Excerpt from the chapter Lost in Los Gatos
It was a summer afternoon in 1994 when Thomas Manjila and Shency Chacko arrived at their apartment in downtown Los Gatos. They did not tell anyone in New York City when they boarded a direct five and a half hours flight from Newark International Airport to San Francisco. It was effectively an eloping - Thomas Manjila didn’t inform Thomas Kurivila and Shency Chacko didn’t give any hint to her family. After landing in San Francisco, they took an airport shuttle and spent almost an hour and a half in Silicon Valley traffic, mainly on Highway 101, to cover the approximately sixty miles to reach Los Gatos. Delhi Palace, the restaurant where Thomas Manjila would start working the next day, was within walking distance on Main Street. Amit Bansal, owner of Delhi Palace and Thomas Manjila’s new boss, had already leased an apartment for him, so they could collect the key from the rental office. After settling into the apartment, which was only a block away from Main Street, Thomas Manjila and Shency Chacko sat on the balcony, from where they had a clear view of the Los Gatos Hills area, which is part of the Santa Cruz Mountains range that stood between the Santa Clara Valley and the Pacific Ocean. The trees on the hills looked tired from the summer heat, but the view was still beautiful. The apartment was on the third floor of the building, giving them an unobstructed view of the town’s streets and the surrounding hills in the background. The day was long and Thomas Manjila wanted to take a walk through the town before going to sleep, but Shency Chacko declined, saying she felt tired. He promised to bring her something tasty for dinner when he returned from his walk.
Bebeto and Romário spent some time with the team for a short warm-up at the Los Gatos High School ground after they arrived at the Lodge at Villa Felice in June, the same day Thomas Manjila and Shency Chacko reached Los Gatos. The World Cup was about to kick off, and Brazil would face Russia, Cameroon, and the host nation, the United States, at Stanford University Stadium in Palo Alto, a town north of Los Gatos. They had been there earlier in April with the Brazilian national team to familiarize themselves with the area. Their practice sessions would mainly be held at the Santa Clara University grounds, and the team’s stay was arranged in Los Gatos. Bebeto and Romário wanted to wrap up the warm-up session quickly so they could go out for dinner with a mutual friend who had moved from Brazil to the U.S. and now lived in Los Gatos. While Bebeto and Romário were well known in much of the world, they could still go unrecognized in most parts of the U.S., where football referred to a different sport altogether. The World Cup had not yet begun, and their faces would become familiar to the American public only later, and only to those who cared to watch it. They believed they could slip out of the lodge and walk to their friend’s house without a security detail, which could look pretentious and awkward for a visit to an old friend.
After they returned from the warm-up session at Los Gatos High School, Bebeto and Romário quickly slipped out of the Villa Felice Lodge onto Winchester Avenue. As they had expected, no one recognized them at first, and there were not many people on the street anyway. Bebeto and Romário even asked a couple of pedestrians for directions, and the pedestrians had no idea they were chatting with two of the world’s greatest soccer players, as football is commonly referred to in the U.S. They might easily have been mistaken for newly arrived Mexican workers looking for a friend who was doing well as a gardener or construction worker in Los Gatos.
The directions Bebeto and Romário received were not very accurate, or they did not know how to follow them. They were supposed to be heading into a quiet residential area where their friend was waiting at home with his family and neighbors to show them his well-known friends. Instead, Bebeto and Romário found themselves on Santa Cruz Avenue, which was crowded with people and lined with all kinds of shops on either side of the street. They quickly realized the danger of being recognized there—and that happened very fast. A long-legged, middle-aged woman jumped out of a wine bar, stood in their way on the narrow sidewalk, shouted their names in Portuguese, and exclaimed to the world about her luck in bumping into them. From her accent, Romário knew exactly which town in Brazil she came from. While he was thinking about that, he also found himself grabbed very tightly by her, and she smelled of the tannins of the red wine from the nearby hills. She was in a frenzy, and people stopped to look at the commotion on the street as she told everyone who they were. People in Los Gatos knew that the Brazilian team was staying there and that the mayor of the town was involved in making their stay comfortable, but they assumed the players would not be very accessible, considering the team’s high profile. Just out of curiosity, more people started stopping by the Brazilians, two nervous and the other very excited, and a crowd was formed around them.