HIS GREATEST WISH; INS MAKES EXCEPTION FOR DYING BOY.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY

The boy's name is Jesus Garcia, and he is 12.

Right now he is deep in Mexico in a small village in the state of Michoacan, saying goodbye to his grandmother and cousins.

This is where the boy wants to be at this moment - at the last stages of a life that will almost certainly end before his 13th birthday.

There is a chance he will live long enough to return to his home in the San Fernando Valley with his mother, Maria, in the next few months after this visit.

But none of the doctors at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles who have been fighting the malignant brain tumor killing Jesus would bet on it.

That's why they knew this trip home to say goodbye to his grandmother and cousins was so important to him. So they tried to help.

One of the doctors sat down earlier this month to write a letter that started a chain of events that led to a moving story of compassion overcoming red tape.

A story about the people who guard the borders of this country stepping aside to let a dying boy come to the front of the line so he could have his last wish realized.

Walter Roig read and reread the letter from Dr. Anat Epstein of Childrens Hospital to the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles. The counselor at Mulholland Middle School in Van Nuys felt like someone had just knocked the wind out of him.

``Unfortunately, Jesus' brain tumor has recurred and has not responded to treatment,'' the March 3 letter said. ``He is now in the terminal phase of his illness, and his death is anticipated.''

Roig looked at the small woman who had handed him the letter - the woman whose eyes were now begging him for help: Maria Garcia, Jesus' mother.

The poor woman, Roig thought to himself. She has already lost a daughter to cancer a few years ago, and now she is about to lose her only child, her son.

``Due to the emotional devastation caused by Jesus' poor prognosis, he would like to visit his family in Mexico as his final wish,'' the doctor went on in his letter to INS.

``We are requesting that you grant Jesus and his parents permission to travel to Mexico and to then return to the United States for whatever time Jesus has left.''

Roig finished reading the letter and searched Maria's face for some answer to why she had come to him. Sure, he liked her son very much and felt deeply sorry, but he was a school counselor, not an INS employee.

The only power he had extended to the boundaries of this school, not the borders of this country.

``Maria was afraid and frustrated and didn't know where to turn,'' Roig said this week. ``She spoke only Spanish. I began to think then that maybe the family was here illegally.''

This wasn't the case, but it was close.

Maria's husband, Gonzalo, was a legal permanent resident working in this country but not a citizen. He had petitioned for his family to stay here with him legally. While they waited for the INS to make a ruling, they were not supposed to leave the country.

If they did, they would not be let back in without proper travel authorization. And that authorization took time.

Jesus Garcia didn't have time.

Geneva Ruiz-Hyatt put down the phone in her office and tried to put a face with the voice. She couldn't.

The manager of the immigration program for the Valley Interfaith Council in North Hollywood had never been to Mulholland Middle School, so she must have met Walter Roig somewhere else.

The urgency in his voice had touched her, even though she could not understand why a mother would want to drag a son in the last stages of life across the border. He'll probably never make it, she thought.

But sure, she would talk to Maria Garcia, she told Roig. Maybe she could change her mind.

``She walked in with Jesus, and it took her about five minutes to change my mind and convince me that what she was doing was the right thing for her son,'' Geneva said Friday.

Like the doctors and the school counselor before her, she felt a sheer urgency to help this boy and his mother, Geneva said. There was no time to wait for a travel request like this to proceed through regular channels. That could take months.

It was 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 10, when Geneva picked up the phone in her office and called Jane Arellano, the INS assistant district director for adjudications.

Arellano was a busy woman, Geneva knew. It would be a miracle to get through to her at this hour on such short notice.

But one look at Jesus sitting on the couch, his tired body resting against his mother, convinced her she had to try.

``She (Arellano) never answers her phone, her secretary always does,'' Geneva said. ``I was shocked when Jane picked it up. It was like there was this divine force out there moving us through this. I said, Jane, I have a story to tell you.''

A few minutes later, Jane Arellano hung up and immediately called in her staff, directing them to get the file on Gonzalo Garcia and his family.

It's one of the perks of being the boss. You've got the discretionary power, in emergency situations like this, to move a terminally ill boy to the front of the line, she said.

Two days later, on March 12, Maria and Gonzalo Garcia were sitting in Arellano's office, signing the paperwork that would allow Maria and Jesus to travel freely across the borders of this country and Mexico for a year.

Included in the packet was one other authorization. It said customs officers were not to stop this mother if she tried to return to the United States with her son in a coffin.

``This one really stood out,'' Arellano said from INS headquarters Friday. ``We had to respond. There wasn't a minute to waste.''

Rules and regulations, red tape and bureaucracy were no match for a dying kid's last wish.

In the waiting room of the INS offices downtown, there are two vases of beautiful artificial red roses with dew drops on them.

People who see them always comment on how beautiful they are and wonder where they came from, Arellano said Friday. So, the boss tells them.

They're a gift to the people who watch over the borders of this country from a mother and her terminally ill son who climbed aboard an airplane Saturday morning, March 13, to visit relatives in Mexico.

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Photo

PHOTO (Color) Geneva Ruiz-Hyatt, immigration program manager for the Valley Interfaith Council, left, and Jane Arellano, of the INS, helped cut through government red tape so that Jesus Garcia, pictured, could see his family in Mexico one last time before he dies.

David Sprague/Daily News