At the time of the shooting, Angel Zorrosa, a 26-year-old distant relative from the same pueblo as the Acevedos, was on kidney dialysis and had just been listed to receive a transplant. Hours after Fortino was declared dead, Zorrosa got a call: As a family member, he would be given priority to receive a kidney.
"I had just been approved that week for a transplant," Zorrosa said.
Last October, Zorrosa witnessed the birth of his first child, a son named Angel Luis. He weighed 5 pounds, 4 ounces.
The birth was a message, said Roberta Acevedo. "I try to find something about Chino in his child."
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"Negro, Chimeco y Feo" -- black, dirty and ugly -- is the title of a popular song from Costa Chica. The lyrics describe the life of a man who is born in a shack on the coast of Mexico with a midwife's help. He grows up attending pigs and fishing for shrimp with an old net; because he is poor, he makes his way in the world with almost no clothes.
But the lyrics go on to explain that his soul is pure, unlike those who were "born in clean diapers," those with lighter skin.
It's a song that reminds Neri Cisneros, who lives in Santa Ana, of his childhood.
"I was that little boy," he said. "I would eat beans and I didn't have shoes.
"Sometimes we were the children playing in the streets without underwear. When I hear that song, it makes me sad because I used to live that life."
Cisneros, like many Costa Chicans in Southern California, is nostalgic about his childhood and misses the land of his birth. But he is the father of three daughters who have never set foot in Mexico. He is intent on raising them here. He will not soon return to Costa Chica.
On the day Fortino was shot, the Costa Chicans had a championship soccer game. They played the match and won.
It was important to keep the team focused on playing, said Martin Ibarra Aleman, the team's coach. The streets are too much of a distraction.
"If you are on the street, then you are heading for trouble," Aleman said. "The guys who play soccer are dealing with the game. For two hours they are in the game and that is all they care about."
But when the game is over, they return to lives shaped by immigration. Steady work has not always been easy to find. Many don't have driver's licenses and face stiff penalties if they're caught on the road in their cars. They worry about the safety and future of their children, most of whom were born here.
At the Sacred Heart Church in Altadena, Padre Glyn Jemmott, a Roman Catholic priest from Trinidad and Tobago who has had a parish of a dozen Costa Chican pueblos since 1984, said Mass one recent Sunday for a congregation of some 500.
Later, he challenged the group to apply their skills in organizing a winning soccer team to strengthening their community. The change is up to them, he said.
"If you have water and you want to get the water to the roots of the plant, you have to carry it there," he said.
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john.mitchell@latimes.com
