He raised 4 kids in Sacramento. He died homeless of hypothermia this winter
Six days after Thanksgiving, a man froze to death on a sidewalk just north of downtown Sacramento. He was the second homeless person to die of hypothermia in the capital city this winter.
Francisco R. Ramirez, 58, was found unresponsive near a gutter in the River District on a November night when temperatures dipped into the 30s.
“An autopsy was performed by our office that confirmed the decedent’s cause of death was hypothermia,” the coroner report read. “The decedent was exposed to very cold temperatures outdoors.”
Ramirez died at a hospital just before noon on Nov. 30, the report said.
Ramirez had been on the streets for a couple months before his death, his daughter said. He did not have a tent or a vehicle.
When his family heard that hypothermia was the cause of death, it hurt, said daughter Esmeralda Ramirez.
“It was hard to think that it could have been prevented,” said Ramirez, 23 of Sacramento.
Her father was born in Mexico, where he taught elementary school, Esmeralda Ramirez said. When he was in his 20s, he immigrated to the United States, where he settled in Los Angeles and worked at a factory. He’s lived in Sacramento for at least 20 years, and used to work at Crystal Cream and Butter.
He lived in south Sacramento with his wife and four children, she said. He would frequently take them to the park and ride bicycles with them.
“When we were younger he was very dedicated with us,” Esmeralda Ramirez said. “He was a very good father. He’d always keep us active, take us to the parks, take us around Sacramento. At the playgrounds, my favorite was the monkey bars. He would always help me get on them and help me find my way across those bars.”
Old family photos show happy memories of birthday celebrations, both in the 1990s and more recently. His family called him “Kiko” as a nickname — a name that was passed down to his son Francisco Ramirez, 21.
But there were difficult times too. Ramirez suffered from mental health issues — schizophrenia, depression and anxiety — which worsened in recent years, Esmeralda Ramirez said. The family would allow him to sleep at the house, but he would often sleep outdoors in order to spare the family from dealing with the symptoms of his mental health crisis, such as paranoia, she said.
“He would tell us people were watching when in reality nobody was,” Esmeralda Ramirez said. “Toward the end he just didn’t want to cause us more harm ... The past couple years he’s been hard on himself because he wishes he could’ve been a better father for us. He thought, ‘in order to punish myself let me separate myself from my family let me live wild and free out there.’”
A city warming center was open on Nov. 29 near where he died, but he may not have known about it, Esmeralda Ramirez said.
Second hypothermia death in Sacramento
Ramirez was the second homeless man to freeze to death this winter in Sacramento.
On Nov. 14, Morris John Jobe, 74, died of hypothermia along the American River near Camp Polluck — a night when no warming centers were open.
In 2021, roughly 230 homeless people died in Sacramento including eight of hypothermia. Sacramento’s homeless population has grown to 9,300. The city and county provide roughly 2,300 shelter beds, all of which are usually full.
Activists say that homeless deaths from weather-related causes are particularly disgraceful because they could be prevented by greater efforts to get people indoors.
Bob Erlenbusch of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness urged the city and county to open public buildings as 24/7 walk-up warming centers in all neighborhoods.
“We demand that the city and county embrace warming centers in all parts of the community,” Erlenbusch said.
He cited a new partnership between the city of Sacramento and Sacramento County in which the agencies pledged to do “whatever it takes” to address homelessness, including adding more behavioral health resources.
Under that agreement, signed last month, the city and county are ramping up teams that will be able to diagnose people “on the spot” right at the camp, Mayor Darrell Steinberg has said. The workers will then be able to drive people the same day to facilities where psychiatrists can prescribe medications, including anti-psychotics, which help with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
People need to be able to get indoors on deadly freezing nights before they can work on their mental health, however, activists say.
A series of atmospheric river storms have been slamming Sacramento since New Year’s Eve. Two unhoused people died when trees fell on their tents earlier this month. The coroner’s office has not yet determined whether any hypothermia deaths occurred during the storm. The risk of hypothermia increases when the body is wet.
The final phase of the storm is hitting the region this weekend, with flooding expected. The county opened a 100-bed homeless warming center at Cal Expo for the first time in at least a decade, but it does not allow walk-ups or vehicles. The city and county also have shelters open on Auburn Boulevard and in the River District.
This story was originally published January 13, 2023 at 4:17 PM.
