Andrés Báez
Andrés Báez, known as Andy to Nadia Beckford and close family, was a Dominican American architect and contractor born circa 2003 in Paterson, New Jersey. He later married Nadia and became stepfather to her son, Raffie Cruz. His work included affordable housing and the restoration of older Paterson buildings.
Early Life and Background
Andrés was born circa 2003 into a Dominican immigrant family in Paterson, New Jersey. He was the eldest of several siblings. His parents loved their children and worked multiple jobs with long hours, leaving Andrés to help feed his younger siblings, get them to school, repair what broke, and calm conflicts at home. The steady role others later recognized in him began as a childhood responsibility. He had little opportunity to be the one receiving care and continued to find that difficult to name as an adult.
Career
Andrés began on building sites, moved into design, and became an architect and contractor. He valued homes and buildings meant to serve people for generations more than professional visibility. Over his career, he gravitated toward affordable housing and the restoration of older buildings in Paterson, projects that could serve residents without displacing them. He took pride in knowing the crews he worked with, including their children’s names and what was happening in their families.
Personality
Andrés was even-tempered, warm, and quietly funny. He was accustomed to handling practical problems without drama and remained dependable for his siblings into adulthood. That steadiness did not mean he had no needs of his own. Andrés feared that people valued the things he provided, fixed, and built more than they valued him, and that they might not want him if he could no longer be the person others relied on. His wish to make a home and family of his own was bound up with his long experience of holding up other people’s households.
Cultural Identity and Heritage
Andrés grew up bilingual in English and Spanish in his family’s Dominican Paterson household, part of the same local diaspora community that shaped Nadia’s father, Joaquín “Joaco” Peralta. Merengue, bachata, family food, and gatherings were part of the life he knew there. His shared Dominican heritage with Nadia included a part of her paternal family background that others often overlooked when they treated her as only Jamaican.
Speech and Communication Patterns
Andrés spoke English and Spanish. His voice was low and easy, carrying across a room without strain.
Physical Characteristics
Andrés was tall and solidly built, with broad hands roughened by years of building-site work. Gray appeared in his hair early, and laugh lines settled around his eyes. He carried his size with ease rather than trying to dominate a room.
Relationship to His Body
Andrés was comfortable taking up space and did not feel a need to perform a version of himself for other people. He did not trade on the handsomeness others saw in him to command attention.
Habits, Routines, and Daily Life
Andrés rose before dawn, drank coffee, and divided workdays between building sites and the drafting table. His siblings continued calling when something broke or someone needed help, but as an adult he chose how to take part in those family obligations. He kept up Sunday gatherings, played dominoes with older men, watched baseball in the background, and fixed things around the house. A pot of sancocho on the stove was among his familiar slow-Sunday routines.
Family and Core Relationships
Parents and Siblings
Andrés remained close to the family in which he had been the eldest child and frequent caregiver. His adult contact with his siblings included practical help, Sunday meals, and gatherings he could choose rather than simply endure as an obligation.
Raffie Cruz
Andrés entered Raffie’s life when the boy was older. Raffie was initially wary and already had secure relationships with his father, Ezra Cruz, and stepmother, Nina Cruz. Andrés did not attempt to replace either parent. He earned Raffie’s trust through patient, repeated presence, taught him practical building skills, and later became his stepfather through his marriage to Nadia.
Romantic and Significant Relationships
Nadia Beckford
Main article: Nadia Beckford and Andrés Báez
Andrés and Nadia met by chance outside the music industry later in her life. He did not know of her public career when they met and had no interest in pursuing her fame. His consistent presence allowed Nadia to rest from the watchfulness she had carried through earlier relationships. Nadia, in turn, recognized that Andrés needed care as well as offering it; their marriage gave him a home in which he did not have to earn affection by being useful. They married after 2038, and their shared Dominican heritage formed part of their connection.