Adrian and Betsy Gonzalez graduated from Eastlake High School in the year 2000 and have been together ever since. After Adrian’s 15-year playing career … including five with his home town Padres that put him 2nd on the franchise’s all-time home runs list … Betsy started Mia Becar, a luxury shoe brand.
That work takes her often to Italy, which is usually a fun trip. Until recently.
“I was in Italy when the first few cases started,” said Betsy.
She saw the coronavirus starting to impact the country and immediately came home.
“I didn’t really see the full effect until I was already back, maybe seven days in here,” said Betsy. “Talking to (Adrian) I was like, it’s going to start spreading. The world is going to start seeing these hot spots everywhere.”
As soon as she got back to America the Gonzalez family did the prudent thing. They closed their doors with their two daughters and didn’t go outside for a while. And they haven’t stopped.
“We had heard that you need to quarantine for two weeks,” said Adrian. “Betsy came back about five weeks ago so we started that 14-day quarantine. To this day, thank God, we haven’t gotten any symptoms or sick in any way but we wanted to be cautious and make sure that we’re not out there spreading something without knowledge of having anything. So that’s when we started it and here we are today about five weeks later.”
Local
Being that close to the pandemic when it was building has motivated Betsy and Adrian to try and be good examples of how to flatten the curve.
“Now that we see where it’s going and where it’s trending I think we all need to be part of the solution,” said Adrian. “If not this can continue to carry on and continue to grow at a rate it has been growing.”
To help those impacted by it, Betsy cutting 30% off the price of the shoes and sending profits to the California Community Foundation COVID 19 Emergency Response Fund. Adrian, meanwhile, found a way for folks who can’t get out and move around to do so inside.
“For me it was important to create a full at-home workout for a week without any weights,” said Adrian. “I thought that was important to share with the world. I have a very good trainer that comes to the house and me and him kind of put our heads together and put together a workout with no weights. You’re talking burpees and planks and jumping jacks and push-ups, all those things that can get your heart rate going and get you a good workout that’s 20-30 minutes.”
To find the workouts go to Adrian’s Instagram page (@adrian_eltitan) and to find the shoes visit www.miabecar.com. Oh, and these high school sweethearts are, like many of us, home-schooling the kids while still taking care of business interests but they’ve been getting along just fine during the quarantine thanks to a tip that might be useful.
“The one thing we do is we give each other two hours,” said Betsy. “For him to work out or do whatever he wants and he gives me two hours so that I can work out and be creative so I think that helps a lot.”
A little “me” time helps “us” time.
