Late DJ Gio's stolen belongings found, family will sell to fund budding artists: "This is his legacy"
SACRAMENTO - The family of a beloved Sacramento DJ is now reunited with some of his stolen belongings after thieves struck his storage unit, taking nearly everything he left behind.
Giovanni Isidro Razo Pizano, known by many as DJ Gio, was murdered nine months ago in April 2022 outside his Natomas home in an ambush robbery.
His family and loved ones grieve every day, but say the pain of him being stolen from them once again was nearly too much to bear. Anita Razo visits her son Giovanni at least three times a week at his gravesite. She listens to his music, plays his music videos, and remembers the good times.
"This is one of my favorites. Because I was there when he filmed this," said Razo at his grave, as she showed CBS13 a video from when Gio had just started his career.
Her son was a fixture in Sacramento's music scene. He was murdered just hours after finishing a set, doing what he was born to do.
"He was a real performer. And he loved it. That was something he did from the time he was 4 years old," said Razo.
Her heartache deepened last Tuesday, Jan. 3.
It was then that she found Gio's Sacramento storage unit, which held all of his personal belongings, broken into and ransacked.
"I looked inside and said, 'oh my god, no,'" said Razo.
She says more than $80,000 of DJ'ing equipment, designer clothing, shoes, everything that embodied Gio, was gone.
"Not only did somebody come and kill my son, but now after he is dead, they take the only things that we have left of him. So, it was heart-wrenching," she said.
But a call from the police is when things would turn around. Deputies over in El Dorado County were making an arrest in an unrelated burglary when they also found stolen clothing and DJ equipment. They made the connection that they were Gio's. It was then they called the Sacramento Police Department, who let Razo know of the discovery.
"The first thing I asked him, I said, 'Are the turntables there?'" she said.
The tables Gio learned on, when he spun his first track at 11 years old, were part of the few things that were returned to his family.
"I saw the turntables. That's when my heart skipped a beat. And I thought, at least we have that," said Razo.
She will, however, one day part ways with Gio's things again on her own terms.
She plans to sell his equipment and expensive clothing to raise money for the DJ Gio fund, meant to help kids who cannot afford it try their talent on the tracks.
"This is his legacy. This is something he wanted to do, and I'm just carrying on the work he started," said Razo.
Those very turntables that were returned to her, she could barely afford when Gio wanted to learn to DJ as a child.
By selling them, she hopes the next kid interested in turning a dream into a passion knows Gio did it first.
"He always told kids, if I can do it, then you can do it too," said Razo.
In April, to mark the one-year anniversary of his death, Razo and Gio's loved ones will hold an art gallery exhibit showcasing and celebrating his life. At a later time, she plans to host an auction to sell those exhibit items in his memory.
While we know an arrest was made by El Dorado County detectives of a person in the unrelated burglary that lead them to Gio's stolen belongings, CBS13 has not yet learned the name of the person(s) or how many burglaries they could be connected to.
It is unclear if this was a targeted attack on Gio's storage unit by someone who knew what was held there, but Razo says that his was the only one broken into.