By REBECCA HARSHBARGER, GINGER ADAMS OTIS and DAVID CONTI
Last Updated: 11:24 AM, July 11, 2010
First, Juan Lazaro Jr. learned his father had a secret Russian name and was living a lie -- and that his mom was in cahoots.
Then the moles of Yonkers copped a plea to avoid prison for espionage and left the 17-year-old piano virtuoso behind.
Making matters worse, Lazaro Jr. and his 38-year-old brother, Waldo Mariscal, are so broke that they had to turn to the Red Cross for help in their bid to stay in New York, said their mother's lawyer, Carlos Moreno.
"They have no money," said Lazaro Jr.'s aunt, Raquel Pelaez Ocampo Almeida.
In a matter of just two weeks -- the time it took for his parents' deep-cover mission to get blown, earning them the boot -- the all-American teen's promising future has become scrambled and chaotic.
"I feel bad for the son. He got tangled up in the sins of others," said Kevin Virgilio, 26, who works at Mannes College The New School for Music, where Lazaro Jr. studies.
The boy's mom, former El Diario La Prensa journalist Vicky Pelaez, appears destined for her native Peru following her deportation last week to Russia.
She and her husband, Juan Lazaro Sr., whose real name is Mikhail Vasenkov, are staying in an apartment paid for by the Russian government, Moreno said yesterday. But Pelaez is having a lot of trouble adjusting, particularly because she doesn't speak Russian, the lawyer added.
Moreno said his client, the only non-Russian member of the ring, may move to Brazil after Peru, and that Juan Jr. would stay in New York under the care of his older half-brother.
Yet Mariscal says it's up to Juan Jr. and his parents, and he's not sure what they'll do.
In any case, they'll have to decide soon: the government is taking their Yonkers home.
Juan Jr.'s elite piano teachers are in New York, and friends say he wants to concentrate on his craft.
"He was good, talented and he worked hard, and he had 'it', too," said former Mannes classmate Lucas Spangher, of Long Island. "I think he was on track to getting that luck that can make a career."
Despite the past two weeks, which his aunt Raquel described as a "nightmare," Juan Jr. says he's OK.
"I'm doing perfectly fine," he told NY1, cracking a faint smile. "We have each other, we have a lot of people and we're going to do fine."
That was Friday, a day after the international spy swap ended the cloak-and-dagger drama that began when the FBI nabbed the boy's parents and eight others leading double lives.
Pelaez, 54, passed invisible-ink messages for her husband and picked up a bag of cash from a Russian contact. Her 66-year-old spouse called himself Juan Lazaro Sr., claimed to be from Uruguay, and once worked as a CUNY prof.
Lazaro Jr. would talk about sports and basketball; he was a LeBron James fan, Virgilio said.
"I thought spies were cool, not homely, politely mannered dads," Virgilio said.
Lazaro Sr. apparently had the whole family fooled.
When Pelaez met up with her husband in court before their guilty pleas, she asked him: "What's your name? What's your real name?" her lawyer recounted.
Additional reporting by Douglas Montero
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