His gravesite is in Mexico. Fresno County deputies found his headstone in a dry canal

After the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office got news of a headstone turned sideways and partly buried at the bottom of a dry canal on Jan. 4, they began searching for its rightful owners.

Deputies contacted local cemeteries and reviewed death records. An online search at www.findagrave.com, the sheriff’s office said on Facebook, revealed the same information that appeared on the stone but a local grave or family couldn’t be found.

Who knew Gonzalo Ramirez, who was born on March 24, 1965 and died on Sept. 10, 1990?

When the sheriff’s office posted to Facebook on Friday that the headstone had been found under a bridge along Monson Avenue, it caught the attention of Ramirez’s son, Eddie Ramirez, 29. It later became clear why a local grave couldn’t be found. Ramirez was buried thousands of miles away – in his hometown of Manuel Doblado, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

The headstone, which had cost the family about $500, had been placed at the intersection of Manning Avenue and Hills Valley Road the year the older Ramirez had died. A semi truck had collided with his vehicle at the intersection, which is less than three miles from where the headstone was found, the younger Ramirez said.

“It was our only memorial we had at the time and it was like our cemetery,” Ramirez said. “We would go visit the headstone and clean and rake all around it and put new flowers and water.”

The headstone remained there until it was suddenly removed about 10 years ago, he said, around the same time that a nearby home was demolished. Until Friday, the family believed it had been stolen and was forever lost to them. All that had been left at that site were flowers and a cross to memorialize Gonzalo Ramirez, who earned a living picking grapes.

Eddie Ramirez and his twin brother were 2 years old when their father died, he said Saturday. The only memories of their father come from their mother and aunts or uncles. His mother tells him that their father had wanted to take the twins, and an older brother, along for the ride from their home in Orange Cove to Reedley before the fatal accident.

The family now lives in Orosi, and has since replaced the missing headstone with a slightly more expensive one that sits at their home next to an altar of the Virgin Mary decorated with flowers, Ramirez said.

Fresno County Sheriff spokesman Tony Botti said Saturday that arrangements were being made to return the headstone to the family. Ramirez said the family plans to clean it up and keep both headstones at home. He said it’s become less safe to keep a headstone at the site of his father’s crash because newly-planted fruit orchards draw farm tractors to the area and the headstone might be damaged.

Ramirez said it’s “sickening” to think that anyone could have removed the headstone, which had sentimental value to his family. Seeing it once again after it was absent for about a decade is a relief, he said.

His mom “doesn’t even want to think about who did it, (she’s) just happy they found it and happy we’ll be getting it back.”

This story was originally published January 6, 2018 at 2:40 PM with the headline "His gravesite is in Mexico. Fresno County deputies found his headstone in a dry canal."