‘Little Friend’ Mourned : 7-Year-Old Murder Victim Buried

Among the more than 90 people who attended the funeral Friday of Sara Nan Hodges, the 7-year-old Newhall girl who was strangled, were many children, mostly schoolmates but also some who barely knew her.

Trevor Bell and Nick Phavini of Santa Clarita, both 11, said they rode buses for nearly an hour to attend the funeral at the Eternal Valley Mortuary in Newhall because they were so upset by Sara’s slaying.

“She had a whole life ahead of her. She could have made a living at something good,” Phavini said.

Bell, who met Sara when his contractor father worked in her neighborhood, was trying so determinedly to hold back tears that he could barely speak.

The girl’s body was found stuffed between a wall and the headboard of a water bed in a neighboring home where 14-year-old Curtis Cooper lived. Cooper, who has been accused of the killing, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment this week.

Sara’s mother, Linda Hodges, eulogized her daughter as a girl who “used to laugh in her sleep, and she was the only one among us who could carry a tune.”

Hodges also read two poems she wrote, including one that reasoned that since Sara died as a child, she was spared most of life’s difficulties.

‘Everlasting Magic’

“Sara’s magic is now everlasting,” her mother said. “She has been released from the wrongs she so insightfully dwelled on.” The second poem regretted that, “With these helpless human hands, your life we could not more protect.”

The freckled, blue-eyed blonde was a tomboy who loved animals, particularly horses, and preferred playing outdoors to playing with dolls, her mother said. She adored her older sister, Tisha Gates, 16, and wanted to be a doctor so she could help her mother as she grew older.

Olga Kaczmar, who rented rooms to Cooper and his mother in her house just five doors away from Sara’s, said she was devastated by the death of the little girl who used to ride Kaczmar’s horses.

“I intended her to always be my little friend. She was such a neat kid,” Kaczmar said.

Shock Remains

Kaczmar said she is still shocked that Cooper was accused of the killing. “I didn’t see any problem,” she said. When the body was discovered in her home, she said, “I was thinking it was just a movie, thinking that it didn’t really happen.”

Standing near the small, white casket draped in pink flowers at her daughter’s graveside, Hodges said she hopes to support programs to care for the mentally ill to prevent deaths such as her daughter’s.

But Hodges, who said she laid out clothes for Sara to wear to the funeral until she realized what she was doing, said she must first recover from the loss.

“The worst part is when I hear a little kid yell ‘Mommy’ and I turn around,” she said.