Lakewood mom starts in-home cake bakery to pay for son’s memorial

LAKEWOOD, Colo. (KDVR) — A brand new baker has just set up shop in her Colorado kitchen. Angela Hernandez is baking and selling cakes out of her home to cover the cost of one of the most heartbreaking things ever to happen to her.

Hernandez launched A Glimpse of Heaven Cakes to help cover the cost of a permanent grave marker for her son, Gary Lee Hernandez , who died in 2022 at age 35.

“My son was 34. June 22nd (was) the two-year anniversary (of his death). He struggled with an addiction,” she told FOX31.

She said Gary made the decision to get clean, and he had been doing great. He had been sober for six months. But one Saturday night, he left home and did not come back.

“I knew the place where he was going and had went over there, and I had found him deceased,” she said.

She found him in a tent. Given his struggles, she is pretty sure she knows what happened.

“I touched his body and turned him over and saw that he was gone. So I started to scream and holler and cry out for help, for someone to help me,” she said.

Like any mom, she didn’t know what to do. It took a long time to figure it out. And then she started baking.

“So that’s how the whole cake business came about,” she said.

‘I wanted to turn this traumatic event into an inspiration for him’

Hernandez and her family didn’t have enough money to pay for the entirety of Gary’s final expenses, like the grave marker, which cost about $7,000.

“And so I decided to bake cakes to come up with that,” she said.

One cake led to another and another, and pretty soon, an in-home bakery was born.

“I wanted to turn this traumatic event into an inspiration for him,” Hernandez said.

She’s not there yet, but each cake is helping raise money for that grave marker.

“He always told me that he saw me doing big things. Tragedy can bring out the best in you. If you allow it,” she said.

To order a cake from A Glimpse of Heaven, visit Angela’s Facebook page .

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