Angel and Stephanie Nazario were living out their dream of raising a family.
The two have been together since they were 15 years old and students at Golden Valley High School, where they now both teach. They are set to celebrate their seventh wedding anniversary this year.
Their marriage resulted in two kids: a daughter, Ellie, and a son, 2-year-old Finley.
Ellie died on March 19, just 14 days after her fifth birthday, due to diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a type of tumor that starts in the brain stem.
For three and a half years, Ellie seemed like a healthy child, Stephanie said.
“Ever since she was born, she was very mobile,” Stephanie said in a phone interview. “Her motor skills were super advanced. She was always a very advanced child.”
Things started to take a turn around Halloween of 2022, Stephanie said. That’s when she noticed that Ellie was having trouble concentrating and her development was slowing down after previously excelling.
Stephanie first thought that Ellie might have ADHD, but when she turned 4 in March 2023, Ellie started having balancing issues.
“She would walk sort of slightly at an angle, like she was walking diagonally,” Stephanie said. “She was not very spatially aware. And you know, she’s 4, so we’re like, ‘Ellie, watch out. What are you doing?’ She was like, ‘I don’t know why you’re getting upset with me. I’m walking straight.’”
About a month later, Stephanie saw Ellie was drooling heavily from one side of her mouth and that her shirt was soaking. Stephanie then noticed Ellie was having difficulty in dance class and got confused and wanted to leave, which Stephanie said was not like her daughter.
Initially wanting to take Ellie to her doctor, when she went to make an appointment, she was told that it could be a stroke and to take her to the emergency room instead.
Once at the ER, the doctors broke the news to Stephanie: Ellie had a mass in her brain. Less than a year later, she died.
“The reality of it is, at the moment, because of the way the medical advancements are, or lack of for DIPG, it was something that I had to tell myself that I had to accept was going to happen,” Stephanie said. “I just didn’t know when it was going to happen.”
Ellie died at 7:15 a.m. on March 19. When she passed, Stephanie said the sun suddenly flooded the Nazarios’ living room with light, a sign that Ellie was OK.
“I’m not a very religious person but I definitely am a spiritual person, and I felt like that was her,” Stephanie said, adding that her passing also fell on the first day of spring. “I feel like she waited until the sun came up, like this wasn’t a moment of darkness anymore.”
The Nazarios kept working while Ellie was receiving treatment, Stephanie as the vocal arts director at Golden Valley and Angel as the school’s band director. It wasn’t until December when Ellie was receiving more extensive radiation treatment that they stepped away to be with their daughter, and they returned on April 8, the week after spring break.
Golden Valley Principal Sal Frias, who knew Stephanie and Angel since they were a couple when he was their principal at Golden Valley, said that’s just the type of people the Nazarios are.
“It spoke to how they really just want to give back to their community,” Frias said in a phone interview.
Stephanie said it was important for her and her husband to tell the students directly that they would be leaving for an extended period of time. Once they returned, they were warmed by the students who not only knew Ellie from her time joining her mom at rehearsals, but also had “gone on this journey with us.”
“They were all exceptionally supportive and prepped each other and said, ‘We’re not going to talk about it unless they want to talk about it. We need to be a pillar of support when they come back,’” Stephanie said. “So it was a really easy transition to come back to work. It was also a very good distraction from being home and sort of sitting in this really dark period of our life.”
The Golden Valley community as a whole has stepped up to help the Nazarios during this time as well. A fundraiser has been started on Free Funder to “return the love and gratitude they have poured out on the students of GV, the staff and their community.”
As of Monday afternoon, $1,400 has been raised, with a goal of $10,000.
Earlier this year, William S. Hart Union High School District governing board member Erin Wilson presented the Nazarios with the One Hart Award. A relatively new honor that was created a couple of years ago along with the district’s four core values — community, courage, caring and creativity — Wilson said it was the Nazarios’ willingness to continue to provide for their students during a period of hardship that spoke to her.
“All the adults in the room know that in life, we will face moments of hardship, heartache and pain. I have yet to meet anyone who is immune to it,” Wilson said. “We see the devastating effects of it all around us and throughout the world. So what can we do? Teach our children how to be resilient when hardship and heartbreak happen? What is our response? It’s natural and reasonable to feel sorrow. The hard part is not staying in those feelings. And that takes an extreme amount of courage.”
Stephanie said it’s going to take some time for her to feel like the void in her life is no longer there, if she ever gets to that point.
One thing she said she knows she will have to do one day is explain to her son what happened to his sister. According to Stephanie, Finley knows that his sister is no longer around and understood that she was sick, but the idea of death is still unknown to him.
“I’m sure there are going to be multiple stages of his life where he’s going to ask different versions of the same question,” Stephanie said, “and then we’ll have to answer that question in a different way each time until he’s old enough to conceptualize what actually happened.”
Ellie’s tumor was donated to Stanford University so that it can be studied. Stephanie said she doesn’t need that part of her daughter and that it can be used to one day save another who is afflicted by DIPG.
“We don’t want this to happen to somebody else,” Stephanie.
As for Ellie herself? She was cremated and sits in a yellow urn with a sun emblazoned on it, located in the family living room.
“We have a special area in our living room where she has her urn,” Stephanie said. “It’s yellow with the sun on it. And it’s in almost like a glass house that has some of the Legos that she built with her dad.”
Seeing that every day and knowing Ellie is no longer suffering brings Stephanie comfort, she said. And yet, the void still exists.
“It does feel like a piece of our family is missing. It feels like a part of me is missing especially because she, in every way possible, was exactly like me,” Stephanie said. “Not only did she have the same exact interests as me now as an adult, but as a child, it was like looking at myself. But also she looked exactly like me to me. She was my first child, but she also was like my very best friend.
“It’s quieter. It’s less busy because we were going back and forth to hospitals all the time,” she continued. “And that’s something I don’t miss doing. But it’s weird. You have days where you absolutely are 100% understanding and aware that she’s not here. And then there are other days where you wake up and you almost forget it for a few seconds. Or you’ll be doing your normal everyday things and you’ll be at the store and you will pick something up and realize that you can’t buy that for them, because they’re not here anymore.”
To help the Nazarios during this time, visit tinyurl.com/3nsfjt6s.
