Family of missing NY soldier clings to hope
BY MATTHEW CHAYES
Maria del Rosario Duran keeps holding fast to hope. Even as military officials announced yesterday that her kidnapped soldier son's identification cards were found in an al-Qaida safe house north of Baghdad, the mother in Corona, Queens, believes he is alive.
"We're waiting, we're waiting. I think this is good news. Maybe they moved him to somewhere," Duran said yesterday of her son, Spc. Alex Jimenez, 25, as a tear formed in her eye. She added: "If I continue to hope and hope and hope, then in my mind he's alive."
Authorities said they had found the ID cards of her son and Pvt. Byron Fouty of Michigan, two of three soldiers captured by insurgents in a May 12 raid on their 10th Mountain Division unit. The body of the third soldier, Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr., was found floating in the Euphrates River. The cards were found June 9 in a house near Samara, the military said.
Since Jimenez was captured, his mother's house has become a shrine to him, with photographs of him in Army dress. Jimenez was living outside Syracuse before beginning his second tour in Iraq last August.
Outside the Corona home, yellow ribbons are tied to the fence. A U.S. flag and a POW-MIA flag fluttered in the wind as Duran made a television appeal.
"Alex, we miss you a lot. Come back to our house," she said, looking into the cameras. "God bless you."
Maria Duran's sister, Milady Duran, said she awakened Maria around 10 a.m. yesterday to say the TV news was reporting the discovery of the ID cards.
The family already knew. Military officials called Duran on Thursday, several days after the discovery, to tell her what had been found, she said.
Still, the family kept television vigil yesterday, awaiting the slightest update that might air on the living room TV set tuned to a cable newscast. To be sure they wouldn't miss the news, the volume was extra loud.
Jimenez had planned to spend a furlough in August in the Dominican Republic, where his family is from, Duran said.
As she waits to see if he will take that vacation, she prays daily, confident "that God has the power" to keep him alive.
"Everything that I'm putting in my mind, it's positive, because if you put everything negative in your mind," Duran said, "you'll be crazy."
© 2007 Newsday Inc.