Nationals’ Ramos gives 13-year-old friend the gift of love

Ryan Zimmerman could tell. From Wilson Ramos‘ tone when he asked to speak with the Washington Nationals’ third baseman, the way he retrieved his phone to find the text message that said, in English, exactly what Ramos wanted to get across that day in spring training. This was important.

This was for Vicky.

Victoria Cabrera, the 13-year-old ray of light Ramos has come to consider a little sister. The slight, bespectacled, brunette girl whose ever-present smile does well to hide the turmoil going on inside her chest. It’s a cruel reality that Vicky, a girl with so much love to give, has a leaky heart.

Crueler, still, that when doctors at Miami Children’s Hospital examined her a few months after her first heart surgery, done in Venezuela in 2010, what they found was so startling they used the word “butcher” to describe her previous surgeon.

“She’s a really, really good little girl,” Ramos said. “She’s young, and she just wants to live life.”

Enlarge Photo

Vicky Cabrera after her second heart surgery on March 9, 2011. (Provided ... more >

Unfortunately for Vicky, living life is an expensive proposition.

‘They saved her’

Vicky was 11 when doctors in Venezuela found that she was suffering from a congenital heart defect known as subaortic stenosis, a narrowing of the left ventricle just below the aortic valve that tightened a pathway essential in the delivery of blood to the aorta. Surgery, doctors in Venezuela said, would fix it. One month later, it was clear it did not.

A second procedure, a mitral valve replacement, was done at Miami Children’s Hospital in March 2011 to help her reach the 13th birthday that has now come and gone. At the time, Dr. Richard Zakheim found her aortic valve also not functioning properly, but the mitral valve demanded more attention. The cost, without the U.S. medical insurance they lack as foreigners, was more than $300,000. They had no choice.

“Here in Venezuela, they told me she has no hope,” said Marfa Mata, Vicky’s mother and a close family friend of Ramos. “Many people can ask why I decided to have the surgery in the U.S. with the high cost. I am scared. She never had trouble with her valves before the first surgery here in Venezuela. That’s why I had the second one in the U.S. They saved her.”

Venezuelan major leaguers Miguel Cabrera, Pablo Sandoval and Carlos Gonzalez joined Ramos in helping Mata to pay down the first astronomical bill. But Mata, who works as a journalist in Venezuela and serves as Ramos‘ PR liaison, still owed a significant amount when Vicky began exhibiting signs that something, again, was wrong. Out with Ramos and his family in D.C. in September, Vicky almost fainted inside a Target store. Ramos just held her in his arms.

Families, lives intertwined

Mata helped Ramos learn English when he was a teenager in the Minnesota Twins minor league system. She sent him books and tapes to foster his grasp on the language, and she travels with Vicky to the U.S. often, sometimes with Ramos‘ family, to help with the language barrier. Ramos often jokes that Mata’s son, Enrique Jose, 4, is like his own. When Vicky threw out the first pitch on Opening Day for the Venezuelan league’s Tigres de Aragua last October, Ramos kept his promise to her that he’d be there to catch it.

Their families, their lives are intertwined.

As Ramos discusses his relationship with Vicky, he uses words like “smart,” and “happy. She’s laughing all the time.”

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