Sisters Were Planning New Start in Their Homeland

By SHARON BERNSTEIN

April 14, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NORTH HOLLYWOOD —

It was hot in the tiny apartment, and steamy. As hot as the wet summer nights in Gualan, Guatemala, where the two sisters had grown up.

It was Saturday night and they had been ironing all day, finishing their weekly laundry and preparing clothing for the trunks and suitcases that would take them, finally, back home after the Easter holiday.

Emma Sauceda, who came to the United States after separating from the man who had been her husband since she was 15 years old, was heading back with plans to reconcile. Her sister, Antonia, was coming too. Inseparable as always, they would leave together.

“Come with me,” Emma had said to her. “I’m not going to leave you here in Los Angeles.”

Thirsty, and ready for their evening walk, they set out for a small mercado across Magnolia Boulevard from the cuarto , or room, they rented in a low-slung yellow building in North Hollywood.

It was there, so nearly across the street that their bodies were flung onto the sidewalk, that the long journeys of their lives intersected tragically with the life of a young man who will always bear the scars of one night’s speedy trip down a neighborhood street.

Emma and Antonia Sauceda, both in their 50s, mothers of 11 children between them, died instantly when 19-year-old Damion Michael Dasaro, driving his parents’ Nissan, whizzed down Magnolia and struck them.

This is the story of their lives.

Emma was born in 1940 and Antonia a year later, in a town on the Honduran coast. The family moved to Guatemala when the girls were 7 and 8.

Their mother taught school and their father worked as a security guard. After work, both parents teamed up to sell clothing and other items that they imported and exported along the border.

“My grandmother was a schoolteacher, but my Mom had to quit school in the fifth grade to take care of her brothers,” said Emma’s son, Elder Harrison-Sauceda.

When Emma was 15, she moved in with Alvaro Harrison, one of many Guatemalans descended from Americans who worked for the United Fruit company. The two became accompanados, common-law husband and wife. They had eight children.

“I remember that we were the only ones to have a TV on the whole block,” said Harrison-Sauceda, who was born in 1958. “We charged a penny to watch ‘The Three Stooges.’ ”

When the couple separated seven years ago, Harrison-Sauceda brought his mother to North Hollywood, where he had been living since the late 1970s. Antonia, whose farm-worker husband had been poisoned by pesticides two years earlier, came with her.

The sisters rented a room in a small apartment building on Denny Street, a block off Magnolia. They did domestic work, taking care of children and keeping house for two Spanish-speaking families. Every week, Antonia sent much of her pay back home to her three children.

Eight-year-old Sandy Harrison is much like her grandmother: pretty, chubby, interested in helping people, loving to dance.

She has heard all the family stories about how her grandmother came to the United States when Sandy was just a toddler. The first thing Emma did was buy the little girl clothes from a thrift store.

She said her grandmother and aunt used to take her shopping, maybe to Ralphs supermarket to buy food, or to Pic N’ Save for toys or a treat. Her grandmother taught her how to dance to the polkas and Tejano music she loved on the radio.

Emma, in particular, loved to dance, and every morning, when her alarm went off at 5 a.m., the sounds of Radio Allegria , KKHJ-AM, blared into the tiny apartment complex.

Antonia worked as a live-in nanny in Ontario, so she came home to Emma only on the weekends. The sisters relished their Saturdays and Sundays together.

“They were very close,” Harrison-Sauceda said. “They couldn’t live without each other. They walked to the market hand in hand.”

The night they died, Emma and Antonia were just 10 feet outside the crosswalk on Magnolia, crossing to buy a six-pack of soda.

“I saw the car going really fast past me,” a witness told police. “I heard the skid. I saw the pedestrians in the street.”

Los Angeles police said Dasaro, who has been charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, skidded 200 feet with Antonia’s body pinned to the hood of his car, staring at him with death’s eyes.

LAPD Detective Ron Vega said that police believe Dasaro, a student at Pasadena City College, was going 62 m.p.h. when he hit the pair. Both died instantly.

Dasaro’s father told police he had sent his son out to buy salad dressing for a family dinner.

His lawyer said the young man, who has admitted to going 50 m.p.h., is so horrified by what happened that he is under a psychiatrist’s care. Dasaro will never forget, attorney Steven Sadde said, staring into the eyes of Antonia.

“He showed an extreme amount of remorse for the situation,” said Vega, who investigated the case. “He cried. He was broken.”

“He recalls getting his vehicle up in excess of 50 m.p.h.,” Vega said. “He said all of a sudden he saw two females standing in front of him in the lights.”

After the car finally lurched to a stop, Dasaro ran out and checked Antonia’s pulse. He screamed for passersby to call 911. Then he called his father from a pay phone and waited for police.

When they died, the two sisters were nearly packed for their return to Guatemala. His father, Harrison-Sauceda said, had finally persuaded Emma to reconcile, and Antonia had decided to go home too.

“My dad was expecting her call at any moment,” Harrison-Sauceda said. “He was waiting for her to call and say ‘Meet me at the airport.’ ”

Emma and Antonia will go home next week, after a funeral service here Monday night. Terrified of airplanes during life, they’ll travel on separate flights--one on Tuesday night and one on Wednesday.

Harrison-Sauceda can’t clear his mind of a conversation he had with his mother just before he moved to Panorama City last month. She was explaining that she wasn’t coming with him, that she would stay with Antonia in the little apartment in North Hollywood because she was going home soon, and there was no need to move twice.

“Just three weeks, M’hijo (my son),” she said. “Then I go.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Pedestrian Fatalities

All figures for 1993

City of L.A.: 128

California: 850

U.S.: 5,638

City Comparison

New York

Total Pedestrian Killed: 254

% of total traffic fatalities: 51.5%

Los Angeles