SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Lina Washington's strength is admirable. She speaks her truth with grace and with grit. She is one of the strongest women I know. Her heart is breaking and still she is finding the strength to use her voice to try to prevent others from feeling the pain she is going through.
Lina is my dear friend, my roommate, and my coworker. Before the coronavirus and before the stay-at-home order was enacted, she sat across from me at work.
I remember meeting her parents when I first started at ABC10. Her mom and dad sat and watched her do the news and sports segment one weekend. Her father was beaming with pride. He watched Lina grow up to be an extraordinary woman and she is just getting started.
This upcoming Father's Day, Lina will be remembering her father and his legacy at a celebration of life. He died from complications due to the coronavirus on June 11.
“He was the strongest man, I’ll probably ever know," Lina shared with me at McKinely Park Thursday afternoon. “He was my best friend.”
He was her inspiration. He was her cheerleader.
“He truly is the reason why I love sports because my earliest memories of going to see the Phoenix Suns were with my dad," Lina said smiling. “His favorite picture of me is him in his tuxedo and me in my little tracksuit standing next to him before we went out to a Suns game.”
Lina's decision to become a sports anchor and reporter is rooted in her relationship with her father. After the NBA finals, she called her father to tell him all about her experience and after the Superbowl, you know who she called. He always picked up. Even at two in the morning, when Lina was driving home late from an assignment, he picked up. He wanted to make sure she got home safely and he always told her he was proud of her.
“It’s almost as if God knew that my dad would be called home," Lina shared.
Lina had the opportunity to go home for her 30th birthday to see her parents before the shelter-in-place order was enacted. Something told her to bring her camera.
“I have an hour-long interview with him from the last time I saw him where he specifically mentions COVID and hopes we can all survive it and unfortunately he couldn’t,” Lina said.
Her father was a diabetic and also recently survived prostate cancer. Lina describes him as a fighter.
“He felt the need to return to work at an Arizona casino, which he was retired, but he was seeking employment for medical benefits. He’s a diabetic. He needed insulin," she said.
When the doors to the casino opened on May 15, Lina said her father was potentially exposed to coronavirus.
“He called me May 16 and said how he feared for his safety," Lina said. “Within two weeks, I got a call from my sister that he tested positive."
Her father was admitted to the hospital. He lost 25 pounds in two weeks. He became weak and fatigued. Lina later learned he needed to go to the ICU.
“I called the hospital on June 10 and that was not the man that I spoke to on June 5. That was the last time I talked to my dad," Lina said.
She described the call. She told her dad to fight. She told him about the amazing project she is spearheading in Sacramento called Boards for Change. She told her father to fight and to listen to the nurses. She told him she loved him. That was the last time she spoke to her father, hundreds of miles away from where he was fighting for his life.
“I really tried to save my dad. But it’s the carelessness of other people who don’t believe this is real," she said. “I will never see my dad again. I want to call him but I know he will never answer again.”
Since her father's passing, Lina has been advocating for change in her home state of Arizona. She talked to numerous media outlets to share her father's story and one week after her father's death, the casino he worked at, Gila River’s Lone Butte Casino in Chandler, closed for two weeks due to coronavirus concerns.
“He did not deserve to die like this. He was a fighter. For him to succumb to this disease, please know it’s real and it can happen to you and people need to take it seriously," she shared.
In the middle of this tragedy, Lina has been dedicating her time to an incredible project she co-founded called Boards For Change.
The goal is to turn boarded-up businesses into art during the unrest following George Floyd's death.
If you'd like to donate to this cause, click here. All money raised goes to help under-served Black youth in our community.
Read more from ABC10
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