Wilmer Vasquez was a gregarious extrovert."He was very outgoing person," remembers his ex-girlfriend Rose Carvajal. He died in 2023 at just 29 years old after working outside as a roofer in record-breaking August heat in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.It wasn’t that they were so similar. Wilmer, the younger one, was an extrovert. “He just wanted to be around people,” Yonatan says. “He was always encouraging people, making sure they were doing good. He liked to be the center of attention.
“I wish I would have chose a different career path, honestly,” he says. “I’d rather be something else.” Wilmer has a young son, and Yonatan says when the boy grows up, he’ll encourage him to avoid a career in roofing. “We don’t need a third generation roofer,” he says. “It’s a hard job.”Yonatan Vasquez and his brother were just a year apart, and were extremely close. Yonatan's earliest memory with Wilmer was arguing about who would get the top bunk in their bedroom.
But Wilmer wasn’t convinced. “, like, ‘No, but if I’m a truck driver I’m gonna talk to nobody. Just me all alone,’ ” Yonatan remembers. Solitary indoor work didn’t appeal to Wilmer’s extrovert personality.Like his brother Wilmer, Yonatan Vasquez works as a roofer in South Florida. He says the weather often gets dangerously hot in the summer and he experiences dehydration, muscle cramps and other signs of heat illness.
Someone gave Wilmer a ride home. Yonatan could see that his brother was sick from the heat. His muscles were cramping, he was dizzy. He didn’t want to be in air conditioned spaces. “Any time we’d put AC on him or a fan, he’d tell us to take it away,” Yonatan says.