‘Save her, and if you can’t, save my daughter,’ dad told paramedics – Orange County Register

James Alvarez, right, is comforted by his 3-year-old “miracle baby,” Adalyn Rose Alvarez-Aguilar, as he talks during the Crime Victims’ Rights Ceremony in Santa Ana on Monday, April 22, 2024. Alvarez’s wife, Yesenia Aguilar was struck and killed by a drunk driver while the couple was walking when she was 36 weeks pregnant. His daughter survived after an emergency caesarean section. Senior Deputy District Attorney Brian Orue is on the left. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

James Alvarez recalled the chilling moment he saw an SUV drive toward him and his pregnant wife during their nighttime walk along an Anaheim sidewalk nearly four years ago.

The couple took daily walks during the pregnancy.

“The only difference that day was we took a different route,” Alvarez said. “We took the long way home.”

He heard screams from the nearby shopping center as an SUV lost control.

As he held the hand of his 23-year-old wife, Yesenia Lisette Aguilar, he recalled, “I closed my eyes and thought this was the way our lives would end.”

Then she was snatched, said Alvarez, one of the speakers at the Orange County District Attorney’s Office’s annual ceremony for crime victims in Santa Ana on Monday, April 22.

“I can see it so vividly,” he choked out. “When I saw her, the person I expected to spend the rest of my life with suddenly disappeared. … I couldn’t register what was going on.”

When paramedics arrived, he was told he couldn’t go to the hospital with his wife because it was during the pandemic.

“I remember telling the paramedics to save her, and if they can’t, save my daughter,” he said.

When he arrived at the hospital, he was told “the news that no one wants to hear. … When I heard this news, it broke me because I felt like it was my duty as a husband to protect my family, but I failed.”

Doctors were able to save his daughter with emergency surgery. When the newborn was stable enough for a visit to the intensive care unit, he experienced another moment that “broke me”: he saw her strapped to life-saving equipment.

But seeing her “fight for her life” inspired him to keep going, he said.

Adalyn Rose’s birthday, Aug. 11, will also always be the anniversary of her mother’s death, the father added.

A Garden Grove woman in her 40s with three prior drunk driving convictions was sentenced to 15 years to life for the collision and related crimes.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said it is important for law enforcement officers to avoid cynicism.

“We need (victims) to remind us so we don’t become insensitive,” Spitzer said. “I never want to lose my humanity by doing this work. … I don’t want to be numb.”

Regardless of “political leaning,” Orange County residents are “united” in the fight against crime, Spitzer said.

“I feel strongly that we are so united… about keeping our community safe as best we can.”

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