Elizabeth Guaracao, co-owner of Al Día and community advocate, has died at 67

Elizabeth Guaracao, 67, of Meadowbrook, co-owner and chief operating officer of Al Día News Media, volunteer, and tireless community advocate, died Monday, April 10, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after a heart attack.

Born in Puerto Wilches, Colombia, Mrs. Guaracao, her husband, Hernán, and daughter Gabriela immigrated to the United States in 1988 and arrived in Philadelphia a few years later. She and her husband started Al Día News in 1992 and built the onetime homemade newsletter into the region’s longest-running and largest bilingual English-Spanish news source.

However, to recognize her only as Al Día’s co-owner and COO would omit much of the intrinsic energy, resourcefulness, generosity, and empathy she poured into Al Día and its staff and supporters. For nearly three decades, she served as general office manager, sold advertising, developed business connections, enhanced employee relations, created charitable funding programs, and generally buttressed her husband’s efforts as they molded the media company into a model of success.

“She laughed with us, cried, celebrated, nurtured, and fed us on more than a few occasions,” staff writer Nigel Thompson said in a tribute published by Al Día. “Elizabeth was the human side of this whole operation.”

Mrs. Guaracao helped establish the Al Día Education Foundation in 2010, and Luis Gilberto Murillo, Colombian ambassador to the United States, praised her and her husband in 2022 at Al Día’s annual Archetypes Gala for their philanthropy and community service.

She worked for years with nonprofits and community groups in both Colombia and Philadelphia, hosted dinners at nursing homes, led toy drives for the Salvation Army, and was active at the Amparo De La Niñez children’s club in North Philadelphia. “She did everything,” said her daughter Gabriela.

Over the years, Mrs. Guaracao shared her sadness at leaving Colombia and the life she had created there during a time of social and political instability. But she used an unwavering optimism, her family said, to continually move forward. “She always had a vision and a faith and trust that she was where she was meant to be,” said her daughter Anna.

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Elizabeth Salcedo was born June 23, 1955, and grew up in Bucaramanga, Colombia. She met and married Hernán Guaracao in Colombia when she was an executive assistant to a politician and he was a journalist on the politics beat. “She was one of his sources,” her daughter Gabriela said.

They had daughters Gabriela and Anna, and lived in Iowa, Philadelphia, Jenkintown, and Meadowbrook after leaving Colombia. At first, she and Gabriela spent time in a small apartment in Olney to be near family in Philadelphia while her husband earned a master’s degree at the University of Iowa in 1991.

For a while, she slept with Gabriela on the floor because they couldn’t afford furniture and a bed, and she took jobs six days a week to make ends meet. Later, she worked as an executive assistant to a local businessman.

“I knew I had to have a tenacious spirit to get ahead,” she told her daughter Anna in a recent online interview. “Those were very difficult times.”

She took English classes at night at La Salle University and cared for Gabriela and later Anna constantly. She said her faith in God, gratitude for the opportunity to improve, and single-minded persistence kept her going when times were tough.

“I hope that what I have done and what I have provided to my daughters will be a reminder to never give up,” she said.

Mrs. Guaracao valued education and self-sufficiency. She doted on her dogs, Rosa and August, eschewed attention to herself, and checked in with family and friends, especially her daughters, practically every day. “She was a source of comfort,” her daughter Anna said.

She was a member of Huntingdon Valley Presbyterian Church and a greeter at First Presbyterian Church of Olney. She enjoyed opera, gospel music, and Colombian folk music.

She laughed a lot, danced everywhere, and raised her soprano voice in song at church and around the house. “She loved it when we were all together,” her daughter Gabriela said.

Her husband said Mrs. Guaracao was “quiet, humble but determined and tenacious.” Her family and Al Día were her passions, he said, and “she remained furiously true to them … until the last minute of her life.”

“Her legacy,” her daughters said, “is of love, faith, and perseverance.”

In addition to her husband and daughters, Mrs. Guaracao is survived by four brothers, four sisters, and other relatives.

Visitation with the family is to be at 11 a.m., Thursday, April 20, at First Presbyterian Church, 201 S. 21st St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19103. A funeral service is to follow at noon.

Donations in her name may be made to La Puerta Abierta, Box 534, Narberth, Pa. 19072, and Mighty Writers, Development Director, 12 E. Church Lane, Philadelphia, Pa. 19144.