An obscure life rocked by a finger found in chili
eartha...@yahoo.com
Special to the Mercury News
An obscure life rocked by chili saga
By Dan Reed, Edwin Garcia and Brandon Bailey
San Jose Mercury News
Anna Ayala grew up in a dirt-poor Texas town not far from the Rio
Grande. She was the baby of an extended family of 14 children. She
trained horses and painted. She had two children of her own and
followed her sister west to San Jose, yearning for a better life. She
lived in relative obscurity.
Then, on March 22, she went to Wendy's for a bowl of chili.
When she claimed she bit into a tip of a human finger that day, the
39-year-old daughter of a migrant crop-picker was plucked from her
quiet existence.
The response has been visceral, intense and widespread. A Peninsula
computer company executive recently in Beijing on business said she
even heard about the chili-finger story from local media there.
Police have arrested Ayala. They say she slipped the finger in her own
chili to try to shake down Wendy's. Her family has rallied behind her.
They say she would never do anything so ``stupid.''
Ayala is expected to be arraigned Monday.
As would happen to many people put under the microscope of law
enforcement and the media, a complex portrait has emerged -- one that,
in Ayala's case, shows some dark shades.
The youngest of Olga Escamilla's four children, Anna Dalia Ayala was
born in 1965, three days before Christmas. Ayala's mother was a
seasonal farmworker who traveled the states picking crops.
South Texas life
Because she wanted her children to be in school all year, Escamilla
arranged to have them adopted by her mother. So Anna, Mary, Juan and
Luis were raised along with their grandparents' 10 other children in
South Texas, said Jose Ayala, one of the 10.
They called her Dalia, her middle name. They also called her China --
Spanish for curly, an affectionate tease about her twirling locks.
Home was in Hildalgo County, a land of heat, farms, ranches and
poverty. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 88.3 percent of the
residents are of Hispanic or Latino origin. More than a third of the
residents live below the federal poverty level.
Nonetheless, the family did not go wanting. Anna's sister, Mary, told a
reporter the family was wealthy and owned a ranch. Other siblings said
the ranch was owned by a relative. Jose Ayala said his father owned
stores in Donna, Texas, and was also a labor contractor, hiring field
workers.
``She grew up pretty good,'' Jose Ayala said, calling Anna's childhood
an average one. ``My mama was very strict with all of us. We never
stepped out of line.''
Mary Ayala, her elder sister by one year, said Anna learned oil
painting in a high school art class in Donna. She owned and trained
horses and loved to put images of them to canvas.
Sundays meant a trip on a small bus, driven by ``Brother Bob,'' to the
local Pentecostal church.
`One of the best'
An unselfish girl, Anna Ayala often helped others. ``She used to go to
my aunt's to help clean the house, without telling her nothing. She was
very helpful,'' Jose Ayala said. ``She was real kind. I think she was
one of the best in the house.''
At about 19 or 20, according to court records, Anna Ayala moved in with
a man 23 years her senior, the father of her son and daughter. They
never married. But her babies' father, Guadalupe Reyes, shared her
interest in horses, owning some in San Benito, a town near Brownsville.
Their relationship, however, later soured. Court records suggest they
parted ways around 1993.
Mary Ayala, who lives in a mobile home park in San Jose, seems to be
the fulcrum of the family, the conduit of all its talk. She said her
husband would travel to this area for seasonal cannery work. In 1984,
she came to San Jose for good. Her sister, Anna, was still living in
Texas, a homemaker.
In 1993, Mary Ayala's little sister left the mesquites, live oak and
chaparral of South Texas for the computers, lattes and strip malls of
Silicon Valley.
A darker side
For a time here, Anna Ayala apparently became a successful
businesswoman, running a janitorial service. But interviews and court
records suggest a darker side began to emerge.
Once here, she moved several times over the past 10 years. She was sued
by creditors over relatively small amounts of money. She also began
filing lawsuits -- a lot of them.
It began in 1996, when she sued Santa Clara County and its social
services agency. The case was later dismissed and records were
destroyed in a routine purge of court files. Ayala's attorney was Ira
Freydkis of San Francisco. He declined to speak with a reporter. And
after being her attorney in at least three more cases, he also declined
to represent Ayala anymore.
One of those was a 1997 case in which she, her then-boyfriend, James
Plascencia, and three of his relatives sued a woman. Court records
indicate the case involved an auto accident, but the files have been
purged.
Two years later, a San Jose auto dealership sued Ayala and Plascencia
in small claims court, accusing the pair of writing a bum check for
$1,900 to buy a vehicle from Capitol Buick-Pontiac-GMC. A judge ruled
in the dealership's favor but the debt has never been paid.
Ayala sued the dealership the same year. She claimed a wheel had come
off a vehicle they sold her, causing an accident. That case was later
dismissed.
Freydkis again was her attorney. But he'd had enough. In court papers,
Freydkis said he had won a favorable settlement for Ayala in a previous
case involving someone named Ruiz.
``Despite this, you stated that you were going to get me -- whatever
that means,'' he said in court papers. ``In light of the above, I can
no longer be your attorney in any matter.''
Later, she claimed sexual harassment in a lawsuit against a local
newspaper, La Oferta Review, alleging that a man who rented an office
from the newspaper made advances on her when she answered an ad to work
as a receptionist for him. The case was dismissed in the newspaper's
favor.
Claims, lawsuits
More recently, she filed a claim against a Las Vegas El Pollo Loco
restaurant, alleging her daughter became sick after eating there. The
company said it paid her nothing.
All told, investigators say, Ayala and her children have been involved
in 13 civil claims or lawsuits.
Her brother, Juan ``Johnny'' Ayala, a cop for 21 years in Texas, said
there's no reason to doubt the claims were real. Most people just don't
take the time to sue when they've been wronged, he said. ``She has a
history because it's happened to her,'' he said. ``The law gives you
that right.''
Two years ago, in a filing in Santa Clara County to collect child
support from Reyes, Ayala reported she was living on a monthly income
of $984 in public assistance and disability payments.
She may have been having troubles, but so was Bertha Davila -- who
squarely blames Ayala for them. Davila said she gave Ayala $11,000 in
2002 as a down payment to buy her mobile home. Problem was, it didn't
belong to Ayala, but to Plascencia.
While Ayala is now facing a felony charge of theft for the deal, it
apparently helped better her fortunes. Property records show Ayala put
$10,000 down on a $199,000 two-story house in Las Vegas just days after
she accepted the money from Davila.
The house has been a nice investment. Records show Ayala has refinanced
twice in the past two years, most recently taking a loan of $276,000.
In an affidavit, San Jose police estimated the home is now worth
between $300,000 and $350,000. And a judge has ruled she cannot use any
collateral to post her $500,000 bail until it's determined if it was
derived from ill-gotten gains.
Cash payments
Davila said she gave the down payment to Ayala in three cash payments.
For each, Ayala produced home-made receipts, written in Spanish. ``I am
going to give you receipts so you won't lose trust in me, because I
don't want you to think I'm going to do anything to you,'' Davila
recalled Ayala as saying.
In Ayala's new Las Vegas home, she lived with her boyfriend,
Plascencia, and her two children, Guadalupe Reyes Jr. and Genesis
Reyes. She had no job. Plascencia, who has held a variety of jobs in
construction and manual labor, was most recently employed at a North
Las Vegas paving company, where he was arrested last week.
Last year, on Dec. 22, her 39th birthday, Ayala and Plascencia wed in
Clark County, Nevada. She made an ironic choice for a husband. Police
say he is more than $400,000 behind in court-ordered child support for
five children that he had with two other women. On Wednesday, police
arrested him on felony charges of child abandonment and using his own
son's name and Social Security number to avoid being held accountable
for his past debts.
Today, Plascencia and Ayala are both in jail, awaiting further
proceedings. Nevertheless, the Ayalas are sticking together. They're
quite sure Anna Ayala is being railroaded.
She is ``not capable'' of planting the finger, Jose Ayala said. ``She
didn't do anything.''
And he said: ``I pray to God for the people over there to rot in hell,
the cops. That's all I can say.''