A portrait of Anthony Jiovanni Guizar, 10, left, and Aniya Marin, 6, hangs on the wall above the dining table April 11, 2024, at the Mendoza home in Hermiston. Anthony died Dec. 30, 2023, after a fatal three-vehicle crash Dec. 25 near Hermiston.

HERMISTON — Anthony Jiovanni Guizar of Hermiston was 10 years and 5 days old on Christmas Day 2023 when his life effectively ended after a car crash.

He died five days later, on Dec. 30, in Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland.

Anthony, whose family and friends called him AJ, hadn’t even had his 10th birthday party yet. His mom, Jennika Mendoza, 26, wanted to wait until after the holidays, when she had time off from her work at Lamb Weston as a packaging technician. AJ’s father for the most part has been uninvolved in his life in recent years, Mendoza said. For a little while, before her current partner, Jorge Marin, came into their lives, it was just her and AJ.

“We both grew up together,” said Mendoza, who had AJ when she was 15 years old. “I would take him to school with me, he graduated with me. I even got a couple chances to graduate with him throughout first, second, third, almost fourth grade.”

It’s been challenging for her to realize the future she imagined for her son no longer exists.

“It’s kind of hard to accept that it wasn’t me and it was him, so I’m struggling with that a lot,” she said, dabbing at her tears with a ripped paper towel her daughter handed her. “I’m struggling with the fact that he’s gone, because I imagined a whole life, you know? I imagined seeing him graduate the way he saw me. I was robbed of his future. We did grow up together, but we didn’t get to finish growing up together.”

Who AJ wasAlthough AJ didn’t get a party before his death, he did get to celebrate being 10 with a family birthday dinner at The Crazy Crab Place in Kennewick. It was AJ’s first time there, and he was excited to try the seafood. He liked trying different foods, Mendoza said, but ramen was his favorite.

He told his mom he wanted to own a ramen noodle shop when he was older.

“He was obsessed with ramen noodles, like, every day all the time,” she said. “He wanted it so bad he learned how to make it himself.”

He was friends with children who lived nearby their apartment in Hermiston. He hadn’t started playing organized sports yet, but was going to try basketball next season. For the time being, he loved playing on his hoverboard and scooter.

AJ also liked having pillow fights with his little sister, Aniya Marin, 6, and fighting with her for the remote to watch YouTube Shorts on the television. Aniya said she enjoyed painting with her brother and recalled painting masquerade masks.

“He had this thing where he would cover her with blankets and smush and jump on her and try to keep her under control,” Mendoza said. “A lot of people call him a bulldozer because when he would go for his hugs and stuff, he would just straight on bulldoze with his head. But that’s all you would get, is him running up to you and being all excited and stuff.”

He also wasn’t afraid of anything, his mom said.

“Not even of spiders,” Aniya added. “Whenever I see a tiny, tiny spider, I cry.”

AJ would handle the spiders for her, and he liked collecting bugs as temporary pets.

Mendoza said she can see AJ in Aniya, especially when she acts sassy and jokes around.

“She’s just like him. He rubbed off on her so much,” she said, Aniya giggling along. “Especially with how crazy she is, or when she pops up in my face or something, that’s definitely him.”

Mendoza said it can be challenging to navigate grief with a 6-year-old, both for herself and her daughter. Aniya can’t fully express everything she’s feeling, and it’s hard for them both to wrap their heads around what happened.

It’s clear Aniya misses her brother, though. She sat on a small beanbag chair wrapped in a blanket covered in his picture, occasionally kissing his fuzzy face in the blanket’s photo.

At one point, she ran to the fridge and returned with whipped cream. Her mom sprayed a dollop into her mouth.

“This was AJ ‘s favorite thing,” Mendoza said. “He would always ask me for whipped cream, and I always used to tell him no because it was for my coffee, but since he’s passed, every time she asks me, I give her some. I never tell her no anymore.”

Life of the school day

As a fourth grader at West Park Elementary School in Hermiston, AJ often made staff members laugh. Rosanna Dias, the school’s attendance secretary, Christy Meyers, lead secretary, and Anna Madrigal, school counselor, would give AJ a small jar of peanut butter nearly every morning before the day started. Mendoza said she didn’t know about it until after he died.

“He’d keep it at his desk and snack on it during the day. There’s still a peanut butter jar on his desk,” Dias said. “He was our little office buddy.”

“He liked cracking jokes,” Madrigal added. “He was always a happy kid and was always very chatty, very social.”

Madrigal said AJ kept an eye on his younger sister, a first grader, throughout the day.

“His presence is very missed and very noticed,” Meyers said. “He’s one of those students who I think even though he only had certain teachers, everybody in the school knew him. He was very positive, he just had a big heart.”

The many office trips for candy and snacks started during the 2022-23 school year, with the peanut butter tradition beginning in the fall of 2023.

“They were all so in love with him because he always made them laugh,” Mendoza said of her son, “always just made it a good time in class.”

In school, AJ enjoyed math, his mother said, and was working on improving his reading.

“He would always come home with books,” she said. “He just always had a backpack full of random books. He didn’t even know what they were called or how to really read. He was a big book collector.”

Mendoza said all his books are still at the apartment they lived in while AJ was alive, though his family is living in a trailer on the outskirts of downtown Hermiston with Mendoza’s partner, Jorge, Aniya’s father. It’s too hard to go back to that apartment, Mendoza said.

“Being there reminds me of what used to be and what could have been or who would have been there,” she said. “I plan on moving out. It’s better to be a little secluded, you know, it just feels better to me.”

Saving more lives than one

Police arrested Raileen Erin Cook, 23, of Hermiston, for causing the crash that resulted in injuries to several victims and led to AJ’s death. The Umatilla County District Attorney’s Office has charged her with driving under the influence of intoxicants, reckless driving, three counts of recklessly endangering another person, six counts of third-degree assault and one of second-degree manslaughter.

Court records show she stands trial on the charges May 13-17.

On the night of the crash, the Mendoza family was on their way to Christmas dinner. They’d spent the morning in Jennika Mendoza’s apartment opening presents. AJ was excited about a new Nerf gun, low-top sneakers from his mom and dinosaur mittens from Bama, his grandmother.

AJ was sitting behind the driver’s seat next to his younger sister when Cook’s car hit the 1998 Honda Civic his aunt was driving.

Since the crash, Mendoza said, they have learned that had AJ not been sitting where he was, it is likely Aniya would’ve received the brunt of the impact and it would have been her who died, as the car essentially collapsed in on itself during the impact, with the engine pushing back into the car’s interior.

“His head either covered her face or protected her whole body somehow,” Mendoza said, “because, with her, she only had damage of a black eye and some cuts and bruises on her face, and her body was a little bit weak, but they believe that AJ really did help her.”

The young mother added she believes whether or not it was intentional for AJ to protect Aniya, it’s what he would’ve wanted.

AJ’s desire to help others also helped Mendoza decide to donate his organs before cremating his body. His ashes now reside in an urn painted with dinosaurs and a volcano, adorned with charms that remind his family of the things he loved and the topics they would discuss together.

“A little girl got his heart, and one day I hope to meet that little girl. What if she laughs like him?” she said. “Or maybe catches little things of him that I’ll catch or something?”

Mendoza said she donated her son’s organs because he would have wanted that.

“He always would help anybody he could,” she said. “Just knowing that he was helping somebody kind of helped me in a way.”

Facing the changes

Since the crash, the Hermiston and Irrigon communities have rallied to support her family.

A GoFundMe for them raised more than $10,600, which went toward covering necessary expenses and helped pay rent while they couldn’t work. Mendoza said she would’ve been seriously struggling without the donations, and the money helped make space for her to start grieving.

Now, with the trial coming up, she’s thinking about what she wants. Mendoza has compassion for Cook, who grew up alongside her in Irrigon, but wants her to take responsibility, too.

“She still robbed me of my son, like, nothing’s ever going to bring my son back,” Mendoza said. “Obviously she’s not just a danger to society and our community, she’s a danger to herself, her own kids. This needs to change.”

Mendoza said authorities need to hold drunk drivers accountable, especially when children are involved, either through incarceration or other methods to ensure they don’t drive while intoxicated.

She also said it can be hard to not feel guilty for being alive, especially when she is also thankful to still be here with her daughter. Some days are harder than others.

“It’s just going to take time, honestly, because I’m still going through and processing a lot every day, but I believe and I am confident that I can do this,” she said. “I’m not going to give up because I can’t.”

Sometime after the trial, Mendoza and Marin are planning to move to Southern California with Aniya, where they can hopefully find a fresh start.