Time was getting late Saturday night, but Octavia Barker and her friend Arhelia Cano had not sold all of their tamales yet.
With Cano’s 12-year-old daughter riding along, the “joyful” Barker was driving south down 10th Street in Kansas City, Kan., on her way somewhere to finish up another inventive day of making good for herself and her four grown daughters since coming to the U.S. from Mexico some 22 years ago at the age of 25.
“She was always in a rush . . . to see people . . . to go here, to go there,” said Barker’s daughter, Leslie, 20.
With a green light, Barker cruised in her small Chevy Spark into the intersection at Kansas Avenue about 9:30 p.m.
Moments before, not far away, two — maybe three — males had stolen a silver Audi A4. They had already left behind its owner, who had crashed another car trying to chase them, police said, when the driver in the stolen Audi sped away from police onto Kansas Avenue.
The silver missile, at a “high rate of speed,” smashed into the driver’s side door of Barker’s car, sending it and another car that had been waiting at the red light on the other side of the intersection into a small parking lot at the corner. The stolen car careered on through chain-link fencing, scattering debris for some 50 yards into Bill Clem Park.
The suspects in the stolen car were able to leap out and run before police arrived.
But they left four people in the other two cars seriously hurt — and Barker fatally wounded at the age of 47.
Leslie Silva, on the rainy Monday after — New Year’s Eve — took measure of her mother’s generous life.
For one thing, she and her sisters are going to have to figure out if they can take up Barker’s regular trek back to family in Mexico with an arsenal of suitcases filled with clothes and things to share.
Barker never had much. She worked as a housekeeper, in homes, at schools. She sold tamales with her friend. She raised four daughters. But always she thought of family in need back home, Leslie Silva said.
“She went to garage sales all the time,” she said. “She’d say, I could give this to my godmother. I could give this to her daughter. Give this to my sister . . .”
And when Barker’s frequent journey back to Mexico was at hand, she’d have eight suitcases — at least — loaded for the long bus rides.
Sometimes she’d pay extra to get the bus line’s permission for her big load. Sometimes one or more of her daughters would go with her and tote some of her extra bags.
“We lost a suitcase one time,” Leslie Silva said. There may have been 12 suitcases on that trip. “They were hard to keep track of.”
The daughter knew her own stories of her mother’s generosity, but friends who came by their house over the weekend after Barker died told her more. They knew her as “Tava.”
Often, her friends met Barker through acts of kindness — like one family friend who told Barker’s daughters that they had first met the day the woman was walking with her young son in the cold, and Barker — a stranger to them in that moment — stopped and gave them a ride.
The way everyone remembered her, Silva said, was that “she was really joyful.”
She came to the U.S. with her former husband from Tamaulipas, Mexico, knowing she’d be able to help herself and help her family here — and open better opportunities for the children she hoped to have.
Leslie Silva, who graduated from Wyandotte High School, is a medical assistant at St. Luke’s Hospital on the Plaza. Her older sister works for an auto parts company, her twin sister works at a food preparation company. Her younger sister is in high school.
“That’s why she came,” Silva said. “That’s what she wanted us to do.”
They plan her funeral now while police continue to look for the suspects from the stolen Audi.
Police offered no updated information Monday. Sunday, Kansas City Kan., Police Chief Terry Zeigler reported that police had searched known gang houses in an attempt to find them. They made some arrests, but none connected to the death of Barker.
The friend who was with Barker in the car — Cano — and her daughter are expected to recover, Silva said. They are another example of the fast friendships Barker could make.
Cano made her own tamales and sold them around town, on corners, in community gathering spots, Silva said. Her mother met Cano selling her food and they quickly determined they could make a good team.
Silva and her sisters cry knowing “we’ll never see her again,” she said. She’ll never appear in the door. She’ll never call on their phones.
Barker’s daughters want anyone who has any information about the crash and stolen car to help police, she said.
Police ask people to call the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS (8477).
“I hope if somebody knows something they are not too scared to say anything,” she said. “That would bring a lot of peace to my family.”
