In Chester, robbers kill Samaritan 'everybody loved'

Maureen Beail-Farkas was so nervous on her first date with her husband, Abe Farkas, that she broke her drinking glass.

For the rest of the meal, and for much of the rest of their lives to come, they shared one glass.

On Friday, the lives symbolized by that glass were shattered when Abe, a former San Diego cop and Peace Corps volunteer, was killed while operating his school-bus-turned-roving-supermarket on the streets of Chester.

For 15 years, Abe provided food and necessities to the people of Chester, a city without a grocery store. He knew that the territory was dangerous but he also knew the need for the simple items, like toilet paper and detergent, was desperate.

"He'd say, 'Everybody has a mother, a sister or daughter, and they'll help look out for me. They need this stuff,' " Beail-Farkas recalled. "Most people were that way. But, obviously, somebody wasn't."

Farkas, 56, of Woolwich Township N.J., was shot and killed on his bus during an apparent robbery shortly after 7 p.m. Friday on West 5th Street near Fulton Place. Police had not arrested or identified a suspect as of last night.

A native of Czechoslovakia, Farkas moved to the United States at the age of 16 and joined the Navy at age 18, serving two tours of duty in Vietnam.

He married Maureen Beail-Farkas when the couple was 20, and the pair became San Diego police officers before they were accepted to serve with the Peace Corps in Chile.

Upon their return to the states, Farkas bought a 7-Eleven store in Glenolden, Delaware County, before selling the store and buying the grocery bus to serve Chester.

"He just always had the Peace Corps mentality," Beail-Farkas, a nurse, said. "He was always going to save everybody."

Farkas thought that he'd run the bus as a roving deli and fruit market but people kept asking about the basic necessities, so he began to provide those as well.

"If you needed something he didn't have he'd make a list and bring it for you," Beail-Farkas said.

At the front of his bus, above the windshield, Farkas kept photographs of his family, his customers and their children. Each time a regular customer brought a new school picture of their child, he'd place it atop the old one, Beail-Farkas said.

"Some of them have 18 years worth of layers," she said. "The people knew him and everybody loved him."

That's why on Saturday, Beail-Farkas and the couple's second eldest child, Rheena, drove to Chester and gave away the supplies that Farkas had stockpiled for his bus.

"My daughter wasn't sure she wanted to do that but we got over there and all these people were crying and hugging and she was just blown away," Beail-Farkas said. "She felt angry before that, but after seeing how much they loved him she understood why Chester was so important to him."

Farkas had been robbed twice before in Chester and, one time, the community took vigilante justice on the perpetrators, Beail-Farkas said. She worries that the same thing will happen again.

"When they did this memorial service [Saturday], I was hugging people and they'd say, 'Don't worry, we take of our own,' " she said. "I don't know if that comforts me or scares me."

Beail-Farkas said that the bus was the only thing she ever fought about with her husband, but something within him wouldn't allow him to give it up.

"I said, 'Abe, if you put together all the hours, you'd make more money doing nothing,' " she said. "But he really felt he was doing a service more than anything else.

"He wasn't a religious person but he lived his religion."

Beail-Farkas said that, after 36 years of marriage, her husband still held her hand whenever they walked together. She still regrets that she was not able to say goodbye the night that he died."I really resented the system because I couldn't go hug him and tell him it would be alright," she said. "All I wanted to do was touch him and hold him and tell him that we're together.

"But how can I feel bad when I had 36 years of absolute love?" she said. "I had for 36 years what some people don't have for a day. How can I feel cheated when I had all of that?"

Farkas leaves behind four children: Josh, 29, Rheena, 28, Nate, 23 and Laurie, 22.

A viewing for Farkas will be held at Daley Life Celebration Studio, in Swedesboro, from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday. Those who plan to attend are urged to come in their street clothes, or "whatever they would have worn to get on the bus," Beail-Farkas said.

Farkas will be dressed in his usual attire - black jeans, sneakers, an Obama t-shirt, a Penn State sweatshirt and a cap.

"It sounds stupid, but I thought he was perfect," Beail-Farkas said. "I always used to pray I would die first.

"I still wish that had been the case." *