In Tragedy’s Wake, a Flood of Support

A housekeeper at the motel that has been Raquel Pelosso’s home these grim weeks pressed $100 into Pelosso’s hand and kissed her on the cheek. A waitress from the motel restaurant gave her $40 and a hug. A woman she had never seen before handed her a potted lily and then walked away in tears.

It was the day after authorities told Pelosso that one of two bodies found in a charred rental car a week ago was that of her 16-year-old daughter, Silvina. Pelosso looked numb and slightly dazed Saturday as she returned the hugs and nodded at the words of sympathy.

Pelosso’s wrenching personal tragedy has become in some small sense the public’s as well, played out on television and in newspaper headlines about the California vacation that ended in death not only for her daughter but for her lifelong friend, Carole Sund, and Sund’s daughter, 15-year-old Juliana.

The crime has also been major news in Argentina.

Newspapers are covering the case on a daily basis. On Friday, shortly after airing an interview with Silvina’s weary father when he returned to Argentina, TV stations interrupted live coverage of the war in Kosovo and political turmoil in Paraguay to transmit the announcement by the FBI of the discovery of the third and final corpse near Yosemite.

“The End of Hope” was the front-page headline the Pagina 12 newspaper Saturday.

Raquel Pelosso has been somewhat overwhelmed by the gifts and money, intended to help defray the expense of her weeks away from Argentina.

“People don’t show their feelings that way in Argentina. I’m really surprised,” she said quietly as she sat in the Holiday Inn where she and the Sunds’ relatives have camped out since shortly after the trio disappeared in February.

A few feet away, in a room off the motel’s indoor pool, was a room full of flowers for Pelosso and the Sunds’ family. Two-dozen volunteers have taken hundreds of messages and calls from the public.

“I really feel uneasy getting so many presents,” Pelosso confessed. “I do appreciate it, but I’m trying to understand how it works.”

Pelosso and Carole Sund’s parents, Carole and Francis Carrington, have said they will remain in Modesto until they can take the remains of their relatives home. Authorities, who have made no arrests in the case, have indicated the bodies will probably be released this week.

The remains of Silvina Pelosso and Carole Sund were found in the trunk of the rental car the trio had taken on their trip to Yosemite. It had been burned and abandoned on a dirt road in Long Barn. Juliana’s body was discovered last week near a reservoir, 30 miles away.

When Pelosso said goodbye to Silvina in December, she thought a little bit about earthquakes, but the idea that her youngest daughter would fall victim to a violent crime never crossed her mind.

After all, she was sending Silvina to Eureka, to the home of a dear friend.

Pelosso and Carole Sund met as teenagers, when they were exchange students. Pelosso had spent some time in Michigan and Sund stayed with Pelosso’s family in Argentina for six months in 1973.

Pelosso was in her first year of college and was not living at home. But Carole Sund got along better with her than with Pelosso’s younger sister, so she would frequently visit.

“We had a great time together. She had a sense of humor,” remembered Pelosso, who with her husband runs a small soft-drink bottling plant in Cordoba, Argentina.

When Carole Sund returned to California, they kept in touch, writing and calling. In the mid-1980s, Sund took Juliana, then a toddler, on a 10-week visit to Argentina. It was summer, and the Pelossos rented a house in the hills. They took the children to the river, and they went hiking. The girls hit it off immediately.

Despite the great distance and only occasional meetings, Sund and Pelosso maintained a strong friendship over the years. They had long phone conversations in which Pelosso could tell Sund things she told no one else.

“I always found her really wise,” Pelosso said.

The girls saw mutual family photos of each other, but that was about their only communication.

When it was time for Silvina’s teenage trip to America, she decided she did not want to go on an organized tour, as her older sister Paula had. “She wanted to see how things worked in another country,” Pelosso said. “She wanted to share a life.”

So Sund invited her. And late last year, Silvina, described as a shy and serious girl, set off for three months with the Sund family. Just as her mother had taken an instant liking to Sund, so Silvina became friends with Juliana.

“I thought it was going to be a hard time for both of them, but they got along as Carole and I had 20 years before,” Pelosso said. Juliana was already making plans to visit Argentina this summer.

The trip to Yosemite was all carefully planned, to be followed by a tour of the Grand Canyon with Sund’s husband, Jens, and the Sunds’ other three children. But Sund and the girls never showed up at San Francisco International Airport, where they were supposed to rendezvous with the family Feb. 16.

When she first heard of their disappearance, Pelosso assumed the three had been in a car crash. But then Sund’s wallet was found in Modesto, suggesting a more sinister fate and setting off a massive FBI-led search.

The Carringtons, who own a successful real estate firm, offered a $300,000 reward for information in the case. Authorities said Saturday that $50,000 will be paid to the man who found the burned car.

The crime has struck a profound chord in Argentina for several reasons. The disappearance, torture and murder of young people at the hands of the military was tragically routine during the 1970s dictatorship.

Pelosso’s mother expressed a common sentiment: It is hard to believe that the family survived the terror of the 1970s only to lose their daughter 20 years later in a seemingly safe area of California.

The Pelossos are a well-liked and well-established family in Cordoba, an industrial center that is Argentina’s third-largest city.

Family friends, neighbors and others in Cordoba have organized marches and Masses to express their solidarity.

The Carringtons also announced Saturday that they have established a nationwide fund to raise money for rewards in other missing-person cases. Law enforcement agencies and families from around the country will be able to apply to the fund, which the Carringtons have started with $200,000 of seed money.

“There’s not much we can do to help Julie and Carole and Silvina,” Francis Carrington said. “I think there’s a lot we can do to prevent this happening in the future, so we can catch some of these people the first time.”

Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella contributed to this story from Buenos Aires.