He needs a new heart. She worries about how they’ll feed their three children
As soon as her husband, on the other end of the phone line, said he needed a heart transplant, Kimberly Lanz looked down at her pointed black flats.
Still holding her phone to her ear, she mentally pictured a list of their monthly expenses, desperately searching for one they could reduce or delete. Then, still looking at her shoes — the only formal pair she can wear to work — she decided she would not get new ones as she had wanted.
“I started to think about where we could cut, even though I know we only spend money on the basics already, like housing and our phones,” said Lanz, 35. “But I knew we needed to start preparing for what’s coming.”
Later that same day, Lanz and and her husband Edirson Azocar, 38, broke down as they shared the news with Adan Hernandez, a ministry specialist for Salvation Army, that Azocar’s heart was operating at 10%.
“It was really tough. They were both crying,” Hernandez said.
The Salvation Army, a religious nonprofit, has already helped the couple as much as it can to cover some living costs, but because of the upcoming surgery, Hernandez decided to nominate the family for the Miami Herald’s Wish Book Program, a holiday fundraising drive.
“She’s a fighter. She’s very positive. And he’s a hard worker. He still works even though he shouldn’t,” Hernandez said. “I’m hoping the community can support them fight for a better future and fulfill their dreams.”
Ever since Lanz and Azocar learned about the surgery about a month ago, they’ve spent most of their time thinking about how they’ll pay their bills once it happens. He’ll need to rest for at least six months, maybe 12, to allow his body to recover — whether he wants to or not. But during that time, the Venezuelan immigrant couple will still need to pay $2,100 in rent and $120 in electricity, feed their three children and cover other costs, all with one less income.
“Thank God we got to this country, and he’ll be able to get that surgery. Thank God we’re getting that opportunity that we previously thought was impossible. We’re grateful. But we’re also worried,” Lanz said on a recent rainy afternoon that seemed to match the family’s mood inside their apartment in Little Havana.
Lacking money and health but not the will to work
Azocar and Lanz have three children: Antonella Gomez, 14; Edianela Azocar, 11; and Jake Azocar, 1.
The girls, a ninth grader at Miami Senior High and a sixth grader at Ada Merritt K-8 Center, focus on getting good grades, and they contribute with chores at home. Meanwhile, the toddler focuses on making everyone smile, as his blond curls bounce while he crawls around, discovering the world.
Lanz sells life insurance plans. She likes it because she can bring Jake into the office and avoid paying the approximately $1,000 that they used to pay for daycare every month.
Azocar works as an food delivery worker for UberEats. His condition — hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, a disease in which the heart wall or septum between the left ventricle and right ventricle thickens, affecting the heart’s ability to pump blood — limits his physical activity. But he still pushes himself to perform tasks like going up flights of stairs to make some money.
He uses a 2008 Toyota Yaris that they bought used on an installment plan; before, he rented a motorcycle to work. He can’t ride with passengers, even though that would be better for his health, because Uber hasn’t yet approved that type of account for him.
“We always do what we can with what we have,” said Azocar, yawning and rubbing his eyes because of his low energy. “And we always have humor, so I try to crack jokes. I even make myself laugh, and I think it helps.”
No strangers to struggle
The family lives in a one-bedroom apartment. The parents and Jake sleep on a queen-sized mattress that they recently got and placed on the living room floor by the kitchen. Other than that, all they have in the living room are two beach chairs, a small TV and Jake’s stroller. The girls sleep in a bunk bed in the bedroom.
They sometimes rely on food banks, and they enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), a federal program, when Jake was born. The Salvation Army, a religious nonprofit, paid their rent for two months once they moved into their current apartment, while they handled the deposit.
They have only about $200 in their savings account, and they can’t really buy chocolates or toys whenever the kids beg for them, but they’re better off than they’ve been in years, perhaps as many as six years.
In early 2017, while they were living in their native Caracas, Azocar’s symptoms began, including shortness of breath, stomach pain, fatigue and swelling in his extremities. He had trouble peeing and sleeping and walking, and sometimes vomited blood. Although doctors had diagnosed him with the condition during his teenage years, and he knew his estranged father had died from heart failure in his 30s, Azocar had never experienced symptoms of the illness until then.
He sought care in 2017, but quickly found out the only real cure would be a heart transplant. Because that wasn’t remotely feasible in Venezuela, his doctor recommended an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), a device that would shock his heart if the rhythm became abnormal. Azocar acquired the device but could never get it surgically implanted in Venezuela because of the poor healthcare conditions there.
In late October of 2017, as they realized Azocar would likely never get the ICD in their home country and the economy there worsened because of the political circumstances, Lanz decided she would migrate to Ecuador. Their family business, a photocopying and printing company, wasn’t as lucrative as it once was, so she left the girls with Azocar and got into a bus headed south to Quito.
Xenophobia in Ecuador, insecurity in Mexico
The trip took about two days. The first night that Lanz arrived she slept in a bathroom with two other women. She got a job cleaning a bakery from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. She stayed there for a month and then got a better job as a forensic auditor, her profession in Venezuela.
Azocar and the girls eventually moved to Ecuador too. The family, with four members at the time, lived there until 2019 when an Ecuadorian man got into a disagreement with them over a bus seat and insulted them because they were immigrants.
Tensions were rising in South America as Venezuelans poured into other nations in search of better living conditions, and Lanz feared they could get attacked because of their nationality. She forbade the girls to speak in public because she thought their accent would endanger them.
In 2019 they returned to Venezuela and set Brazil as their next target. They bought their one-way plane tickets in early 2020 but before they could leave, the pandemic hit and the borders shut down. They lost the investment and stayed home until January 2021, when they once again decided they needed to move, this time north to Mexico.
In Mexico City, he worked as a food delivery driver. She worked at a call center and then again as a forensic auditor. But they struggled financially. She made about 8,000 Mexican pesos each month, or roughly $465, and they paid about 7,000 pesos in rent, or about $407. They used his earnings to live, but also felt threatened because of the crime. He got mugged once, and his motorcycle was stolen.
In October 2021, just nine months after they had arrived in Mexico, Lanz decided they needed to migrate to the U.S., although it seemed unlikely that they could cross into the U.S. because they didn’t have the thousands of dollars that they had heard were needed to pay a coyote.
“When you’re in a situation like that, when you’re so desperate, you find the courage. I think anyone would. I did. I said, ‘We’re leaving in a week,’” she said. “And we did.”
A surprise in Miami
The next 10 days passed in a blur. They sold everything they owned, even their beds, and managed to come up with a few hundred dollars. They took a flight, then a bus, then a taxi, and made it to the border.
Thankfully, as they stood on the bank of the intimidating Rio Grande River, each carrying a backpack with clothes, they encountered an old man who said he’d guide them for $200. The man carried one of the girls on his back, and Azocar carried the other one.
Lanz recalls little after that, mostly just how the water kept rising as they advanced, until it hit their necks. They all held up their bags, trying to keep their clothes dry because they had heard that the U.S. Border Patrol throws any luggage away if it’s wet.
When they eventually reached the other side, Lanz wept.
“I was so excited,” she said. “So excited we had survived.”
They made it to an immigrant shelter in Texas, and were released quickly — because of Azocar’s deteriorating health, they suspect. They traveled to Miami, where Lanz’s sister lives, and stayed with her for a while. He worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant, and she worked as a housekeeper at a hotel. Eventually she became a nanny, and the family she worked for let them rent a studio they owned.
And then they got a surprise in March 2022: They were expecting a baby.
Eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
That summer, the family Lanz worked for told her they needed to move out of the studio because they wanted to use the space as an Airbnb. Then, in her last trimester, in October 2022, immigration authorities took Azocar into the Krome Detention Center after he got stopped for a traffic infraction — a curse that turned into a blessing in a sense.
Jake was born Nov. 18, 2022, while Azocar was detained. But a couple of days later, Azocar’s symptoms got so bad that immigration officials took him to the hospital, and the ICD he needed was implanted. They released him a few days later and he met his baby boy inside an Uber parked outside Krome.
Both parents described the months that followed — the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 — as excruciating. Neither could work because he had just had open-heart surgery, and she had to care for their newborn. But one of the parents still had to drop off the girls at school using the public bus, even if some days they had to ask friends and family to lend them the $2.25 bus fare.
Lanz remembers a specific day on which she was waiting at a bus stop with her baby and the girls under the scorching sun, and Edianela asked her for water.
“I felt like I wanted to die,” Lanz said. “There I was, hearing my daughter ask me for water, and I had no money to buy it for her.”
The family’s situation has slowly stabilized since then, but now they face the next obstacle: It’s time for the heart transplant that they always knew Azocar would need.
Hernandez, the Salvation Army counselor, said they need help paying for basic needs like rent, utilities and food. In addition, Lanz is hoping she gets a new laptop so she can work remotely. She plans to get a tax certification course and do that on the side for extra income soon.
As they recently talked about how they could manage, Azocar reminded Lanz that in Ecuador, they once ate eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a month because that’s all they could afford.
“Now maybe it won’t be eggs,” Azocar said, joking because egg prices soared late last year.
“We’ll see what we find,” he added, reaching out to rub Lanz’s hand, as she stared out the window.
How to help
To help this Wish Book nominee and the more than 100 other nominees who are in need this year:
▪ To donate, use the coupon found in the newspaper or pay securely online through www.MiamiHerald.com/wishbook
▪ For more information, call 305-376-2906 or email Wishbook@MiamiHerald.com
▪ The most requested items are often laptops and tablets for school, furniture, and accessible vans
▪ Read all Wish Book stories on www.MiamiHerald.com/wishbook
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