Edgar Castaneda said he woke up on Easter Sunday to multiple calls from his father. Initially he thought, “I’ll call him back when I wake up,” as he assumed the calls could not have been that urgent.

The nature of his father’s calls were much more urgent than he originally thought.

When he woke up and spoke on the phone with his father, he learned that their food truck, Taqueria El Taco Loco, which he and his father owned and ran, had been destroyed by a fire.

The taco truck’s destruction is believed to have been caused by an arsonist along with a series of fires started on the same morning. Their truck was the second of four fires that were started in the area.

When Edgar arrived at the site of their family’s food truck, he found his father, Luis, already at the scene.

“The first thing I saw was my dad in tears,” he said. “That was hard.”

Edgar said he and his father bought and opened the food truck last summer after losing their jobs due to the pandemic. He said Taqueria El Taco Loco was not only their passion and their dream, but it was an important source of income.

Edgar said they had invested not only money, but their time and effort as well. He felt like they had built up their reputation and their clientele through hard work.

The loss was devastating.

At the beginning of this week, Edgar started a GoFundMe to raise money for their family’s food truck. As of April 8, the page has raised over $17,000 with over 260 donors.

“I really wasn’t expecting that,” Edgar said of the overwhelming support.

Edgar said it will likely be a month or two before he and father reopen for business with a new truck.

“We’re coming back, bigger and better,” Edgar said.