Travel Forum / Travel Types / Air Travel / December 2005

Neighbors, family stunned by Alpizar's violent death

Maitland man is remembered as a loving husband who 'was always nice.'

Henry Pierson Curtis and Willoughby Mariano
Sentinel Staff Writers
December 8, 2005

MAITLAND -- They called him Rigo, speaking in whispers and shock
outside a Maitland home illuminated Wednesday night by television
lights and sudden national attention.

To neighbors, he was a jogger, an immigrant, a bicyclist, a loving
husband. He was the paint guy at The Home Depot, the man who always
waved hello.

And to the frightened woman talking through a mail slot in a red door,
Rigo was her "darling son-in-law." She slid out his photograph,
showing a smiling Rigoberto Alpizar against a star-filled background.

In the hours after Alpizar's name flashed across televisions and
computer screens, friends, neighbors, and family members struggled to
understand how someone so nice could be the same man who authorities
said claimed to have a bomb at Miami International Airport.

"I can tell you he was very proud to be living in America," said
brother-in-law Bradley Jentsch in Sheboygan, Wis. "He was very, very
proud to become an American citizen and to vote."

Alpizar moved to the U.S. about 20 years ago after growing up on a
farm near Golfito on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, according to his
in-laws.

He and Anne Buechner, his wife of more than 18 years, regularly jogged
and rode bicycles together through their Maitland neighborhood.

"He always said, 'Hi, how is your day?" said Alex McLeod, 16. "He was
always nice."

Reports from the Miami airport shortly after the killing that
described Alpizar as mentally ill left longtime neighbor Louis Gunther
doubting media accounts. The friend he knew never showed any signs of
a mental illness or aggression toward anyone.

An Orlando-area resident for more than 10 years, Alpizar worked at
Home Depot on Colonial Drive near Semoran Boulevard, neighbors said.
Home Depot spokesman Don Harrison said he could not confirm if Alpizar
worked for the company.

Alpizar and his wife bought their four-bedroom house in 1998 on Gillis
Court, where houses now sell for $250,000 and up. They had no
children.

As word of Alpizar's death spread, TV crews, photographers and
reporters filled the street in front of the house. Other than a couple
of brief interviews through the front door, the woman who said she was
Alpizar's mother-in-law did not leave the house until about 9:15 p.m.,
when Maitland police escorted her away.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, Alpizar and his wife left on a trip
sponsored by their church to work with children in South America, said
Gunther, who was taking care of their house while they were gone.

The couple first met in Costa Rica when Buechner, a social worker, was
working in Central America. They regularly returned in recent years to
his childhood home after the death of his mother to spend time with
his aging father, relatives said.

The widow's siblings, including brother Steven Buechner of Milwaukee,
had not been able to speak to her by Wednesday evening.

"He was a very loving husband," said Jentsch, calling Alpizar "Rigo,"
a family nickname. "He loved to read and he taught himself English by
reading."

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