Grandmother's Recurring Grief As Highland Senior Killed In Crash

GLOUCESTER TOWNSHIP, NJ — Barbara Wence was already coping with the loss of her own daughter. Now she's lost her granddaughter, Gina Alessandro, too.

The Highland Regional High School senior was killed in a car accident earlier this month. Wence helped raise Alessandro after her own daughter – who was Alessandro’s mother — died after a battle with cancer in 2013.

Now she's coping with loss, again, remembering what it was like 7 years ago when her daughter's death happened on what she thought would be worst day of her life. Wence has now lost two people she helped raise.

“I don’t believe it,” Wence, 75, said. “I thought when I lost my daughter, that would be the worst day of my life. Then I lost my granddaughter, and I realized that was really the end of it.”

Alessandro, 18 of Somerdale, was on her way to see her grandmother in Rio Grande on Feb. 8 when her car left the road on the Atlantic City Expressway and struck a tree. Wence had warned Alessandro about driving in the torrential rain and high winds that night, but Alessandro was determined to come see her grandmother. She had just been accepted to Rutgers University and told her grandmother it was the happiest day of her life, Wence said.

“Whenever I texted her, she always got back to me,” Wence said. “I texted her when she didn’t show up, and when she didn’t get back to me, I knew something had happened.”

Wence tracked Alessandro’s cell phone to an area off the Atlantic City Expressway near Hamilton Township. She was pronounced deceased on the scene.

“I can’t believe it,” Wence said. “I still think she’s on an extended vacation.”

Alessandro lived with her father and needed a female role model in her life, Wence said. So Wence decided to have a much bigger role in Alessandro's life after her own daughter died in 2013.

So three times a week, Wence would make the trip from Rio Grande to Somerdale to help her son-in-law raise Alessandro and her four brothers. Wence taught Alessandro how to manage the household.

“She cooked, she did the grocery shopping. She worked hard and got all A’s,” Wence said. “Last year, she went to work because she wanted to buy a car, and she still got straight A’s.”

She played high school basketball and enjoyed dancing. True to her upbringing, she taught little children to dance.

She wanted to continue to apply what she learned about taking care of children as a pediatrician, Wence said. It was a career path Wence pointed her toward, saying it would always exist.

Alessandro was the second youngest in the family, and was very close with her brother Nicholas. Nicholas is 16, and Wence said she was like a mother to him.

“He looks for her all the time,” said Wence, who was planning to spend the day with Nicholas the day she spoke to Patch. “He has to know I’m there for him.”

It was like that when Wence lost her daughter in 2013. She said she had no time to mourn because she knew she would help take care of the children. At the time Geanine Concio-Alessandro died, Nicholas was still too young to get on the bus.

While coping with this loss, she knows she must stay strong. She still has loved ones in her life; her husband is still alive, and her own mother turned 97 just last week.

The community has shown its love for Alessandro. Highland honored her at the wrestling match three days after the accident, Wence said. It is also planning to make a donation in her name, although plans are not finalized or official. More than 800 people turned out for Alessandro’s funeral, Wence said.

“She was the perfect all-American girl,” Alessandro’s cousin Lynn Olsen McAlister said. “She was sweet to everyone. It’s such a shame someone so young lost her life with so much ahead of her.”

“Everyone who knew her loved her,” Wence said. “She was an amazing young lady with a heart of gold.”