Mother was keeping her daughter company in the Champlain Towers. They’re both missing
Elena Chavez, 88, and Elena Blasser, 64, a tight-knit mother and daughter pair, had plans on Thursday, June 24. They had long promised a new bicycle to their six-year-old grandson (great grandson for Chavez), a belated birthday present they’d been promising since April. They were going to pick him up, bring him to lunch and take him to pick out his new wheels.
Both are missing since the Champlain Tower in Surfside collapsed in the early hours of Thursday morning. It’s been a “living nightmare” for Pablo Rodriguez, Elena Blasser’s son and Elena Chavez’s grandson. Elena Chavez, who lives nearby by herself, was staying at her daughter’s house in the towers to keep her company while Blasser’s husband was traveling in Panama.
“They value family above all else,” Pablo said, describing beloved family rituals, which included an annual family vacation and Saturday lunches. He said the two have a close relationship with his son and he’s been doing his best to not expose him to the tragedy unfolding.
“Yesterday was really hard,” Pablo said in an interview on Sunday. “Because he knows that every Saturday they come over.”
The mother/daughter pair fled Cuba during Castro’s revolution when Elena Blasser was only a little girl. They spent several years in New York and then moved to Puerto Rico, where Blasser spent the majority of her upbringing. The family came to Miami in the late ‘70s and have stayed ever since.
Pablo described his grandmother and mother as fun loving and always seeking adventure and new experiences. They both share a passion for travel that they’ve passed along to the rest of the family, even to their grandson/great grandson, who Pablo says already has his own little suitcase, loves airports and likes to check into flights and hotels himself.
Elena Chavez is so passionate about travel that she made it her career — even at 88, she still works as a travel agent. The two had have been to places like Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Ukraine. They had been planning to travel to Russia before the pandemic hit. Elena Chavez was planning her first post-pandemic trip to the Czech Republic.
“She did everything,” Pablo said, “She still worked, she had friends, they’d go to the theater, go out to dinner, travel to Europe, go on cruises.”
Elena Blasser’s life is devoted to education — she was an elementary and middle school teacher, then a school counselor and a vice principal at different schools throughout Miami-Dade.
“My mom [is] a force of nature — very strong willed and passionate,” Pablo said. “She was my best friend, we talked every day.”
