The red nylon star balloons tied to the fence of a Dutchtown home in south St. Louis indicate a party is going on in the backyard.
Children are chasing each other with foam pool noodles, hot dogs are sizzling on the grill and family and friends are enjoying each other. However, it is not a birthday party; it is a barbecue in remembrance of Juan Baltazar.
Baltazar was one of five people killed on May 16, 2025, when a storm and EF3 tornado ripped through St. Louis. The 152 mph winds that came through the city caused a large tree in Carondelet Park to collapse on the front window of his pickup truck. He died within minutes.
His wife, Rachel Baltazar, told St. Louis Public Radio last year that she waited two hours for emergency crews to remove the tree from his blue truck with cranes. Although she was devastated, all she could think about was how she would tell her two young children that their father had died.
Over the past year, she has been keeping the children busy with school and other activities to help reduce their stress levels because of the loss of their dad.
"I don't think we've really grieved yet," she said.
Besides running after her children and excelling at work, she has been busy with DIY projects to help avoid sulking over the loss of her husband. Last summer, during a heat wave, she cleared out her backyard and put down artificial grass, plastic snap-in tiles, two raised garden beds and an above-ground swimming pool.
"He would have done most of it — I would have helped with some stuff — but he would have done most of it," she said. "I had to redo it, because when we bought the house, the backyard was all pretty much all mud, so I had some contractors do a little bit, but it kind of made it worse, so I had to fix it myself."
To many, Juan Baltazar was known as someone who could repair anything. However, the community at-large knew him for his tasty corn. He owned a street corn food truck called El Mandilón. The truck could be seen at festivals, parks, parties and in parking lots. People lined up to eat his wood-roasted corn on the cob or loose corn, both served with an array of toppings.
Rachel said he may have been one of the few people in the area who cooked corn over a fire, as it is traditionally done in Mexico. Although she sold the food truck last year to help make ends meet, she said patrons are still on the hunt for it.
"They still look for it on Google, it still sends me notifications when they look for the corn," she said, smiling.
Juan Baltazar was born on Jan. 1, 1977, in Piedras Negras, Mexico. He had been living in the United States for over two decades and had seven children, four living in Mexico and three in the St. Louis area.
His family gathered in the backyard on the anniversary of his death, reminiscing about his passion for camping and fishing. Some remembered how he would be gone for hours fishing for trout at state parks. Jenny Hartley, the mother of one of Baltazar's older sons, recalled Juan making his own bait with cheese and other food and materials to catch catfish.
Hartley hopes their 17-year-old son, Martin, will pick up his father's passion for the outdoors and cooking. Hartley and her husband, Nick Brown, plan to include those activities to help Martin cherish good times with his dad.
"We try to keep that in consideration with Martin, because he doesn't have his dad taking him fishing anymore," Hartley said. "Those are things that we have to plan for, because he still needs those experiences, and we just have to make sure we're the ones that do it."
Hartley and Brown say keeping Martin's memories of his dad alive is a priority for them, especially since they have noticed some changes in Martin's behavior over the last year. They say he retreats to his room or the basement more often, and he does not come out as much to enjoy family time.
Martin is engaging more in things he enjoys, like playing video games instead of focusing on school, Brown said.
"He's old enough to understand his own grief … so you got to let him try to navigate that path himself too," he said. "We don't know what it's like to lose a father at a young age — we've lost loved ones, but it's completely different, so it's hard for us to navigate and figure out how to create the space."
Martin plans to start grief counseling next month to help deal with emotional issues tied to his father's sudden death. He created an altar in his room to honor his dad, and he wears his cowboy gear to feel closer to him.
Rachel Baltazar said she also noticed their 4-year-old son, Matias, is getting angrier at home and at preschool as he realizes his dad is not coming home. She is saddened by this, because she knows he cannot express his pain because he is so young. She often drives with her children through Carondelet Park and stops in the area where Juan died, because she said it connects her children to their dad.
"They'll say, 'Hi, Papa. Bye, Papa. Love you, Papa,'" she said. "Every time we go through there, they know where we are once we hit the first turnabout before we get to the second, where it happened."
Their 7-year-old daughter Rosalia and son Matias talk to Juan's urn at an altar in their home's foyer that Rachel put up. She also created a sacred space outside, similar to a gravesite. She placed a small, black metal headstone on the side of the house with faux flowers, budding lilies and a lilac bush.
Rachel keeps her extended family in Mexico updated on Juan's children via phone and social media. She said his siblings, mother and children are still grieving over his death, because they never properly said goodbye. Last year, the Trump administration cracked down on immigration and made it impossible for most of Juan's family in Mexico to obtain an emergency visa to attend the funeral. His mother did make it to St. Louis for the service, but she is still torn over his death.
Hartley said Juan's mother posts every day on Facebook about how heartbroken she is and how sad she is on holidays, like Mother's Day.
"They didn't go one day without talking to each other," Rachel said.
Rachel understands that pain, because she thinks of her husband all the time. On May 7, she filed a lawsuit against St. Louis' emergency management agency and the forestry division. She wants the public records she requested regarding the storm and the trees in Carondelet Park released to her.
She began seeking attorneys after learning that the sirens had failed because of human error. According to the lawsuit, she filed public records requests with CEMA on Sept. 25, 2025, and with the forestry division on Oct. 10, 2025. The suit says that each department has violated Missouri's Sunshine Law by continuing to delay and deny public records requests for months. She is seeking $5,000 for attorney fees and other costs.
As the days move forward, Rachel hopes people remember Juan as a loving human being who was passionate about life and his family. She wants people who knew him or heard about him because of his death to show love and kindness to others just as Juan did.
"Juan was really blessed. He would always help somebody. He'd give people a ride if they needed a ride, rake somebody's yard … clean out a grease trap at a friend's restaurant or throw garbage out, he didn't care," she said. "He'd help somebody, and that would be a way to remember him. Just help somebody."
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