtinfo.com

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