OP-ED: What Really Happened at Don Pico's - Part 1 of 2 Parts

OP-ED – This is a 2 part article.

Link to part 2 is listed at the bottom of this part 1.

What Really Happened at Don Pico’s

by Lucy Bedolla Mejia

On October 1, 2012, three weeks after my husband Isaac died, his sisters Anabel and Florencia had a written contract delivered to my home. In that contract, they demanded $10,000 each per month to stay at Don Pico’s or they would walk. When I refused to sign it, they quit. This is the story of what really happened at Don Pico’s.

BACKGROUND

Isaac Martin Mejia and I were married on October 12, 1997. My in-laws, Isaac C. Mejia and Herlinda Mejia, had started Don Pico’s in 1975. They offered to sell the restaurant to their daughters Anabel, Florencia, Angela and Martha in 1999. But none of them wanted to buy it. So my husband and I decided to buy it, and over time we paid it off.

My husband Isaac died in a single-vehicle car accident on September 8, 2012. His blood alcohol level that night was .17 – over twice the legal limit. He had been working at Don Pico’s since the morning – his chef had quit weeks before, and he had been cooking in the kitchen, working 14-hour days. His sisters were working that night and one of them took his car keys away from him. His sister’s ex-boyfriend was bartending. Isaac found the keys and drove away - minutes later he was killed on the freeway. We had been married almost 15 years and we had a daughter together, Francesca.

The CHP came to my door after midnight that night. I had been asleep, and thought it was Isaac coming home. When they insisted on coming inside, I thought, “Ok, it’s finally happened – he got a DUI.” They asked me to sit down, and then told me he had died in a car accident. My world stopped in that moment. My heart pounded. “What??!” I couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to scream, but couldn’t. I was crying, and I just kept saying, “No. No, no, no! Are you sure?” The lady from the coroner’s office looked at our family portrait, then looked at me. She said, “I’m sure. That’s the man I saw.” They kept asking me if there was someone they could call for me. No, I said. No. Not wanting to wake my daughter, I asked them to leave.

I cried quietly all night in my bathroom so she wouldn’t hear me, my heart racing, thinking, “how can this be? what am I going to do?” I called my best friend in Italy to tell her – the only person awake at that hour. Early the next morning, I drove the few minutes to my in-laws’ to tell them. They took one look at my face and knew something was wrong - “¿Estas bien? I said, “No. Isaac fallecío anoche en un accidente de carro.” I had never seen such shock and grief, ever. That is, until I returned home, woke up my daughter, and asked her to come and sit on the couch. I said, “Francesca, Daddy died last night in a car accident.” She screamed, “No, no!” and ran to our room, grabbed a sweater of his and clutched it. She ran from room to room, screaming, looking for him. Then I held her and wept with her, as her heart and mine broke into tiny pieces.

INSURANCE POLICY

Isaac and I had previously talked about what would happen to Don Pico’s if he were to pass away. Don Pico’s was the dba name for a corporation, Mejia Family, Inc., founded in 2006, and Isaac and I were the only shareholders. We had agreed that we would take out a policy of insurance on his life for the benefit of his sister, Florencia, so that if he died, she would have money to buy the restaurant from me. Florencia of course knew about this. She had met with our financial advisor and he explained to her that the purpose of the policy was so that Florencia could buy the restaurant from me if Isaac were to pass away. And in fact, upon his death, Florencia received $500,000.00 from that life insurance policy insuring Isaac.

AGREEMENT TO RUN BUSINESS

Before Isaac’s memorial service on September 18, 2012, I met with Florencia and asked her to help me with the restaurant. Present were my father-in-law, my sister-in-law Angela, and my sister-in-law Florencia. I told Florencia that I needed her help, and that I could not run the restaurant by myself. She asked me to give her three months to decide whether she wanted to buy it or not. I said yes.

On September 27, after 10 days, I inquired where all the cash was. Anabel said there hadn’t been much cash. Then I told Florencia that I would be signing the payroll checks, since I was now the sole signer on the bank account. They were visibly irritated by this news. On my way to pick up the paychecks, Florencia and Anabel called me on the phone and told me to “come get the keys, since it’s YOUR restaurant!” They told me that they were standing outside and customers were waiting to be seated, that I should come and seat them and wait on them. They had just seen me in my workout clothes and I told them that I wasn’t prepared to do that. I called my father-in-law and asked him to help me. He talked to them, and they worked that lunch.

EXTORTION

ex·tor·tion

ikˈstôrSH(ə)n/

noun

noun: extortion; plural noun: extortions

1 the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.

When I arrived at Don Pico’s that afternoon, September 27, Anabel and Florencia told me, “We want $10,000 a month each to stay on.” I asked them to give me some time to find new managers. They refused. I asked them why they were doing this to me, that I thought Florencia had wanted to buy the restaurant from me, and she said, “Why should I pay you for something that’s already mine?” I said, “Because it’s not yours. Am I supposed to just hand it over to you?” I had no one to run the restaurant and they knew it. I had no choice but to agree on the spot to pay them what they were asking.

Two days later, when I was on my way to the restaurant to sign some checks, I got a call from one of my husband’s friends informing me that Anabel and Florencia asked him to call me and tell me that they didn’t want me to set foot in Don Pico’s. By this time, I was livid, and I stopped at the restaurant and told Anabel that her request was denied. She told me that if I did not agree to this, I would “have to face the consequences.” Those were her words. I told her that I had started looking for a new manager.

THE CONTRACT

On October 1, I received a written contract that Anabel and Florencia wanted me to sign, delivered to my home in San Bruno by Florencia’s boyfriend. The contract required me to personally guarantee a payment to them of $10,000 per month each to stay for the month of October 2012, and stipulated that I could only go to Don Pico’s to pay bills and sign checks. They demanded a payment of $5,000 the next day, October 2, 2012, before the start of their shift that day, and the remaining $5,000 payment on October 20, 2012. Here is a copy of the contract.

LINK to proposed contract that was NOT accepted

I REFUSED TO SIGN & THEY QUIT

By the grace of God, I found two experienced and trusted managers, friends of my husband, with full time jobs of their own, who were willing to help me out, without even asking how much I was going to pay them. Words cannot convey my eternal gratitude to these two gentlemen, Armando Macuil and Cesar Morales, who are now my friends forever. On October 2, in the morning, I met with Anabel and Florencia. When I told them that I could not sign the contract, they were genuinely shocked. They quit, walking out and taking half the staff and that morning’s catering money with them. Luckily, all the kitchen staff and some servers stayed. My new managers were witnesses to this meeting, and were on hand to take over immediately.

OP/ED “OPEN LETTER”

But that wasn’t even the worst of it. In an “Op/Ed Open Letter” published in the San Bruno Patch on October 9, 2012, the “Mejia Sisters” said it’s true that they weren’t fired from Don Pico’s – that they were “replaced.” They failed to tell the whole truth – which is that they were replaced because they quit. They made no mention of the contract or the money they tried to extort from me. Their thinly-veiled insults, the innuendo contained in the Open Letter, felt to me, intentionally hurtful. Questioning the corporate ownership of the restaurant, saying that they wouldn’t challenge it because of the love my husband had “for his daughter.” And then in the comments, people who didn’t even know me were judging my life. “Where was the wife?” (At home taking care of our 12-year-old daughter.) “I never saw HER at the restaurant!” (That’s because I was practicing law and taking care of our daughter.) And on and on. At some point I stopped reading.

LINK to part 2 of this 2 part article: link

Lucy Bedolla Mejia, Owner

Don Pico’s Mexican Bistro & Cevicheria

461 El Camino Real, San Bruno, CA 94066

(650) 589-1163; donpicosbistro.com