This portrait of Fedelina “Nanay” Lugasan, who was enslaved and forced to do domestic work for decades, most recently in Northridge, was painted by Eliseo Art Silva. (Courtesy image) A Forest Lawn attendant guided Aquilina Soriano-Versoza into the room where the body of Fedelina Lugasan lay atop a gurney, a blanket pulled over her torso, her head resting on a pillow. Separated by the coronavirus pandemic while living, it was only Lugasan’s death that allowed Soriano-Versoza to see her for the first time in months.
Soriano-Versoza met Lugasan in May 2018 when Lugasan stepped into an FBI agent’s car and got away from the family that enslaved her as a domestic worker for, according to Lugasan and her advocates, more than six decades, most recently in the San Fernando Valley. Soriano-Versoza and other members of the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles bonded with Lugasan who at age 81 had entered an unfamiliar world. They called her “Nanay” – “Mother” in Tagalog.
Fedelina Lugasan sits with family members during an event at the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday, March 10, 2020. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) But this May, just two years after […]
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