‘Not a single drawing’: Mom who lost son, husband in Surfside faces life without keepsakes

Among the most treasured possessions that moms tend to keep for their entire lives are some of the works of art made by their kids when they were little. Either prominently displayed on fridge doors and shelves or tucked away in messy drawers, the items are worth more than pretty much anything a mom might own.

Those first stick figure drawings of mommy and me; finger paintings and handprints forming the shape of a heart; a collage forming a bouquet of paper flowers that little hands cut all by themselves.

Raquel Oliveira, a mom who lost her husband, Alfredo Leone, 48, and their 5-year-old son, Lorenzo Leone, in the Surfside condo collapse, is painfully aware of how irreplaceable those items are and how much strength it will take her to get through life without them.

“She is an extremely strong woman, grounded and really intelligent, and she is suffering in ways we can’t imagine; but not having anything to remember them by, not a single object, that’s just beyond tragic,” said Katia Pirozzi, a close friend who lives in Deerfield Beach, her voice cracking with emotion.

The 41-year-old Brazilian was in Colorado visiting her mom and sister when the Champlain Towers South condo building collapsed in the early hours of June 24. She had gone for a short visit after all in the family had received COVID-19 vaccines and was planning to return home for the weekend. She woke up to the horrible news on that Thursday.

Leone and Lorenzo later were among the people identified in the wreckage of the beachfront building. They were recovered on July 8 by Miami-Dade Police.

Oliveira and Italian-born Leone moved to Miami from Rio de Janeiro in 2017, looking for a safer place to raise their son Lorenzo, who was 8 months old at the time.

Brazil’s seaside city, where Oliveira was born and where she met Leone, had become even more dangerous that year as drug-related crime took over entire neighborhoods amid a deep economic crisis in the state of Rio.

Pirozzi said that despite the deteriorating situation in the city, Oliveira had to convince Leone to leave Rio.

“He loved Rio. He loved the beach; he loved the lifestyle. They had originally considered moving to Portugal, but Miami was a better option considering the kind of life that Alfredo wanted to have for him and his family,” Pirozzi said.

She said Miami’s dynamism and emerging tech scene appealed to Leone. As a business development professional with experience in launching technology companies in several markets, the Rome-born electrical engineer was excited when he joined MentorcliQ, a company that provides mentoring software to teams all over the world. He was chief revenue officer at the company, “working on making mentoring a mainstream employee benefit,” he said on his LinkedIn profile.

He was also passionate about helping nonprofits and young tech companies. Leone served on several advisory boards including that of Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit LINGOs (now Humentum), language learning company Ascentify, software review platform InsiderHub and nonprofit Tunnel Labs.

But his biggest passion was his son, Pirozzi said. “He really embraced being a dad and marveled at every milestone, every achievement as he watched Lorenzo grow.” The little boy and his dad spent many hours doing puzzles together and loved to listen to music. He had given Lorenzo a set of drums for Christmas, she said.

Leone’s parents live in Spain and traveled to Miami earlier this month to provide DNA samples to help in the identification of their son and to be with Raquel, Pirozzi said.

Local friends are supporting Oliveira however they can, said Carolina Lara, a friend from Aventura. She started a fundraiser on GoFundMe to collect $100,000 to support Oliveira. The campaign, which started on June 29, had about $74,000 in donations so far. Colleagues from software company SAP, where Oliveira works, also organized fundraisers on her behalf.