Stonewall veteran and trans activist Victoria Cruz has passed away. She died aged 79 on Thursday, June 25, following a battle with liver cancer.

Victoria Cruz was born in Guánico, Puerto Rico, as one of 11 children, and moved to Red Hook, Brooklyn, with her family when she was young. After graduating from high school, she began her transition, sourcing hormones from a doctor on 28th Street in Manhattan.

Cruz was among those present at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, the night of the historic uprising that helped spark the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. She was outside with her boyfriend Frankie, one of the bar’s bouncers, when the violence escalated. He told her to go home, and she returned in the morning to find the place in ruins and a standoff underway.

According to The New York Times, she grabbed a beer sign and other memorabilia and also took home the bar’s dog, Rusty. Although less involved in the riots in comparison to figures like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, she became a deeply respected and beloved trans elder within the community in the following decades.

She spent 17 years working with the New York City Anti-Violence Project, supporting LGBTQ+ and HIV-affected survivors. As reported by The New York Times, members of the community would affectionately ask for “Miss Vicky”, trusting her above anyone else to offer empathy and support.

 

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In 2012, she received the National Crime Victims’ Service Award from the Department of Justice for her work. In an interview in 2022, she reflected on her commitment to helping others, saying, “If you have the empathy to help out people, that’s half the ordeal. Just having the empathy and letting them know that you’re there to help them, not to judge them.”

Cruz was also a key contributor to the 2017 documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, which followed her investigation into the activist’s death.

Rest in power, Victoria Cruz.