Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
By LUIS PEREZ
Newsday (New York)
A fire ravaged their bodies and took away their parents, but now a Family Court judge has given a measure of peace to three young Queens sisters by awarding full custody of them to their maternal aunt.
“Our parents passed away and now we have our aunt and our uncle,” said Naomi Siguencia, 8, who is the oldest of the girls and a mother figure to her sisters.
“I love being home. I love my sisters,” she said yesterday, as she watched over her younger siblings during a reporter’s visit.
The girls spent nearly a year in intensive care after the Dec. 15, 2004, Jackson Heights blaze that killed their parents, but now home is no longer a hospital room for Naomi, Carolina Sandoval, 5, and Alexandra Sandoval, 4. On Friday, the court awarded their aunt Reyna Gomez full custody, according to Gomez and her attorney.
But even before the court ruling, the girls had moved with Gomez into a new apartment in College Point late last year, after being released from the hospital. Last week, the girls began attending the same small Roman Catholic parochial school a few blocks away.
Though they have made tremendous headway, the girls’ burns are far from healed. All must undergo physical therapy, perhaps for years more, and they must wear special suits a few times a day, including when they sleep, to help heal their skin, still raw in places. All three girls constantly scratch and pick at their clothes, which conceal the tender burns.
“My three little beautiful babies gave me three victories,” said Gomez, who has doted over the girls through their recovery. “The day they opened their eyes in the hospital, the day they walked out of there and the day they came to live with me at last,” she explained.
Gomez had wrangled in Queens Family Court with the girls’ paternal aunt, Dina Sandoval, who had also petitioned the court for custody.
Sandoval could not be reached for comment, but a social worker close to the case who did not want to be named said Sandoval had dropped her petition for custody weeks ago.
The girls have largely been oblivious to this family drama, Gomez said.
Their mother, Flor Pineda, 36, who rushed back into their burning 89th Street home to save her daughters, died that day. Their father, Alex Sandoval, 30, who suffered burns to 70 percent of his body and never emerged from a coma, died at a hospital about two weeks later.
“Carolina, she almost always awakes at two or three in the morning, crying,” Gomez said.
Once a week, the sisters are taken to Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn to visit Pineda’s grave. Their father’s body was taken to his native El Salvador.
“They asked me why is that?” Gomez said of the younger two girls. “And I said, ‘Well, mami, sometimes things are not the way we need them to be. But I tell them they are both in heaven.”
She added that when the little ones cry in the car on the way to the cemetery, it’s Naomi who calms them.
Of the three girls, Naomi suffered the most severe burns. She left St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital in Bayside in November, but returned there in December for yet another skin graft surgery, one of dozens she’s already had, Gomez said.
Naomi interrupts to say that she likes her aunt’s arroz con pollo better than hospital fare. She then grabs her sisters for a group hug.
“It’s hard,” said Gomez. “But I want them to be well. I want them to live a normal, regular life.”