This story is one in a series featuring trips down memory lane with longtime Casa Bonita fans and former employees who shared their fondest tales with The Denver Post. The restaurant and entertainment venue in Lakewood is expected to reopen in May.
Not long after Annette Enzaldo started working at the Casa Bonita gift shop in 1974, the year the Lakewood restaurant and entertainment venue opened, she caught the eye of a mariachi band member.
Annette, formerly Schumaker, always admired the musicians as they tuned up their instruments near the gift shop. “When the band would make their grand entrance into Casa Bonita, it made my heart flutter to hear that music,” she said.
One day, a 5-foot-4-inch violin player from the band named Valente Enzaldo approached the 23-year-old Schummaker, who was wearing a white blouse with puffy sleeves and a colorful printed skirt for the gift shop’s uniform, and said hello with a thick Mexican accent.
“I thought, ‘Well here’s my chance to practice my Spanish,’ and I said, ‘¡Hola! Como estas?’” Annette, who studied Spanish all four years of college, said. “And that kept on for probably two or three weeks, and one day I was taking my break, and he joined me.”
The smell of sopapillas, burnt cheese, chlorine wafting from the waterfalls — and love — was in the air.
For a while, the two kept enjoying breaks together, sometimes tucked quietly behind Casa Bonita’s waterfalls or even in the caves for some peace and quiet. Valente, a 27-year-old Puebla, Mexico, native, would practice his English on Annette and she’d practice her Spanish.
“It was the funniest thing because we could hardly understand each other, but I thought he was so handsome with tanned skin and this big head of black hair,” Annette said. “And he was quite intrigued with this blue-eyed, fair, light brown-haired girl that spoke some Spanish. We just kind of pulled together like fireflies in a fire.”
Valente got up the nerve to ask her out for a drink during one of their breaks, and she quickly said yes.
Annette had moved to Denver from Aberdeen, South Dakota, after college because she said she didn’t want to become a farmer’s wife. She first got a job working in a real estate office, but as the youngest one there, she wasn’t making many friends. So when she heard Casa Bonita was opening, she thought the new sparkly restaurant and entertainment venue would be the perfect opportunity to meet other people her age, and she did just that.
After a year and a half of dating, Annette and Valente got engaged and then married in September 1976. The two still worked at Casa Bonita, but Annette moved up from the gift shop to the puppet theater, until 1977. Valente even saw The Jackson 5 band come in for lunch one day while he was working.
But shortly after they got married, Valente got the opportunity to play for Los Compadres mariachi band in Los Angeles, so they headed to the West Coast. The couple ended up having three children, Christopher, Julie and Robert, and they eventually returned to Denver in 1989.
Valente played in a variety of mariachi bands in Denver, even returning to Casa Bonita for a period of time, up until he passed away in May 2015 at the age of 70. Every mariachi band in Denver that he worked in played at his funeral at St. Thomas More. And each year, Annette, her children and five grandchildren have a big enchilada dinner with rice and beans and margaritas on his birthday, May 21, which is also two days before he died.
“His oldest granddaughter is even following in his footsteps with the violin,” Annette said.
As Casa Bonita prepares to reopen for the first time since the pandemic and with a fresh renovation from new owners and “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Annette, now 72, can’t wait to return to the spot where her 40-year love story all started.
She plans to bring her whole family to show off her name on old employee placards, which the restaurant was seen polishing up in a recent sneak peek, as well as the staircase, where Valente and his mariachi band members once took a photo she still has.
“It makes me emotional to think about our time there together,” Annette said through tears. “This was the beginning of my love story and my family. It’s where I met the man of my dreams, who I was with for over 40 years, and it holds a very important place in my heart.”