WATSONVILLE >> A recent Friday night under the lights was a bittersweet moment for junior Julian Pizarro Jr.

As the final moments of the game ticked down, the Monte Vista Christian School Mustang kicked the game-winning field goal for his team Oct. 11 on his 17th birthday — already a day of celebration he shared with his triplet siblings Jonathan and Sarah.

Earlier that day, however, Julian’s 54-year-old father and pastor Julian Pizarro Sr. was running in Watsonville near Freedom Boulevard and Miles Lane when he was struck by a passing car shortly before 10 a.m. The accident, causing a traumatic brain injury, happened less than two hours after he posted a smiling photo of his three children and the message, “Happy 17th Birthday Kiddos!!” to his Facebook page. The 29-year-old driver involved in the crash reportedly remained on the scene and cooperated with investigators.

That night, Julian Jr. was carried on the shoulders of his teammates and spoke for an interview with the Sentinel after the game.

“I’m glad that I got to do it,” he said. “I’m just sad that my dad couldn’t be here to watch it.”

Just 15 days later, Pizarro Sr., Monte Vista Christian School’s head varsity boys soccer coach and pastor of Spanish ministries for more than two years at Twin Lake Church in Aptos, succumbed to his injuries and died while hospitalized. According to an online fundraiser on behalf of the Pizarro family’s expenses, Pizarro struggled with pneumonia and never regained consciousness. As of Wednesday, the fundraiser had surpassed its original $80,000 goal.

The crash, unfortunately timed in the midst of National Pedestrian Safety Month, remains an open investigation, the Watsonville Police Department wrote Tuesday evening in a social media post.

Santa Cruz County calls to Pizarro family

Pizarro, hired as a Monte Vista Christian coach in 2022, was born and raised in Chile, according to the school’s announcement of his hiring. Not long before, Pizarro and his family moved to the United States after serving eight years on the mission field, according to the announcement. Pizarro and his wife had earlier lived in the area, when he coached varsity boys soccer for Scotts Valley High School, beginning in 2000. Pizarro was drawn back to the county after an international head-hunting search conducted by Twin Lakes Church, according to lead pastor Rev. René Schlaepfer. Many of Pizarro’s sermons were recorded — including his final Oct. 6 service — and remain posted to Twin Lakes Church’s website and YouTube channel.The church’s leadership envisioned adding a fourth service to its offerings, one given in Spanish and mirroring its English-language services. In fact, what would become the “TLC en Español” services were scheduled simultaneously with their English counterpart and served as a successful strategy for mingling congregants and even diversifying the other services, Schlaepfer said. Some three years ago, the church struck gold in finding Pizarro, who had former ties to the area, had served as lead pastor at a church in his native Chile and was involved in ministering at large Houston-based Spanish-language congregations.

“We all felt like he was almost created in a laboratory, perfectly for this position,” Schlaepfer said. “He was actually completing a doctoral dissertation on exactly this strategy and had studied churches nationally and internationally who were doing what we had hoped to do. So, he was literally an expert on the subject.”

Schlaepfer, asked to describe Pizarro, quickly reeled off a list of his former fellow pastor’s positive attributes, including vibrant, passionate, friendly, visionary, smart, funny, loving and committed to the ministry and its people. He added that Twin Lakes is committed to continuing its Spanish-language sermon and “building on the vision that Julian began” and touted the church’s recent largest English-language baptism to date, where more than half of the nearly 100 people baptized were not white.

“It’s not just that he had all those qualifications on paper,” Schlaepfer said. “His personality was so warm and so engaging that he didn’t know these things in some sort of academic and cold sense — he really lived them and believed them.”

Teams offers unity

Monte Vista Christian announcement quoted Pizarro at his hiring, saying that coaching soccer allowed him to “teach and model biblical principles.”

“We are all individuals, uniquely created by God, and at the same time we are a part of something bigger than ourselves,” Pizarro was quoted. “When we fully comprehend this principle we become a stronger team all working towards the same purpose and goals.”

Monte Vista Christian School’s football coach Spencer Ferrari-Wood described the Pizarro family as “an MVC family, through and through.” All three of the triplets — two of whom Ferrari-Wood teaches — attend Monte Vista Christian, and mom Jessica Pizarro teaches Spanish-language courses at the school as well, he said.

“I know that our community here and also at Twin Lakes Church, where the father was Spanish pastor, has really rallied around them in prayer in the past couple weeks and our hearts and prayers go out to them at this time. It’s been really difficult for them,” Ferrari-Wood said. “We certainly love the Pizarro family. Just a wonderful family. You hate to hear, any time this happens to anybody, but the Pizarro family is just a special family that we all love.”

MVC senior Dominic Pierini, who said he did not know the elder Pizarro well, serves as football quarterback on the younger Julian’s team.

“I know that my teammate’s going through a really rough time and I think that he’s shown a lot of strength and courage just how he’s been going to school and being out there every day,” Pierini told the Sentinel. “I think that I’m going to be here with him no matter what and if he ever needs anything from me, he can call me.”