TAMPA — Donna Mohamed was soft-spoken, her friends and family say, but her presence and love were always felt.
She was born in the small village of Fishing Pond in Trinidad and Tobago. It was there she’d meet her future husband, Michael Mohamed, and where her daughter Samantha Moss was born. The three moved to the United States together in 1987.
“She wouldn’t always speak to me, but I’d tell everyone, that was going to be my wife someday,” Michael Mohamed recalled of when they were young. “I’d tell every other man in the streets, ‘stay away.’ She was so beautiful and kind, even way back then. I knew I wanted to marry her someday.”
Mohamed said his wife’s big heart prompted her to work at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa. She worked there for 24 years in the dietary department and didn’t have plans to retire anytime soon.
Her life would be cut short on Nov. 12, however.
Mohamed, 60, was struck by a hit-and-run driver that morning as she crossed Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard on her way to work. The crash happened just before 7 a.m., Tampa police said, between N Habana Avenue and N MacDill Avenue.
Police did not say what type of car hit her. Family and friends said at her memorial service, however, that she was struck just moments after stepping off a Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority bus.
Two women, Jenna Jordan and Stephany Spicola, said they witnessed the crash. At Mohamed’s memorial service, held Nov. 24 at the Florida Mortuary on Nebraska Avenue, the women said she fought until her last breath.
“She fought so hard,” Spicola said. “But in the end, we could see she was at peace.”
Mohamed’s death brought the dietary department of St. Joseph’s to an emotional halt, her co-workers said. One by one, eight workers spoke at her service.
One worker said Mohamed consoled her when she discovered she had breast cancer. Another said he never knew her to miss a single day of work and that co-workers jokingly called her “Cousin Donna.”
“She radiated a joy that people picked up on,” one co-worker said. “She had an impact on people beyond what she realized.”
Mohamed’s sister-in-law, Wendy DeCoteau, wiped away tears as she told stories of life with Mohamed in the Caribbean.
“Donna was one of the people in the world where, if you knew her, you were going to love her,” said DeCoteau. “And now you’d miss her. Especially because this wasn’t supposed to happen. I know she’s in a better place now but I’m just breaking up over how it happened.”