A Mission family told Action 4 News that they are working to get their grandmother out of jail in a decades old drug case.
Angelita Treviño is in custody with other federal inmates at a jail in Raymondville.
The 69-year-old woman was considered a fugitive in a 1986 drug case from Brownsville until her November arrest.
But Noelani Gonzalez remembers her grandmother as the woman who baked birthday cakes and looked after her 14 grandchildren.
“I never suspected anything,” Gonzalez said. “She was married to my step grandpa for 25 years. No one knew of this. We were all shocked."
It all started back in October 1986 when Angelita’s brother Roberto Treviño-Salinas allegedly asked her to drive a friend to Corpus Christi.
But that car contained a load of heroin, which was intercepted by authorities.
Gonzalez said her grandmother was innocent but took a plea deal under the advice of an attorney hired by Treviño-Salinas.
Family members claim Treviño was supposed to get probation but federal court records show she got sentenced to four years prison instead.
Treviño skipped out on bond moved to the Houston area where she started a new life and never returned to the Rio Grande Valley.
Prosecutors dropped charges against Treviño-Salinas in 2002.
But Gonzalez said nobody in her family has had contact with him and it’s assumed he’s living in Mexico.
After getting arrested near Houston on an unrelated charge, Treviño appeared in Brownsville’s federal court on Tuesday.
She was given 60 days or time served for her bail jumping case but now must start serving the four-year sentence in the drug case.
Gonzalez said she and other family members go to visit her grandmother on weekends but it's hard to see her behind bars.
"It's cold and there's no heater there,” Gonzalez said. “My poor grandma. She has a bone disorder. She can barely walk."
Gonzalez and her family are searching for an attorney who can reopen her original case and get the sentence overturned.
"We're gonna fight until she's out of there for something she never did,” Gonzalez said. “She's innocent. She should have never been convicted. The system failed her. They lied."
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