Carlos Alberto Estrada

On Thursday, September 1, 2022, Carlos Alberto Estrada, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, brother, compadre, nino, friend, and coach passed away. He was 64 years old. Carlos was born December 8, 1957, in Oxnard, California to the late Bernard Estrada and Olga Meakes. He graduated from Los Amigos High School in 1976 and went on to play football for Santa Ana College. In his senior year, he was elected captain of the defense as the center and popular at the time was a commercial about canned tuna fish, Charlie Tuna. When his teammates gave him the nickname, Tuna, it stuck. In 1987, he married the love of his life, Deborah Solis Perez, with whom they had four children. He helped with the potty training, taught them to read with expression, not to bite each other, fold towels and shirts properly, swing a bat and throw a ball, love sports, laugh, and enjoy food and family. He had many careers, he worked at Steelcase for 14 years, became a mortgage loan officer for 8 years, then a maintenance technician for 10 years in the Inland Empire and Orange Counties.

He spent many years coaching baseball, basketball, football, and softball at every level. He was a passionate, knowledgeable, and charismatic coach. He was known for his creative ways of motivating his players from taking the kids to get slushies at 7/11, Krispy Kreme donuts, pizza parties, and Knott’s Berry Farm tickets. If he wasn’t volunteering on the field he was coaching from the stands.

His greatest source of joy was his family and friends. He was a generous, loving, and committed husband. He enjoyed gifting his wife with flowers for Valentine’s Day, her birthday, Mother’s Day, their anniversaries, and “just because.” He loved taking her to dinner, going to the movies and concerts together, taking cross-country road trips, driving to Mexico to enjoy lobster and margaritas, FaceTiming the grandkids, and reading the Bible together. He loved his children and would constantly remind them of this in the form of a question. When he would ask, “Do you know I love you?” His children were confident in his love for them. Every year he would buy his daughters a Sees candy heart for Valentine's Day, he was their Valentine. He communicated to his children that the most important thing was to trust God. Carlos also had a deep love for his grandkids. He cherished the time he had to spend with them. He took joy in buying them the biggest and best gifts every year for their birthdays and Christmas.

He loved his brothers and enjoyed spending time with them, their wives, and his nieces and nephews. They would often get together to watch football and boxing matches, barbecues, and family parties. When you saw them together there were always huge smiles on their faces, lots of laughs, and funny stories about their childhood that would get everyone laughing hysterically.

Because of Carlos’ outgoing personality, he made friends everywhere he went. This meant that when he went out he would usually run into someone he knew. Others noticed how he was so well known in the city and joked that he should run for mayor in Moreno Valley.

His hobbies included watching football, golf, and baseball. He enjoyed creating and joining Fantasy Football leagues with family and friends. His favorite sports teams were the Angels, the 49ers, and UCLA. You could usually find him watching movies; some of his favorites were Back to the Future and Star Wars. He would sign his kids out of school early so they could watch the latest Star Wars movie during the matinee show times. He loved listening to music. You would often wake up hearing music that he was playing loudly on his stereo speaker. He enjoyed trying new restaurants. He loved dessert. His favorites were brownies and banana cream pie, and he enjoyed making strawberry pie. He was an avid reader of fiction novels and the Bible.

Carlos was best known for his generosity, love for his family, talking to everyone he came across like he had known them forever, his sense of humor, passionate coaching, faith in God, and his perseverance and positive attitude when his health was declining.

Months before his passing he communicated to his family that he wanted to be with the Lord. He knew that to be away from the body was to be at home with the Lord. He trusted God with his health and knew his life was in God's good hands. Where he is now—really is, as he used to say, “unbelievable.” He would often tell his family that when he died he wanted them to have a party, play Madonna’s song “Holiday,” and celebrate his life.

Left to cherish his memory are his wife, Deborah, five children, Vanessa, Monique, Danielle, Charlie, and Heather, eighteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The funeral will be held on Saturday, December 10, 2022, at 10 a.m. at Calvary Chapel in Moreno Valley, Ca.