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Decade After Tragic Day Care Fire, Sonoran Family Finds Help In Scottsdale

ABC Daycare
Murphy Woodhouse/KJZZ
Alejandra Guadalupe Esquer Ochoa, 13, and her parents Heraclio Ernesto Esquer Lopez and Olga Lidia Ochoa at their home in Hermosillo on the 10th anniversary of the ABC Daycare fire.

Wednesday marked the 10-year anniversary of the tragic ABC Daycare fire in Hermosillo, Sonora, the Mexican state to Arizona’s south.

That fire claimed the lives of 49 infants and toddlers, and injured 106 more. Two of those survivors were Olga Lidia Ochoa, who worked at the day care, and her daughter Alejandra Guadalupe Esquer Ochoa, now 13.

“I lost consciousness inside the day care, trying to get children out,” Ochoa recalled.

Alejandra suffered major burns to more than 80% of her body and was initially treated in Sacramento. In recent years, she has also gotten help at the Bosley clinic in Scottsdale. 

“Before I had a lot of scarring, and there were lines without hair on my head,” she said. “And now, it looks normal.”

The family will be visiting Arizona again in August for a checkup. Ochoa said Arizonans have always been kind and respectful to the family. 

Alejandra is now mostly focused on doing well in school, where she’s taken an interest in mathematics.

“I like it, because it comes easily to me,” she said.

A decade after the tragedy, Ochoa said justice still hasn’t been done.

“That would be a relief, you could say, for those truly responsible to pay,” she said.

Murphy Woodhouse was a senior field correspondent at KJZZ from 2018 to 2023.