Noe Chavez Garcia is a tile setter who lives in San Marcos. But to his family and friends he is the "Miracle Man."
Garcia was lured to Tijuana on December 18, 2004, and shot seven times by two gunmen.
"I didn't feel pain, I was in shock," the 45-year-old man said.
It all began when Garcia got a call from a man he had only met a few times.
"He said his mother died and he needed a ride to the airport in Tijuana," he said.
Garcia took the man and another man across the border, but they didn't end up at the airport. Instead, the men directed Garcia down a dirt road.
"When I stopped my truck the guy shot me in the face, there is a hole right here," he said. "He shot another two times in my neck and then the other guy gets the gun and he did three here (in his back)."
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Then came the seventh and final bullet.
"He pulled me from my hair and put the gun in my mouth and he shot me in my mouth," Garcia said.
As he sat in his truck, bleeding to death, the two men walked away.
"I asked them, ‘why did you do this to me?’ They said ‘it was your wife’."
After the men left, Garcia honked his horn until he got someone’s attention. He was taken to a Tijuana hospital before family members took him to UCSD Medical Center.
During his recovery, he said he questioned his wife, Magali, about the shooting, but she denied having anything to do with it. Garcia said he didn't believe her and filed for divorce. San Diego County Sheriff's investigators got involved in the case but couldn't prove Magali masterminded the murder plot.
More than three years passed before Garcia said a detective asked him to wear a hidden recorder before talking to Magali. To Garcia's surprise, he said Magali began to cry and apologized to him before confessing her part in the murder plot.
"She said she didn't plan to kill me or whatever, but she did," Garcia said.
The taped confession led to Magali Cabrera's arrest. In early 2008, she pleaded guilty to attempted murder and kidnapping. She later admitted that she was having an affair with one of the gunmen. Both gunmen have been identified, but haven't been caught.
On Thursday, a San Diego judge sentenced Magali Cabrera to 9 years and 8 months in state prison.
Garcia and his ex-wife have an 8-year-old daughter together. He said she was the reason he tried to stay alive in the moments after being shot.
The shooting left several scars on Garcia's body, and he can no longer hear in his left ear. He said the sentence wasn't long enough.
"I wish she would have gotten longer, I never want to see her again," he said.
