He drowned trying to save fellow kayaker

TAMPA -- When jobs were plentiful, Jose Munguia worked seven days a week to support his family. When he was home, he would feed his two children -- a 2-year-old daughter and 7-month-old son --play with them and put them to bed.

"When he came home, I didn't have to do anything," said his girlfriend, Xochil Gonzales, 22.

He also was the type of person to help strangers, no questions asked.

"He would always give the shirt off his back for people," Gonzales said today, crying outside the couple's Tampa apartment. "He was too nice in some ways."

Munguia died Sunday during a break at a construction site when he and a coworker took a kayak onto Moon Lake. The kayak tipped over. Initial reports were that neither man could swim, but Gonzales said Munguia knew how to swim. But fellow workers at the scene told her that his coworker, David Ortiz-Rodriguez, flailed around in the water, not knowing how to swim.

Munguia, who was holding on to the overturned kayak, let go and swam over to help his coworker, who gripped him firmly, taking him below the surface. The bodies of both men were found Monday. 

"It was just instinct. If he saw anyone struggling, he'd be the first one to run out and help them," Gonzales said.

Munguia had been on the job site only about two days, she said. The couple moved from Miami to Tampa three months ago in search of work because of a shortage in construction jobs. Munguia had given her a small ring with overlapping hearts on Valentine's Day, promising to give her a nicer ring later. The two planned to marry later this year and move back to Miami, where they both grew up.

Thirty minutes before the accident, Munguia called her, telling her how tired he was of construction work and their life in Tampa. But he said he wasn't going to stop to take air conditioning classes until she had her degree as a registered nurse. He said he had a surprise: tickets to a concert of one of their favorite bachata bands from the Dominican Republic, playing in Miami in May.

"He was my best friend," Gonzales said. "Even though I'm here, I feel like part of me died with him."

Times staff writer Saundra Amrhein