Jane Gonzalez, co-founder and CEO of MEDwheels, was honored by friends and family members on March 21, a week before her death at age 66.
Luis Vasquez
Jane Gonzalez, shown in a 2020 file photo, was co-founder and CEO of MEDwheels, a San Antonio supplier of medical equipment. She was also an advocate for small and minority-owned businesses. She died March 28 at age 66.
Billy Calzada
Jane Gonzales, co-founder and CEO of MEDwheels, loads boxes of face masks, disinfectant and other supplies into a van on Nov. 12, 2020, for the Neighborhoods First Alliance in San Antonio. During the pandemic, her company donated protective equipment across the city.
Billy Calzada
Jane Gonzalez, co-founder and CEO of MEDwheels, stands in her company’s warehouse in a 2010 file photo.
EDWARD A. ORNELAS/SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
San Juanita S. “Jane” Gonzalez, a San Antonio entrepreneur who made a career of providing life-saving medical equipment, sometimes for free, and who spent decades advocating for small and minority-owned businesses, has died after a battle with cancer. She was 66.
MEDwheels, a company she co-founded and ran, supplies wheelchairs, walkers and other equipment to hospitals, schools and public agencies. She was also a force in the city’s business and civic circles, pushing to expand opportunities for smaller firms. Many who knew her described her as strong and fearless — a “chingona,” or champion.
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“She wanted to make sure that our local dollars were being spent on local businesses,” said Julissa Carielo, a San Antonio developer and business leader who met Gonzalez 20 years ago through the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
“I don’t know anyone like her. She fought to make sure they had a chance,” Carielo said.
Gonzalez, who died March 28, was the oldest of four siblings and a graduate of Brackenridge High School. She earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Our Lady of the Lake University and a master’s degree in finance from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. After working in Houston and on the East Coast, she returned to San Antonio and in 2005 founded MEDwheels with her brother, Rolando Gonzalez.
The company began with durable medical equipment before expanding into automated external defibrillators and related equipment.
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“Our products save lives. This isn’t just a business, this is a calling,” she once said.
That mission extended beyond the company.
“She did everything she could to help the underprivileged,” her brother said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gonzalez and her team donated thousands of pieces of protective equipment — masks, gloves, gowns and sanitizer — across San Antonio’s East Side, at one point giving away about 15% of the company’s inventory.
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“I became emotionally connected to it,” she said at the time. “I made it my mission.”
READ MORE: East Side business owner donates life-saving equipment
Her business advocacy focused on “second-stage” companies poised to grow beyond the startup stage.
In a 2021 commentary published in the San Antonio Express-News, she urged local leaders to support such businesses.
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“Investing in second-stage companies is the answer for true organic economic growth,” she wrote.
By 2023, the City of San Antonio had launched a Second Stage Company Grant Program aimed at helping such businesses expand, enter new markets and add jobs.
Carielo, co-founder of the Maestro Entrepreneur Center, a nonprofit that nurtures early-stage businesses, said Gonzalez was a driving force in bringing the concept to San Antonio and persuading elected officials to get on board.
“She didn’t just talk about it,” Carielo said. “She pushed it forward.”
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That commitment was reflected in her generosity. Gonzalez often donated equipment and helped people in need, including by opening the company’s warehouse during a winter freeze to shelter homeless individuals.
“She was there to help — family, strangers, anyone,” said Yvonne Gonzalez, her sister-in-law, who helped run MEDwheels’ day-to-day operations.
After being diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2021, Jane Gonzalez received treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She went into remission before the cancer returned in 2024 and spread. She spoke openly about her experience.
“For a moment I wanted to throw the towel and raise a white flag,” she wrote in a September 2021 Facebook post. “But I praised God and continued to say YOUR WILL be done.”
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That faith sustained her through years of treatment and into her final days.
“She was a fighter in every aspect of her life,” her brother said.
She remained involved in the business until the end.
“She would not stop,” Yvonne Gonzalez said. “She always worked.”
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One week before her death, she joined family and friends for what she called her “Moving On Up” celebration. On March 21, family, friends, and business leaders gathered for a night of mariachis, belly dancers, menudo and celebration. Many wore red at Gonzalez’s request.
Carielo said the event reflected how Gonzalez approached the end of her life: choosing strength and joy rather than seeking sympathy.
Days after her death, Gonzalez’s friends held an “honoring her” luncheon centered on an interview she recorded while in hospice care.
In the recording, she urged others to live with purpose and without regret.
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“It’s inside of you,” she said. “Ask God, ‘What is my calling? What can I do to help my neighbor?’ We all can do something to make this world better.”
Gonzalez is survived by her brothers, Rafael, Rogelio and Rolando Gonzalez; her nephew, Roland Garrett Gonzalez; and her niece, Brianna Jeanett Gonzalez.
A funeral Mass will be held at 9:30 a.m. April 9 at St. Philip’s Catholic Church, 142 Lambert St., with interment to follow at Mission Burial Park South, 1700 SE Military Dr. The family asked attendees to wear pink in her honor.
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