For the last 18 years, Hector Sanyustiz has lived the anonymous life of a Mariel refugee struggling to adapt to life in America, find well-paying work, raise a son.

But there was a moment in Sanyustiz's life that was anything but ordinary. His actions sent three countries into chaos, forever changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, and rocked South Florida.

Sanyustiz, who is recuperating from open-heart surgery in his sister's Opa-locka home, was the man who in 1980 plowed a bus into the grounds of the Peruvian embassy in Havana under a barrage of gunfire from Cuban guards.

His dramatic bid for freedom ignited the diplomatic havoc that led to 10,000 Cubans flooding the embassy in a weekend and sparked the Mariel boatlift, which brought 125,000 refugees to South Florida in three months.

Until now, Sanyustiz's whereabouts remained a mystery.

``I didn't want to tell anyone who I was or talk about what I did,'' said Sanyustiz, 49. ``I'm not someone who goes around proclaiming that I'm a hero.''

Sanyustiz agreed to tell The Herald his story because he believes enough time has passed for the Cuban government not to take more reprisals against the family he left behind in Cuba. A stepson who was with him on the bus stayed behind and served three years in prison.

``I don't want to die without telling my story,'' Sanyustiz said. Unemployed, in frail health and short of money, he's hoping a serious filmmaker will want to buy the rights to his story and put his life on film.

The Herald was able to verify Sanyustiz's identity through Florida state records, federal documents, Cuban and U.S. newspaper accounts of the events of 1980, Sanyustiz's own personal documents, and interviews with relatives and friends.

To many who remember ``the Havana 10,000,'' as the Peruvian embassy refugees became known, the revelation that Sanyustiz made it to the United States in the Mariel boatlift and has lived in this country all these years comes as a surprise.

``It's the only Mariel story that hasn't been told,'' said Wilfredo Allen, a Miami lawyer who helped resettle refugees during Mariel. ``This guy is like the father of Mariel.''

Whereabouts a surprise

Many believed that Sanyustiz and five others on the bus remained in Cuba, living under Peru's diplomatic protection to avoid imprisonment.

``We never knew what happened to him. We believed they had never been allowed to leave Cuba,'' said Siro del Castillo, a longtime refugee advocate. ``I find it incredible that this guy would be here and we wouldn't know it.''

The story of how Sanyustiz made it to the United States is as spectacular as the events of Tuesday, April 1, 1980.

The backdrop: It was nearly impossible to get a visa to leave Cuba. Cubans had but two options -- attempting a dangerous crossing from heavily guarded coasts, or seeking asylum at a friendly embassy under an agreement between Latin American countries.

An unemployed 31-year-old Havana bus driver, Sanyustiz watched the activity around the embassies for nearly a year. He decided the Peruvian embassy was the most accessible.

He hatched the plan to crash the gates with three other friends -- Radames Gomez; Francisco Diaz Molina, bus driver of Route 79, which passed by the Peruvian embassy on Fifth Avenue; and Maria Antonia Martinez, in whose house the three men secretly met.

They almost didn't get the chance.

Picture of survival

On March 28, Sanyustiz was involved in an accident that could have killed him.

After dropping off his wife at the pizzeria where she worked, Sanyustiz was sitting on his parked motorcycle when a bus came up behind him, crashed into him and sent him hurling under a parked semi-truck.

``I was sitting right there and saw the whole thing,'' said friend Luis J. Hernandez, who now lives in Hollywood. ``People were screaming, `Se revento, se revento.' (It crushed him.) But Hector just got up and said, `I'm fine.' ''

Photographers on the scene took Sanyustiz's picture as he stood by his motorcycle without a scratch. The Cuban tabloid Verde Olivo  ran it, remarking on his miraculous survival.

The same picture would appear again days later -- the miracle man turned into a villain.

On the afternoon of April 1, Sanyustiz drove Diaz Molina's bus No. 5054, pretending to be an apprentice ``to get people used to seeing me there'' and to get practice maneuvering the new vehicle.

``Raulito had said, `I contribute the bus, but I'm not driving it,' '' Sanyustiz said.

Using deception

Late in the afternoon, Diaz Molina radioed his bosses. He told them one of his tires was dangerously flat and he was returning for repairs. He had lied.

Instead, he let off the passengers and stopped to pick up four people -- Gomez; Martinez and her 12-year-old son, Lazaro Vega; and Sanyustiz's 18-year-old stepson, Arturo Quevedo.

Before driving off, Diaz Molina reached for a medallion of Our Lady of Charity. He asked everyone to pray to Cuba's patron saint for protection.

One by one, they kissed the golden image.

About five miles from the Peruvian embassy, Diaz Molina turned the steering wheel over to Sanyustiz. Gomez sat behind Sanyustiz, Diaz Molina on the stairs. Everyone else took cover on the floor.

As they approached the embassy, Sanyustiz made a sharp turn and crashed into a fence. But he had turned too soon; it was not the entrance. When he realized the mistake, Sanyustiz backed off, drove a few more yards, and plowed the bus through the gates.

Cuban sentries guarding the embassy sprayed the bus with gunfire. Two bullets ripped into Sanyustiz -- one in his left leg, the other in the right buttock. Gomez suffered superficial wounds in the head and back.

A bullet killed one of the guards, a 27-year-old Interior Ministry policeman. The Cuban government blamed the hijackers. The Peruvians said one guard accidentally shot the other.

Diplomatic safety

But once inside embassy gates, the Cubans were in Peruvian territory and free from arrest.

The Peruvians rushed Sanyustiz and Gomez to Havana's Carlos J. Finlay Military Hospital to be treated for their wounds. The four others remained in the embassy as relations between the two countries deteriorated. Cuba wanted the gate-crashers handed over for prosecution. The Peruvians refused.

Angry, Cuba removed its guards from the Peruvian embassy on Good Friday. When word spread through Havana, people started flocking to the embassy. By Saturday, the asylum-seekers had grown to more than 300. By nightfall, it was thousands. On Easter Sunday, more than 10,000 people were jammed into the grounds, clamoring for political asylum.

As pressure mounted, Cuba answered by announcing the opening of the port of Mariel to those wishing to leave. In Miami, Cubans responded by staging massive demonstrations in support of the asylum-seekers, chartering every boat available and setting out to pick up relatives.

Throughout Havana, mobs that supported the government were throwing stones and eggs and yelling epithets -- ``escoria'' (scum) -- at those who wanted to leave. The tabloid Verde Olivo  blared in bold headlines, referring to Sanyustiz and the others on the bus: ``Let them all leave, but not them! They will never leave!''

Below the picture of Sanyustiz and his motorcycle, the caption read: ``He won't be saved from this one.''

Mobs also were posted outside Sanyustiz's hospital window, clamoring ``Paredon! Paredon!'' (To the wall!) for Sanyustiz to be put before a firing squad. ``I thought for sure I was going to die, or at least go to prison for a very long time,'' Sanyustiz recalled.

A surprise offer

To his surprise, representatives of the Cuban and Peruvian governments made him an offer: Leave quietly on the boatlift.

Sanyustiz thought it was a trick to remove his diplomatic protection. He repeatedly declined the offer -- until his Peruvian escort convinced him it was for real. Sanyustiz told them he'd leave only if his wife, Lucia, and their 5-year-old son, Hector Jr., could go.

The Cuban official negotiating with him and the Peruvian agreed, Sanyustiz said, but posed one condition: Sanyustiz could not tell anyone who he was.

On the stormy night of May 16, Sanyustiz and his family were taken to the Port of Mariel and put on the Key West-bound shrimper Gulf Star. But Lucia's son Arturo Quevedo was arrested as he tried to leave the embassy, pretending to be just another Mariel-bound refugee.

``To this day,'' Hector Sanyustiz said, ``I don't know why I'm here, why they let me leave.''

Sanyustiz didn't find it difficult to avoid the limelight in a South Florida overwhelmed with the mammoth task of screening and resettling, all at once, thousands of Cuban refugees, some of them criminals and mental patients sent by Cuba.

He revealed his identity only to the FBI, which advised him to keep a low profile, Sanyustiz said.

Life in Miami Beach

At first, the family went to live among other Mariel refugees in Miami Beach hotels paid by resettlement organizations. Sanyustiz and his wife were able to find maintenance work.

But Sanyustiz says his wounds, still fresh and painful, kept him from performing some tasks. While cleaning stairs in a hotel, he fell down and the broom he was carrying pierced his leg wound, reopening it. The hotel's owner gave him $800, close to a month's pay, and let him go.

With the money, Sanyustiz bought a 1972 Oldsmobile and set out to find another job.

He and his wife had heard of a place in Hialeah that bought aluminum cans, so they spent several nights collecting cans all over Miami Beach.

Then they drove to Hialeah -- only to discover their hard work paid only $8.

Their old clunker had consumed $10 in gasoline.

``That was just too much for us,'' Sanyustiz said, laughing at the memory. ``We have stumbled so much in this country.''

Resettlement workers sent him to Chicago, then Houston, to try his luck. But the promise of well-paying jobs evaporated.

Jobs found in Orlando

The family's luck changed when they moved to the booming Orlando area, where the couple found steady work, she in a plant nursery, he driving a construction truck. By 1987, they had saved enough money for a down payment on a $52,000 house in Winter Garden. They have lived there for the last 12 years, in a place Lucia Sanyustiz describes as ``the kind of neighborhood where you can leave your doors open.''

Two months ago, Hector Sanyustiz came to Miami to stay with his twin sister and search for work. But he suffered a heart attack. Rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, he underwent bypass surgery to repair three clogged arteries.

Despite the hardships, Sanyustiz says he has no regrets.

``Of course it was worth it,'' he said. ``I found peace. All I ever wanted was to live in peace, to work and earn a salary that would allow me to live decently. That wasn't possible in Cuba. When you least expected it, someone was knocking on your door and telling you it was your turn to watch over the neighborhood, or that it was time to do `volunteer work.'

``I was tired of the oppression, of being a nonperson,'' Sanyustiz said. ``Everyone has the right to live as a human being.''

Herald staff writer Fabiola Santiago can be reached by e-mail at fsantiago@herald.com