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Last Flicker of Hope Is Extinguished : Coping: Until the very end, Leticia Hernandez’s family held on to the belief that the little girl would be found alive.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

When detectives arrived at the Hernandez home late Sunday, Jesus Hernandez said, he sensed that the family’s protracted, painful vigil might finally be ending, for better or worse.

His sister’s inconsolable sobs soon extinguished the flicker of hope that had burned brightest on each occasion when young Leticia was reported sighted, from California to Florida.

“Until the very end, we always had hope,” Hernandez said Monday as he stood outside the family’s modest apartment in Oceanside, patiently answering queries after the announcement that his niece, Leticia, who had just turned 7 when she disappeared almost 15 months ago, had been found dead in a rural area about 22 miles northeast of her home.

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Inside the family’s cramped, two-bedroom apartment, the girl’s mother, who is also named Leticia Hernandez, was too grief-stricken to speak much about her dead daughter and namesake, known to all as Tita.

The mother’s eyes welled with tears as she stared, benumbed, at a television screen, while relatives and neighbors stopped by to comfort her amid the tight-knit barrio composed mostly of Mexican immigrants and their families.

Muy triste (very sad),” she kept repeating mechanically, as her six other children--from 17-year-old Maria to 8-month-old Miguel, who was born as the family awaited word of Leticia--trod back and forth across the carpeted floor.

“Tita is gone now, but we will never forget her; she is always in our hearts,” said Victoria Gonzalez, the girl’s grandmother, who sat on a couch below a life-sized picture of young Leticia, the child’s hair braided smartly to the side, a playful smile on her lips.

“This is God’s will,” continued the sobbing grandmother, who, like other family members, is a practicing Mormon. “God can call us any time that He wants. One has to comply with God’s will. Tita’s work on Earth is done. She has gone to God. We remain here with our sorrow.”

In a nearby crib were the gifts, still wrapped, that the family had planned to give Leticia on Christmas Day, 1989; that was nine days before she disappeared. A green bow still graced a scooter, to be presented to Leticia upon her return.

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The girl was believed to have been playing outside the building when she was apparently abducted. Her mother was inside washing clothing.

Leticia was one of seven children, several of whom were born in Mexico, relatives said; she was born in California. The dead girl’s father, Rodolfo Martinez, is a farm worker in the Sacramento area. A dozen or so relatives live at the family’s apartment.

The dead girl, by all accounts, was outgoing and friendly. “She always made us laugh,” recalled her uncle, Jesus Hernandez, 20, brother of the mother and the designated family spokesman.

Despite their profound grief, the family expressed little rancor. There was no talk of vengeance.

“I’m not a judge, but God will judge those who did this someday,” said the uncle, fighting back tears. “If they ever have a family, I hope this never happens to them. This deed will always be in their heart. . . . This has been a very hard blow for all of us. To be rancorous would only make it harder. We’re not capable of judging.”

As for the many reported “sightings” of Leticia--she was said to have been spotted as far away as Florida, in the company of a man and woman--relatives said they were all quite perplexed, now that her body had been found not too far from her home.

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“That always gave us some hope,” the uncle said of the sightings. “I don’t know if these were lies or not. I just don’t know.”

The much-publicized disappearance generated considerable uneasiness in the mostly Spanish-speaking community, whose poor residents consider their children as great treasures. It is one of countless Southern California immigrant neighborhoods, this one a quiet, suburban-style place where rents are somewhat affordable and arrivals from deep in Mexico have an opportunity to embark on new lives, sending their children to schools where they learn English, as a ticket to better days.

The youth’s apparent kidnaping prompted parents to take extra precautions with their youngsters, expressing wariness at suspicious strangers who wandered into the area. The neighborhood abuts Interstate 5.

“I never left my children alone after this,” said Maria Dominguez, a mother of four daughters who lives upstairs from the Hernandez family. She, like others, expressed shock at the fate of the missing girl.

“This is a great injustice; there was no reason to do something like this to this poor innocent,” Dominguez said Monday afternoon as she stood on the stairwell discussing the incident with other mothers. “There was no reason for it.”

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