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 From
the poor neighborhoods of Santa Barbara, Angel Ramirez is a thug at the
head of a gang of violent and ruthless Latinos like him.
He
makes his first appearance in the show in fall of 1985, after having
physically attacked young Danny Andrade. Following his trail to the
dispensary where this latter is treated, Angel ransacks the place, looking
for drugs to steal. Danny puts on his track the former policeman Cruz
Castillo who, after a fight with Angel, manages to reason his gang and
makes him expelled of it.
Willing
for revenge against Cruz, Angel makes him come to the clinic where he
takes him as hostage, along with nurse Mary DuVall and Mason Capwell. He
hurts Mason, but is ultimately controlled by Cruz and thrown in jail.
Early
in 1986, Angel makes amend by agreeing to testify against some dangerous
gangsters to see his prison sentence reduced. With the help of Julia
Wainwright and Pearl Bradford, Angel is hidden in a hotel. Cruz makes
believe to his death after a shooting, so he can testify without
interference. On leaving prison, Angel is the first in Santa Barbara to
discover that Gina DeMott Capwell, whom everyone believes she is dead
after a fall in the Capwell boathouse, is indeed still alive. He agrees to
hide her in his apartment, where comes to meet them regularly Hayley
Benson, Gina's niece.
Angel
wins all the more Gina's interest when he
becomes her official dealer : indeed he starts to sell her some drug that
she slips without her knowledge among her enemy
Santana Andrade's
allergy drugs. Suspected by the police, Gina asks Angel
to lie by telling that it is the district attorney Keith Timmons who buys
drugs to him and not her.
Angel
resumes then his activities in drug deal and finds again among his victims
Danny Andrade, whom he beats black and blue at the end of 1986 for not
having paid his debts. This outbirst of violence puts Cruz in his
footsteps and Angel is arrested again.
In
fall of 1987, Angel's
road crosses Cruz's again when this latter is unjustly imprisoned for
Elena Nikolas's murder. Angel sees the opportunity to definitely take his
revenge against Cruz and, after several threats, he attempts to make him
stabed in the court, in vain.
We
will hear one last time talking about Angel, in March 1989. Searching for
his kidnapped baby, Cruz discovers that one of his former teammates, the
young Ramon Fonseca, has actually conned him and participated in the
misdeed. He then understands what motivated him when discovering that
Ramon is Angel's brother, to whom he had sworn to avenge the imprisonment.
A final wink to a dangerous and recurring character of the world of Santa
Barbara, too often forgotten...
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