From KOB TV 1/14/12
She thought he died, but father and daughter reunited after 14 years
Heroin addiction and prison left Simon Aragon homeless and alone.
His daughter Bernadette Garcia had only faint memories of her father and she assumed he was dead.
Until she saw him in a story we reported about the City of Albuquerque’s Heading Home Program, an initiative that places homeless people in housing.
Moments after the story aired, Garcia called KOB Eyewitness News 4 and said she just saw her dad for the first time in 14 years.
On Saturday, the two were reunited.
“If you guys wouldn’t have put him on the news, I don’t know, I probably wouldn’t have seen him again,” she said.
Her father, now sober for two years, has long advanced past the drug addict Garcia once knew.
“It wasn’t her fault, it was mine,” Aragon said. “The kind of life I was living and what I was doing and I’m really sorry. I have a place where I can take my medicine where I’m safe where I can rest and eat and not worry about being jumped and taking what I have.”
The city’s Heading Home Program has identified more than 50 of Albuquerque’s most vulnerable homeless people and placed them in apartments.
Not only does Aragon have a warm place to sleep, he now has a table to spread pictures of family he never knew existed.
“I want to see my grandchildren and get close to them and get to know them,” he said.
His daughter said she is more than excited to make her family stronger and Aragon said he is ready for the responsibility.
“I thought I was alone for years and no one to turn and stuff like that,” Aragon said. “But now its different I’m going to make it different, I am the only one that can change all that.”
