Osvaldo Gonzalez-Hernandez was the one who called Michael Avena last year with the good news: The space for a pizzeria that Avena previously managed but ultimately had to close was available again. And Gonzalez-Hernandez said he would happily return as Avena’s pizza maker.
Avena and his wife, Christine, quickly packed up their Orlando home and returned to Orange, Connecticut, where they opened We’re Back Pizza in May 2023. More recently, though, Avena got another call, this time with bad news: The long-standing friendship with his team member had turned tragic. Gonzalez-Hernandez, 49, was killed in a hit-and-run crash late last month.
Now Avena is raising money to send his beloved employee’s body home to family members in Mexico.
Avena has launched a GoFundMe page for the cause. It has thus far raised $2,765 toward a goal of $8,500. You can click here to donate.
Gonzalez-Hernandez was a father and grandfather, but his family stayed behind in central Mexico while he worked in the U.S. On the GoFundMe page, Avena wrote that Gonzalez-Hernandez was “a mainstay in our restaurant [and] a hard-working man that always had a smile on his face, bringing levity in a stressful environment.”
Adrian Alvarez, another We’re Back Pizza employee, told the New Haven Register that Gonzalez-Hernandez regularly sent money to his family in Mexico. “We worked together making pizzas, and he was always very friendly with all the customers,” Alvarez said. “He was very, very funny. He always blasted music very loud and would always be dancing in the kitchen, talking to all the customers. Even though he didn’t speak English very well, he would talk to them.”
Avena worked at the Abate Pizza location in New Haven before moving over to manage the brand’s newly opened store in Orange. That was in 2011, and Gonzalez-Hernandez soon came on board, first as a dishwasher, and worked his way up to manning the pizza oven. But after eight years of success, things started going sour at the restaurant when a fire broke out in 2016, followed by another fire in 2019.
The restaurant had to close, and the Avenas moved away to Florida. “My whole heart and soul was in here,” Avena told the New Haven Register after reopening the restaurant as We’re Back Pizza last year.
Another business opened in the former Abate space, but when it closed, Gonzalez-Hernandez was quick to let Avena know—the two had remained long-distance friends after Abate closed down. “When I was deciding if I should come back or not, I cleared it with him to make sure he’d be coming back with me,” Avena said in the more recent New Haven Register story. He said, ‘Of course I’m coming back.'”
“We need to get Osvaldo home to Mexico so he can be buried amongst his four children, grandmother and his mother,” Avena wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Please help us get Osvaldo home.”
