Hi! My name is Cailen Soriano, youngest child of my family of 5, to Racheal Soriano, my mom, and Albert Soriano, my dad. I have 2 older sisters, Keannah and Micaela. My mom is a lab technician for Kaiser Permanente, and my dad was a general dentist, growing his dental practice. For the past 4 years my mom has been paying thousands of dollars in settlement money after my dad passed away.

4 years ago on December 9th, my mom woke me up telling me she had tested positive for COVID. This was the beginning of years of pain, suffering, and sadness for my family, and especially my mom. My dad would end up testing positive on his birthday just 4 days later, and also rush my mom to the hospital that night, where she stayed for a week. By December 22nd, we would end up calling 911 to rush my dad to the hospital, as he was barely able to breathe. He eventually ended up intubated in the ICU on New Year’s day, and on the morning of January 8th, 2021, I was in middle of my online zoom class, hearing my mom crying and yelling from across the house. I’d never thought I'd hear my mom cry like that, and I felt my heart sink to my stomach. I came downstairs, and she had a look of horror on her face. While on the phone with the hospital, they told us we should quickly go and see him cause he wasn’t gonna make it. By around 9:56 AM, my dad’s passing was confirmed as me, my mom, and my two sisters felt the warmth of life in my dad’s body fade away. The last words we heard from my dad was just before he was getting intubated, and he said, “This is Not The End.”

After his celebration of life, my mom essentially took over his business as we tried to sell his practice to ensure his employees and his office would be secured by someone we trusted. However, we eventually failed to sell the office and his workers who we believed we trusted would turn on my mom and my family as a whole. She was still healing from her own hospitalization from covid, for nearly 7 months after, she struggled to gather money to pay the employees as she was faced with the inability to work, grieving her deceased husband, and overwhelming depression. By the time my mom had finally gotten rid of the office through the bank after about 5 month of attempting to keep the business alive, two former employees of my dad wound up suing my mom. Unfortunately, my mom was liable as she was legally seen as the stand in business owner for operating it for so long, and they ended up settling for 50 thousand dollars, and 40 thousand dollars each. As a now widowed mother with a 40 thousand yearly salary and supporting 3 children who were all still in school, paying those settlements felt impossible, and the end of our time living in my childhood home.

Luckily, we were able to receive a small amount of money from my dads life insurance each, and we each used a portion of it to help my mom pay for the settlement costs. Just when we thought it was over, my mom was served papers for another suit from the bank that my dad loaned from. Their initial asking price was 375 thousand dollars, which is an impossible number for my mom. Eventually my mom and her lawyers (who milked 100k out of her in lawyers fees, which she isn’t even able to fully pay) came to a settlement of 75k, which is still unreachable in our current situation. 3 years later this settlement was finally reached, and now, in march 2025 my mom is due to pay the bank, and after paying over 200k dollars over the past 3 years, this one has been the hardest to deal with. Feeling so close to the finish line yet so far, my mom has reached so many breaking points. My mom has done everything for me and my siblings for the past 4 years, all while shouldering the burden of protecting us, doing her best to keep the money from our dad, and sacrificing everything she has to keep us happy. All I want to do is free her of this 4 year hell she’s experienced, and let her find happiness in her hobbies and life again.