Gloria Martinez served as an emergency medical technician for REO Meatwagon in Night City’s Santo Domingo district, navigating the hazards of the impoverished neighborhood while raising her son, David, in a cramped Megabuilding H4 apartment in Arroyo. Determined to shield him from their precarious existence, she secured his admission to Arasaka Academy through tireless negotiation, believing corporate education his only escape route. Her tenacity defined her life: David was born on a speeding ambulance gurney as she stabilized an edgerunner mid-transit. The same patient, his mantis blades freshly reattached, severed David’s umbilical cord—a stark juxtaposition of survival and vulnerability that marked her son’s entrance into Night City’s unforgiving sprawl. To fund David’s tuition, Gloria covertly harvested cyberware from the dead, eventually recovering a military Sandevistan from cyberpsycho James Norris’ corpse in 2075. Before finalizing its sale to mercenary Maine, she rushed to retrieve David after he hacked his neural port at Arasaka Academy. En route home, their car collided with casualties from a firefight between the Animals gang and an Arasaka convoy. Denied aid by Trauma Team’s corporate triage protocols, Gloria endured delayed, subpar care at a back-alley clinic. Chronic overwork compounded her injuries, claiming her life within 24 hours. David preserved her ashes in a plastic urn and inherited her Sandevistan and sun-faded EMT jacket—artifacts he later wielded as a mercenary. Though he abandoned her dream of corporate ascent, her ambitions haunted his choices until his death. Lucy, his partner, interred Gloria’s remains in North Oak Columbarium, etching the niche with a tribute to David’s final act at Arasaka Tower’s summit. Gloria’s existence mirrored Night City’s relentless grind: her sacrifices underscored systemic indifference toward the marginalized, while the tools she scavenged to secure David’s future instead propelled his descent into violence—a cycle of desperation echoing endlessly through the city’s neon corridors.