Thurston County will bid Eloy Perez farewell in public memorial on Saturday

Today would have been Eloy Perez‘s 33rd birthday.

On Saturday, his south Thurston County community will remember the life of the popular athlete and former professional boxer in a public memorial at 3 p.m. at Rainier High School. But before that could happen, the body of their prodigal son had to be brought back to the United States.

Perez, a standout youth athlete in Thurston County, was killed Oct. 5 in Tijuana, Mexico, where he had lived since being deported in 2016.

A pair of back-to-back DUI arrests while on suspension from boxing in 2012-13 landed the undocumented Perez in jail, then indefinitely in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. With no release assured, he voluntarily opted to be deported to Mexico — despite the fact that he had lived in Thurston County since he was a toddler and attended Rochester and Rainier high schools. He didn’t speak Spanish fluently.

“He never should have been here,” Eloy’s younger sister, Emma Perez, said while riding through the traffic of Tijuana this week. She was accompanied by her uncle Noberto Montealegre of Tacoma and Eloy’s girlfriend Jannel Herrera of Los Angeles, as well as friend and Olympian videographer Tony Overman.

Emma Perez’s goal: Bring her brother home to Rainier.

What followed were “the longest two days of my life,” Emma Perez said. She shuttled multiple times between the Tijuana police investigations headquarters and the morgue — which lacks both computers and refrigerated storage — in a city that averages nearly seven murders every day.

The group was supported as well by Eloy’s friends and coworkers from the Mexico side of the border.

Eloy and Emma’s distant cousin Joe Alvarez, who hadn’t met Eloy before helping him find a job and move to a better neighborhood, offered much-needed translations. Friend Sara Martinez, who gave Eloy his first job in Mexico working on bail bond investigations, had spent the previous week helping Herrera search for and eventually find Eloy.

Eloy’s friends at Green Energy Solutions, where he trained to sell solar panels, raised more than $1,000, aware that everything in Mexico has a cost.

Meanwhile, the Thurston County community raised more than $5,000 for the family’s expenses.

Before leaving the country, Herrera and the family created a memorial of bright flowers along the colorless trash-strewn dirt road on a hill overlooking Tijuana where police believe Eloy was shot in the head and dumped. A neighbor family made a flower vase and cross bearing Eloy’s name to contribute to the memorial, and offered emotional support to the family.

Even after all the paperwork and fees paid, transferring Eloy’s body to a funeral home in San Diego and on to a crematorium 100 miles away in Perris took two more days of shepherding by Herrera.

She was scheduled to fly with Eloy’s ashes to Seattle Thursday evening and deliver them to his mother.

The death of Eloy Perez brought together two cities with nothing in common, except for their love of the charismatic young man.

A week ago, friends in Tijuana said goodbye to Eloy Perez. On Saturday, the village that raised him will put a coda on his story.

“I guess I just want to be remembered,” Eloy said in a 2006 interview with The Olympian.

“He wanted to be loved.” Herrera said.

This story was originally published October 25, 2019 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Thurston County will bid Eloy Perez farewell in public memorial on Saturday."