Juan Epstein of ‘Welcome Back Kotter’ dies at 60
Robert Hegyes, the actor best known for playing Jewish Puerto Rican student Juan Epstein on the 1970s television show “Welcome Back Kotter” died Thursday at a hospital in Edison, N.J., after suffering an apparent heart attack. He was 60.
Hegyes was appearing on Broadway in 1975 when he auditioned for “Kotter,” a television series about a teacher who returns to the inner-city New York school of his youth to teach a group of irreverent remedial students nicknamed the “Sweathogs.”
