NAPLES, Fla. (AP) - Diego Grisales remembers the sound of shattering glass as the windows to his home in a comfortable neighborhood were shot in.
He remembers the anonymous phone calls - dark threats to kidnap him, his wife, his two children.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were extorting funds for their warfare against the Colombian government. Upper-level managers like Grisales were prime targets.
“I was getting a lot of calls asking for money, because they think we have all the money,” Grisales said, shaking his head in disbelief. “We didn’t.”
In fact, Grisales was working at two jobs. He was a manager at one of Colombia’s largest companies. Educated as an economist, he also was teaching marketing at several local universities.
But there was no way to convince his tormentors, and their tactics were becoming terrifying. The president of his company even conceded that, for Grisales’ own safety, he and his family should disappear.
“He said, ’If you have the opportunity, move to another country,’” he recalled, remembering the year of his nightmare, 2003.
And so they did.
In what were the scariest three months of his life, Grisales spirited his family away to an apartment in another city.
“We didn’t even give the address to anyone,” he said. The Grisales family left behind their home and depleted their savings account to keep the family hidden.
And a scant two weeks before Christmas, Diego Grisales boarded a plane to the United States, seeking political asylum.
-Learning restrooms are not mushrooms
In 2003, Grisales knew only a few words of English. He didn’t have enough money left to pay all the attorney fees for his asylum application and find a place to live.
“For me that was the worst part. One day you have everything. The next day you have nothing,” he recalled. He came to Bonita Springs solely because the only relative he had in the United States, a cousin, lived there.
At age 45, Grisales was about to learn the capacity of his endurance. He got a job with an evening cleaning service, working 3 to 10 p.m.
“I was cleaning things I never did even in my own house,” he recalled, laughing. Then he was hired full-time with Publix supermarkets, stocking produce counters. He kept his night work as well, essentially working two full-time jobs to earn money for a car.
“It was hard because it was from 4 a.m.to 1 p.m.,” Grisales said of his supermarket work. “So I would get three or four hours of sleep at night, then be at work at 4 a.m., then get an hour of sleep before I went back to work at 3.”
A helpful neighbor gave him a bike, so he cycled from a tiny apartment in Bonita Springs to his jobs.
“I can’t believe I did that,” he said, shaking his head. “It was hard. Believe me, it was hard.”
Grisales had two more mandates for each day. The first was calling his wife and children. The second was learning English. He still remembers the misery of conjugating verbs.
Then there were the variety of names for every item in English. Grisales still laughs about his encounter with a Publix customer who wanted to know where she could find the restroom. Grisales had only learned the English word “bathroom” for facilities.
“I thought, what is this? Is she saying mushroom?” he recalled. Grisales led her to the mushrooms, and realized from her reaction that his translation was wrong. “I thought, oh my gosh, I’m in big trouble!”
-A family begins climbing the economic ladder
There were radiant moments of light. Looking for a church, Grisales came upon the Amigos en Cristo mission at Hope Lutheran Church. Pastor Bob Selle, its founder, greeted Grisales after church, heard his story and immediately offered help with food and clothing, as well as spiritual support.
“I love Pastor Bob. He is like an angel,” he said.
Grisales also can still remember the joy of seeing his wife and children emerge from the gates at Miami International Airport, safe on American soil.
“This was the happiest moment of my life,” he said. “I was, ’Oh, my God, thank you!’”
Getting political asylum was not difficult for him or his family, Grisales said. It was expensive, however. The Grisales family was on a spartan budget for the first years.
For a while, the family slept on air mattresses. Food was a precious commodity. Grisales still remembers a family trip to the supermarket with a gift card from the church. Their son, Diego, spotted a container of fresh strawberries; it was all he wanted. But those strawberries, out of season, were $5.99 a box.
“We needed meat. We needed bread. We told him no, we couldn’t afford those. He started crying,” he recalled.” I was crying, too. So was my wife.”
“People need to be disciplined to make it,” he said. For Diego Grisales, his spiritual faith is important as well. As is one more component: “I love a challenge,” he said.
When the Literacy Council of Bonita Springs invited Grisales, who was taking classes, to be the board’s student representative, he said yes. Not long after, they upped the ante: Their program director was leaving. Would Grisales consider that job?
“I was like, ’Are you kidding me? I don’t even know English that well,’” he recalled. But he knew the students who were coming into the country were from a myriad of countries - Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, Russia, China - and that each one’s voice needed to be heard.
“I said, ’Yes, I’ll do it,’” he said.
-A new citizen reflects on the differences
Eventually, he came back to the business world, spurred by suggestions from his daughter. Today, the Grisales family owns three cellular communications franchise stores that employ 16 people. Diego Grisales and his wife, who live in Estero, have become U.S. citizens.
“We are paying taxes. We are helping the economy of this country. That’s the major satisfaction that I have,” he said. “Right now, this guy who came 15 years ago from another country, speaking no English, is right now helping to grow the economy of this country, this beautiful country. I love this country.”
He loves it for many reasons, he said. “I rescued my family; they saved my family. No. 2, because I feel like a … professional in my country, managing my business, hiring new people, helping the economy grow.”
The people are nice; he even loves the language, with its tricky verbs. This is a safe country, he added.
“And most of all, the freedom. You can express whatever you want,” he said. There’s no fear of reprisal or worry about a military takeover of the government.
Grisales is still an economist at heart and misses teaching. “I love teaching,” he said. “But right now, my focus is my family and my business.”
The refugee situation at U.S. borders is a hard question for him, he said.
“I know the economy of those countries is very bad. There’s no employment. It’s not safe,” he said. “There are no services, like health services. I think they have to do it - because I did it - to save their families. There is no option, believe me.
“Maybe in those countries that the situation is worse than the one they had in Colombia a few years ago,” he said, speaking about the extortion from all kinds of groups that is a daily occurrence. “Some of those groups, they don’t care about life.”
Grisales reflected on his own good fortune again.
“I feel blessed to be in this country every single day. Every. Single. Day.”
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Information from: Naples (Fla.) Daily News, http://www.naplesnews.com
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