They knew he had to have been there: Martinez, a migrant from Mexico, worked every day except Saturdays. He rarely took time off for holidays like Thanksgiving. When an alarm went off at night, he’d rush on site. Even with friends in social situations, he’d lament when a crop didn’t turn out well, blaming poor seeds, or he’d rave about a stellar harvest.
“He took so much pride in his job,” close family friend Alicia Ortega said in an interview, looking at the ceiling as she tried to hold back tears.
“He used to send me pictures of mushrooms. ‘Look how beautiful they grow,’ he’d say. His phone was full of pictures of mushrooms.”
Martinez, 50, was among seven people killed by Chunli Zhao, 66, a fellow immigrant mushroom farm worker who appeared in court on Wednesday after he was charged with murder.
Beyond his devotion to work, Martinez was praised as a fiercely loyal and good-hearted man. Unmarried and with no children, he gradually…
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