ADRIAN — Even if you had never met Paul N. “Chico” Martinez, there’s a good chance you knew his name.

That’s because, in a word, he was everywhere.

Community events? He was there. Service projects? He was there. And most of all, if there was somebody in the community who needed help — whether it was because of an illness, a fire, or any other personal crisis — Chico Martinez was there.

But one of his biggest passions was organizing Adrian’s Cinco de Mayo celebration.  Now, two years after his death from a rare form of lung cancer, his family and friends are honoring his legacy by incorporating the Adrian Cinco de Mayo committee as a nonprofit and starting a scholarship in his name.

Chico organized Cinco de Mayo for more than 20 years. His wife, Teresa Martinez, remembers the beginning this way: “He said ‘You know what? I think I want to have a parade for Cinco de Mayo. That’s all he said, and he just went with it.”

Something he always wanted to do was form a nonprofit to run the celebration. After his death, his family and friends decided they would take the plunge and make it happen — “to make Chico’s dream come true.” The new organization is called Chico’s Cinco de Mayo.

This year’s Cinco de Mayo celebration, taking place on Saturday, May 4, will begin with a parade. Lineup will begin at noon along Greenly Street and the parade will begin at 1 p.m., traveling along Maumee Street to the Lenawee County Fair and Event Grounds. 

The festivities will take place at the Merchants Building at the fairgrounds. The entertainment will include three live bands — Los Hermanos Villegas, JR Aldaco and the Midwest Allstars, and La Nueva Onda — and the children’s dance troupe Tropa de Niños Pequeños, led by Rachel Ybarra.

Organizers will be requesting a $10 donation at the door to benefit a scholarship in Chico’s name. The scholarship will be for Hispanic students from Lenawee County who are going into a community service field, and the first award will be made to a student entering college in fall 2025. The hope, his wife said, is to help make sure that “the next generation can follow in his footsteps.”

It’s a fitting tribute to someone who was constantly looking for ways to help other people.

“If something needed to be done or somebody needed help, he was the first one to jump on it,” Teresa Martinez said.

He spent many years working as a paraprofessional in the Adrian school district, where he was also a coach. Working with the student council at Springbrook Middle School, he helped students get that school’s Thanksgiving turkey drive off the ground.

Sometimes his activism extended far beyond Adrian’s borders. A longtime member of the Michigan Army National Guard, he helped box up care packages for service members deployed overseas. He was also involved in protests for the Black Lives Matter movement and Stand with Standing Rock, which aimed to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from being run through the tribal lands of the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota.

Other times, he turned his energy toward helping one person at a time — even something as seemingly small as hearing about a child who wanted a basketball hoop and finding a way to make it happen.

“He was always doing something for the community,” his friend Bobbi DeLaCruz said. “Always.”

His last job prior to his cancer diagnosis was working at L&W Engineering in Blissfield. He was diagnosed in 2020 with lung cancer with a RET rearrangement, something that’s extremely rare and generally found in patients who, like Chico, are younger than the average lung cancer patient and don’t have a history of smoking. 

Once someone is diagnosed with this type of cancer, they usually don’t have much more than a year to live. Chico survived for 18 months. The cancer was pushed into remission twice, but came back aggressively the third time. He died on November 8, 2022.

“He fought to the last,” DeLaCruz said. Not long before he died, he told his friends that he’d gone ahead and gotten the following year’s parade permit so they wouldn’t have to worry about it.

“He fought with everything in him till the day he died,” she said.

Teresa Martinez describes her husband this way: “If I could sum it up in a phrase, he was a walking angel on this earth.”

For Chico’s family and friends, the steps they’re taking to further his legacy will make this year’s Cinco de Mayo particularly special.

“We hope we’re making him proud,” DeLaCruz said.

Cinco de Mayo festival details

• Date and time: Saturday, May 4, with parade starting at noon
• Location: The parade begins on Greenly Street and ends at the Lenawee County Fair and Event Grounds. Festivities will be in the Merchants Building at the fairgrounds.
• Cost: A $10 donation at the door is requested to help start a scholarship honoring Chico Martinez.
• More info: Call Teresa Martinez (517-918-1489) or Bobbi DeLaCruz (517-215-2350) or email [email protected].