EASTHAMPTON — Several weeks ago, Anastacia Torres was awake late at night with her boyfriend, 25-year-old Samuel “Sammy” Garcia Jr, when country singer Luke Combs’ song “Better Together” came on over the speakers — a song she said could have been their wedding song.
Though it was late at night, Garcia cheerfully insisted she get off the couch and dance with her — he was always dancing, even when no music was playing. And as the next song came on, and then the next, the two kept dancing the night away.
“That was what life was like with him,” Torres said. But those were some of the last dances they would share. Garcia died on Dec. 16 from injuries he suffered in a car crash on Southampton Road in Holyoke. “It has been just horrible. We’ve been trying to keep each other occupied.”
The 2014 graduate of Easthampton High School and lifelong city resident was known as a fun, warm and caring person who always wanted to help others.
“He was just always making people laugh,” Garcia’s cousin Elizabeth Lombardi said Tuesday. “That was his favorite thing to do, no matter which way — telling jokes, funny voices, always dancing … He has a heart of gold, pure gold.”
Garcia was well known as a star athlete who was named Most Valuable Player in both basketball and football his senior year.
EHS Athletic Director Brian Miller, who coached Garcia’s basketball team, said Garcia was one of the hardest-working players the school had ever seen.
“If you had five Sams on the court, you would win every game,” he said.
But it was Garcia’s leadership and kindness that stood out, Miller said, remembering seeing him walking down the hall of the high school holding the hands of one of the preschoolers in the Tiny Tots program.
“He was always inclusive and got along with anyone,” Miller said. “He would do anything for anyone.”
Torres, Garcia’s girlfriend, said the weekend before his death, Garcia was trying to help a friend find a guitar to buy, even though he knew nothing about guitars himself. That’s who Garcia was, she said. His warm personality and smile were contagious, infecting everyone from his nephew Milo, who still plays with the dump truck he recently bought him, to those he served as a bartender at Rumbleseat Bar & Grille in Chicopee.
Torres met Garcia at Elms College, where she was immediately drawn to those qualities.
“He was everything, he was my light, my best friend,” she said. “I confided in him and the love we shared was overwhelming … He just got me, we were always on the same page, finishing each other’s sentences.”
Garcia is predeceased by his older sister, Alexis “Lexie” Garcia, who tragically died in 2007 at age 15.
“It feels surreal that we’re doing this over again, it’s just unimaginable,” Lombardi, his cousin, said. “But I myself find a little comfort in the fact that they’re together. He loved her so much and missed her every day.”
On Tuesday, Garcia’s family held a wake for him at Our Lady of the Valley Parish. Some of his longtime friends served as pallbearers, carrying his casket from Graham Funeral Home to the church. A Boston Celtics jersey and a shirt with the late rapper Mac Miller accompanied pictures of Garcia inside the church.
Many of his loved ones have been sharing memories of Garcia in the days following his death. For Tyler Sudnick, who met Garcia when the two were preschoolers, what stuck in his memory was sneaking out as middle schoolers for late-night bike rides around Easthampton.
“And the texts,” he said Tuesday. “He was a friend who would always text everybody.”
“He was always there,” chimed in Zach Leone, who has known Garcia since second grade. “He was the most energetic and hard-working kid.”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.