Elizardo Sanz sips peacefully on a drink at his restaurant Café Bustelo. The 60-year-old is enjoying a his Cuban-themed eatery before the rush of regular patrons swoop in for the day.
Sanz’s calm demeanor can be attributed in part to this welcome down-time in the often hectic life of a restauranteur. But his near-death odyssey two decades ago from Cuba to the United States are also a factor.
Sanz’s journey began on Aug. 13, 1994 and lasted four days. Tired of Fidel Castro’s oppressive regime, Sanz fled the island nation, where he had grown up to become a mathematician and chemist.
With the help of four friends, who accompanied him on the 90-mile trip from Cuba to Key West, Sanz constructed a raft made of eight tubes of aluminum and two chambers for tractor tires. The boat did not have a motor; just the arms of the five men rowing it toward freedom.
“The first three days were stormy and on the fourth day the sun was so harsh that we got burned and delirious with fever. Because of the shape of the raft, we were submerged in water from the waist down and even more dangerous was the fact that, in order to keep the sharks away, we had to throw kerosene on the ocean, and we got coated in it too. The sharks lurked all four days, they were two times bigger than our raft, but they never attacked,” Sanz recalled.
A squadron of ‘Hermanos al Rescate,’ an organization which, during its existence, was dedicated to rescuing rafters trying to emigrate from Cuba, found the group and, with the Coast Guard’s assistance, got Sanz and his companions out alive.
Without a dollar in his pocket and suffering terrible burns and other ailments from his journey, Sanz had to start his new life in the United States completely from scratch.
“He started off working in restaurants in Miami, where he went from washing plates to being a manager,” said Sanz’s wife, Araceli Sánchez. “Thanks to that things have gone well for us in our restaurants. I met him in Las Vegas, where he had gone to work. We got married in 1996.”
The couple decided to move to Georgia in 2006 because they were tired of paying such high flood insurance premiums because of the hurricanes that ravaged Florida that year, including Katrina, Sanz explained.
In Georgia, the couple became business owners with two restaurants that were favorably received by critics and the community.
Jack Bucsko, a client of the restaurant and Spanish teacher at Johns Creek High School, was so impressed by Sanz’s story that he invited him to share it with his students last year.
“Since then he has shared his motivational story with more than 300 students in this school. He’s my hero!” said Bucsko.
Students at Northview High School have heard Sanz’s testimony in hopes that it will teach them about life experiences.
“It was crazy. You have to be very, very desperate to do something like that, because there’s almost no chance of making it,” Sanz said.
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