Valiente

Margarita's Beginning

The country of Mexico is a beautiful place, but everyone in the country know that the true magic not only stares them in the face without them know it but deep within themselves.

Jesus Flores and his wife, Sofia, lived in Guadalajara, and they felt very lucky to have each other. They loved to play music and ride horses together. Nobody was more spiritual than their beautiful little daughter, Margarita, who filled her parents' lives with joy and spirit. Margarita loved to ride horses, play the violin, and study zoology. She wanted to be a zoologist, just like her mother. Sofia sang a special classic to her daughter every night before bed, and she made a one-of-a-kind music box that played the song—and the song went like this.

Oye el viento cantar

Mira el águila volar

Siente el sol en tu piel

Y en tu camino ve con fe

Yi si la noche fría está

En tu corazon, unfuego siempre habrá

Be strong, be brave

Let courage lead the way

Stand tall and know who you are

Wild heart, wild soul

Roam free to the unknown

And know that you have everything you need to be fearless

Fearless

Ah, yes, Sofia loved her family very much, and she didn't think she needed anything else. It was a magical time. The pure joy of spirit filled life in Guadalajara. Margarita was very young, but she didn't think she needed anything more than what she already had. She would brighten the days of anyone around her. But even the brightest days can be darkened by an unseen tempest.

When Margarita was four, Sofia started suffering seizures. Sometime later in that year, Sofia was diagnosed with epilepsy. She wore a medical bracelet saying that she was epileptic. Jesus wanted to make sure his wife had the help she needed, and little Margarita did, too.

But in July 2003, when Margarita was five years old, she found her mother unconscious in bed, and she alerted her father, who rushed her to the hospital. It turned out that Sofia had suffered a seizure in her sleep the night before, and there was nothing the doctors could do to help her. That was it. Sofia had died, leaving Jesus devastated and their little daughter with no mother. All the family's friends and neighbors were devastated, and they especially felt sorry for little Margarita because she was the one who found her mother dead in the first place. Worst of all, Margarita was still young, but she knew about death—and so, she was traumatized at having found her mother like that.

Jesus was a college zoology teacher, so he wanted to give his daughter what she needed. Apparently, Jesus had no sisters, and his mother died before Margarita was born—and Sofia's own mother died a year before Sofia started suffering those seizures. When Margarita wasn't in school and her father was busy teaching, she would hang around a friend's house, and sometimes the neighbors would babysit. Jesus gave his daughter what she really needed and made time to bond with her, but he was so busy that he didn't make time to start dating—and he was still distraught at losing his wife.

It had been a decade since Sofia died, and Margarita grew to be a beautiful teenager—and she looked just like her mother, which made Jesus a little emotional. Now that Margarita was a teenager, she was old enough to hang around the house alone. She was very happy, and she had a great relationship with her father—but she barely knew what it was like to have a mother because she was very young when her mother died.

In August 2013, Jesus and Margarita were taking an end-of-summer vacation to Sunflower Bay, California, in the United States. They went to a bluegrass festival when Jesus met Nancy Thomas—and it wasn't long before they got married.

Along with Margarita's new stepmother came her own daughter, Stephanie, who was older by three months. Jesus and Margarita filed for asylum to be legal immigrants in the United States, and they were approved. In the middle of the month, Jesus and Margarita left Mexico and moved to Sunflower Bay, California.