This is part of a Yahoo News series honoring some of the American lives lost to COVID-19. Their stories are told by family and friends, who were left to deal with their often sudden and painful deaths.
Alicia Arias, 79, of Buena Park, Calif., died on Jan. 13, 2021, after becoming ill with COVID-19. She is among the more than 571,000 Americans who have succumbed to the disease since the first known fatality in the United States in early 2020.
Her daughter, Yolanda Arias, told Yahoo News that people gravitated to her mother because she was loving and accepting of others. “She loved just making everybody happy. Making everybody happy made