One World. One Nightmare.
That's been the experience for Rocklin's Karla Fuentes-Rivera, who flew to China on July 21 for what was to be the vacation of a lifetime.
When her bag containing her Olympics tickets was stolen on a crowded street last Wednesday, however, it started one smoggy quagmire.
Since then Fuentes-Rivera said she has had to endure a language barrier, curt Chinese authorities and her mother suffering from a heart condition.
"There is no Olympic spirit to be seen," Fuentes-Rivera said via cell phone early this morning from her Tianjin hotel room.
For a few other locals contacted at the Games, the Olympic experience has been positive. Chris Tapio, a 37-year-old Greenhaven-area native, is blogging about Lodi-born U.S. men's soccer player Patrick Ianni.
"We have not experienced any mistreatment," Tapio wrote in an e-mail.
Maureen Smith, a kinesiology professor at Sacramento State attending the International Center for Olympic Studies conference said, "We have a blonde friend in our party and the joke is that she's going to star in a lot of Chinese families' photo albums," Smith said by cell phone from her Beijing hotel room.
Fuentes-Rivera, 29, said that after going to two police stations to file a report about the theft, she, her mother Ruth Rojas, 48, and brother Zachary Rojas, 13, went to the ticket office at Beijing National Stadium, only to find the entire area fenced off.
The next day at Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games headquarters, Fuentes-Rivera said she was yelled at by a Chinese official who refused to give his name or the name of a supervisor and had to stand (there were no chairs) for more than four hours.
It was then when Ruth Rojas started to lose consciousness. Despite her pleas for help, Fuentes-Rivera says no Chinese officials responded. Fortunately, a contingent of doctors and nurses from California in the room came to their aid.
Doctors told Fuentes-Rivera that her mother suffered a "cardiac irregularity" and discharged her from the hospital after about six hours.
Despite tickets for the Opening Ceremony being equipped with a microchip that links to the ticket holder's passport, Chinese officials told Fuentes-Rivera all they could do was prevent the thief from using them and they could not allow her into the stadium.
Fuentes-Rivera was a United States Olympic Committee intern at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens. She was an interpreter and liaison for the Mexican and Puerto Rican contingents, and said the difference in how the Games were operated is as different as night and smoggy day.
Fuentes-Rivera said the ordeal has been especially distressing for Ruth Rojas, who missed her first Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony since 1984 in Los Angeles.
"It's tragic I had to watch her cry outside of the stadium during that ceremony," Fuentes-Rivera said. "This is a woman whose spirit isn't easily broken."
Fuentes-Rivera and her family are staying in China until Aug. 29 and are trying to get new tickets to events.
Call the Bee's John Parker, (916) 326-5519.
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