Family of Aspiring Model Grieves Over Dreams Ended by Violence

So many times, Dolores Mata recalls, the teachers would call home about her youngest daughter, Sasha, who everyone knew as “Hollywood.” It was never about her grades or her attitude, but always about the starlet-styled way in which she dressed.

But the mother understood, just like the two sisters and everyone else who knew Sasha, that this fashionable and impressionable young woman wanted to become a model. She longed to trade her plain old blue-collar Carson neighborhood in for the glamour of the runway.

On Saturday, in a living room filled with pictures of Sasha, the mother cried over her daughter and a graceful maturity into womanhood that will never be: 18-year-old Sasha is dead, the victim of what police are calling a gang-related shooting eight days ago outside the family home.

“Sasha was beautiful, but it wasn’t the clothes,” her mother recalled. “It was the personality inside the clothes. She just always stood out.”

Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators don’t know what prompted the occupants of a passing car to open fire on Sasha, her older sister, Yvette, and three friends as they sat in a car around 2:40 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 13.

Two girls were injured and Sasha was struck in the chest and sat dying in the driver’s seat as her anguished mother tried to revive her, pleading with her to keep breathing.

“This is a tragedy that happens too many times in Los Angeles,” said Det. Martin Rodriguez. “This girl was not a gang member. Like many other victims of gang violence, she was a person with a job, a viable member of society, who happened to grow up in an area known for gangs. We just can’t explain why the guns were turned on her.”

At a gas station two miles from the Mata home, friends and family--and some who never even knew Sasha--gathered Saturday for a charity carwash to help Dolores Mata afford a proper funeral for the daughter she says never got the chance to show the world her real beauty.

All throughout a gray drizzly day, the cars came and went, people paying their respects to the memory of a teenager they said represented innocence and stolen potential.

They talked of bitter irony, that the girl so fond of stiletto heels, leopard skin purses and fancy hats, who her sisters laughed would dress up just to walk to the corner market for an orange soda, had often pitched in to wash cars at events dedicated to other victims of crime in her neighborhood.

Now, it was Sasha’s time to take her place as unfortunate beneficiary.

“One lady just wanted us to empty her ashtray and she still gave us 10 bucks,” said family friend Steven Caudillo. “She said she was so sorry over our losing Sasha.”

Ever since the killing, members of the Mata family have asked themselves what they could have done differently. Sure, Sasha had known boys in her neighborhood and in her school who were affiliated with gangs. But then, Sasha knew everybody, her mother says.

Dolores often instructed her daughter not to make a mistake and take up with any local young boys, to wait until she got to college where she would “meet doctors and lawyers” and find a really comfortable life.

“Meanwhile, I would always tell her ‘Baby, be careful where you go and who you go there with,’ ” Dolores Mata said. “Because if someone in some car doesn’t like who you’re with, then you’re in danger as well.”

On that early Saturday morning, a mother’s fears became violent reality.

Sasha had left her job at a sporting goods store at the Del Amo mall and had gone out partying with her sister and friends in Torrance. As the group returned to park in front of the Mata home in the 100 block of 234th Street, the car engine still running, a car passed and the firing began.

Rodriguez said police had targeted the area around the Mata home as a gang area, adding that the single male in the car with Sasha was a suspected gang member from a different part of the city. Although Sasha’s family doesn’t believe the young man’s presence inspired the shooting, they say they can’t rule out gang involvement.

Dolores Mata has asked police to organize a meeting of local gangs to hammer out a truce.

“Sure I’m angry, but I don’t want any retaliation,” she said. “Too many mothers are losing children to this gang nonsense. Sasha’s life had just begun.”

On Saturday, as they washed cars and wiped away tears, Sasha Tatiana Mata’s friends and family talked about the aspiring model who was seeking direction in her life.

Reeling from teachers’ complaints over her choice of dress, a discouraged Sasha had dropped out of high school after her sophomore year and had considered pursuing several careers, from dental hygiene to fashion design.

“I’ll miss her hugs and kisses,” her mother said. “No matter what she did, Sasha was somebody you could never stay mad at.”

Recently, Sasha appeared in a car-oriented magazine, and she had visited several local modeling agencies, who had been encouraging, her mother recalls.

In the days after her death, city officials said they want to build a center for nonviolence in Sasha Mata’s name.

Outside the Mata home still sit the flowers placed there by friends and admirers, along with a note that reads: “Rest in peace, Sasha. We’ll miss you, Hollywood.”