News photographers captured pictures of Romero next to the bloodied Kennedy - images that would be seen all over the world. Several men, including Olympic gold medallist Rafer Johnson and Los Angeles Rams football player Roosevelt Grier, jumped on the gunman. During that brief pause, a man ran toward Kennedy and opened fire. Did he remember him from the day before? Romero stuck out his hand and Kennedy stopped to shake it. In the kitchen, Kennedy raced through and waved to kitchen staff. Kennedy walked downstairs and decided to go through a hotel kitchen and meet with reporters waiting on the other side. After his victory speech, Huerta tried to usher Kennedy to another room where mariachis were waiting to play for the victorious candidate. In the Embassy Room, Kennedy thanked supporters, including United Farm Worker co-founder Dolores Huerta. Kennedy won on the strength of Mexican-American and Black voters. In some East Los Angeles precincts, polls closed early, not because of irregularities but because everyone had voted. “I had no doubt that I had just met the next president of the United States.” Nothing would stop him from pursuing his dreams, Romero felt. The busboy walked out of Kennedy’s room with complete happiness. “He wasn’t looking at my skin, he wasn’t looking at my age … he was looking at me as an American.” “I will never forget the handshake and the look … looking right at you with those piercing eyes that said, ‘I’m one of you.

Kennedy grabbed Romero’s hand with both hands and said, “thank you.” For a moment, there was silence. “All I remember was that I kept staring at him with my mouth open,” Romero said. Kennedy put down the phone and waved Romero to come forward. He saw Kennedy toward the back - one hand held a curtain and the other gripped a phone. Romero was on duty and came into the room with a group of other busboys. The day before the California primary, Kennedy and his aides ordered room service at the Ambassador Hotel. Instead, Romero got a job at the Ambassador Hotel as a dishwasher and later a busboy. The family lived in poor East Los Angeles and he attended Roosevelt High School the year that Chicano students started organizing walkouts to protest discrimination against Mexican-American students.īut Romero’s stepfather “ruled with an iron hand,” and the teen feared he’d face trouble at home if he took part. “I still have the fire burning inside of me,” Romero told The Associated Press.īorn in the small town of Mazatan, Mexico, Romero moved to Baja California until his family received permission to bring him to the United States as a 10-year-old. Romero grants few interviews but recently made himself available for the Netflix documentary Bobby Kennedy for President, Stor圜orps and others to talk about the hope RFK inspired that remains with him 50 years later. Today, nearly 50 years after that tragic early morning, 67-year-old Romero doesn’t bear the same guilt, thanks in part to the support of RFK fans who say the former busboy was an example of the type of people Kennedy sought to help in making racial equality and civil rights a cornerstone of his life’s work. Romero held a wounded Kennedy as he lay on the ground, struggling to keep the senator’s bleeding head from hitting the cold floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen.įor almost a half-century, Romero blamed himself, wondering if he could have done more, and often asked, what if Kennedy hadn’t stopped for that brief moment to shake my hand? The torment ate at Romero so much he fled Los Angeles and resettled in seclusion in Wyoming. Kennedy on the night of his victory in the California presidential primary on Jwhen a gunman shot the New York senator in the head.

Romero had just stopped to shake the hand of Robert F. LOS ANGELES-Juan Romero was a teenage Mexican immigrant working as a hotel busboy 50 years ago when he was thrust into one of the seminal moments of the decade.

Rfk assassination busboy