Adopted Boy Is Found Dead While Hugging His Dog in His Bedroom Days Before His Birthday

A mother who tried her best to get to her burning home to save her son has been left devastated as she cannot plan his 15th birthday party and must instead plan a different gathering.

Luz Varga was horrified when flames engulfed her hometown of Lahaina in Hawaii. Vargas, her eldest son, and husband were away from home, but her youngest adoptive son, Keyiro Fuentes, was in the house.

Fuentes was due to start school again the next day after being on vacation and was said to be relishing his time at home before the inferno engulfed their home and resulted in tragedy for the family.

At the time, Varga had been planning Fuentes’ 15th birthday party and wanted to include a vanilla cake and lots of white balloons, saying her son would have liked that. Unfortunately, those plans were curtailed by tragedy.

On August 8, fires ravaged the Lahaina area in Maui, Hawaii, leaving many families displaced and others grieving those family members they had lost during the fires. Varga is no stranger to that heartache.

When she heard that fires were engulfing the area where she lived with her adoptive son, Fuentes, she raced home from work only to find an intense traffic jam. Varga and her family didn’t let the traffic jam stop them.

Varga, her elder son, and her husband jumped out of their car, abandoning it where it stood and racing toward their home on foot. They each took a different route in hopes that at least one of them would get to him.

On her way home, a woman stopped Varga and told her she should not go further as the fire ravaged everything. Varga shared:

“I just looked at her and said, ‘Please get out of my way. I need to save my son.'”

Varga continued running and found that her shoes began melting, which slowed her down. She then abandoned her shoes, too, running barefoot for her home when a man on a motorbike offered her a ride.

The man on the motorbike drove Varga as far as he could and told her that although he could not go any further, he would pray for her son. Varga then reached the firefighters battling the blaze, only to find that none spoke Spanish.

Soon after, an Argentinian man stopped and offered to translate for Varga, who was told that the area where she lived had been cleared and nobody was there. Authorities advised her to search away from the fire.

Varga waited in places where survivors showed up day after day and didn’t see Fuentes. She also reported him missing and checked with police periodically to see if he had been found alive somewhere.

Varga and her family also hitched rides from shelter to shelter as they had lost their car when they abandoned it but never found Fuentes in any of the shelters. Two days later, friends showed up in a park where they were waiting for Fuentes and imparted heartbreaking news.

Their friends told Varga and her family that they had snuck into their home and found Fuentes there but that he had passed away. Varga asked her friends to take her to see her son, but not before she stopped at her sister’s home to fetch a shovel and pail. Vargas explained:

“I thought he’d just be ashes … powder. But that’s not how it was.”

When Vargas entered the house, she found her son’s lifeless body hugging his dog, who was also deceased. She felt God had maintained her son’s body so she would know it was him when she entered the house.

Vargas’ husband and elder son wrapped Fuentes’ body in a tarp and carried him to a police station, where they waited for Fuentes’ death to be registered. Vargas admitted she asked God to hold her son for her until she left Earth.

Friends and family of Vargas are concerned for her wellbeing, saying that she sometimes loses her grip on reality. She fondly remembers her son and recalled anecdotes about how he would not let her leave the house without filling in her eyebrows and how he wanted to be fit.

To come to terms with her grief, Vargas tried to stay busy and planned a memorial for her son on what would have been his fifteenth birthday. She said she wanted to honor her son and go through with his birthday party.

Unfortunately, Fuentes was not the only person who perished in the fire. More than 114 people have been reported dead, and some have lost their entire families. You can read more about the Lahaina fires here.