A Mother Turns Grief Into Strength

Cindy Soto vividly remembers that Monday morning in May 1999. Her daughter wore a Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt, brown corduroy pants and light-up sneakers. Soto fixed her daughter’s hair and kissed her goodbye. As the little girl skipped across the day-care playground, flashing her gaptoothed smile at Miss Debbie--her favorite teacher--Soto called out, “ ‘Bye, baby. I’ll see you later.”

But she wouldn’t.

Later that afternoon, Steven Allen Abrams would plow his car through the fence of the Costa Mesa day-care center’s playground, killing Sierra, 4, and another preschooler, Brandon Wiener, 3.

Today, 1 1/2 years later, Abrams will be sentenced. He was convicted of first-degree murder in August after a trial in which he said voices egged him to “execute” innocent children. The jury recommended that Abrams spend life in prison.

Soto said she would not attend the sentencing; she is still too hurt and angry.

Yet, since Sierra’s death, Soto has become a source of strength as she and three other Orange County women who have lost toddlers deepen their friendship.

Pamela Wiener, 34, of Costa Mesa; Susan St.Clair, 34, of Laguna Beach; and Sarah Key-Marer, 31, of Huntington Beach, have very different lives and backgrounds. But they, like Soto, have experienced what every mother fears most: the death of a child.

“I can’t take away their pain,” said Soto, a 36-year-old Costa Mesa resident. “I can’t tell them the pain goes away with time because it doesn’t. . . . All you can do is survive, to show them that you can.”

Soto, then, lets her life be the example. She tries to be strong, offering whatever advice and support she can.

Soto and Pamela Wiener both lost their children when Abrams gunned his 4,000-pound Cadillac across the playground, pinning the children under the tires. Although they cope and grieve differently, the two mothers understand each other’s loss better than anyone else.

“My friends and family have been wonderful, but it’s different,” Wiener said. “Having her in my life . . . helped me through a very difficult time.”

Sometimes, help came in the form of diversion. The two would spend an evening singing karaoke or just having dinner together.

Mostly, their time is spent working for the causes they share: increased security around playgrounds and legislation mandating treatment for the dangerously mentally ill.

“Losing your child in the same incident . . . is such an intimate, profound level of feeling,” Soto said. “Pam and I deal with it very different, but we can relate to the same feelings. . . . There’s [friendship] and empathy because of what happened.”

Sarah Key-Marer lost her 4-year-old daughter Lauren on Nov. 8, when she fell from a cliff on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

“I remember reading about [Soto’s loss],” Key-Marer said. “I was thankful to God it wasn’t my child. But I also felt compassion for Cindy. Then, a year and a half later, I have my own tragedy.”

Key-Marer contacted Soto after her own daughter died, and the two were drawn together by several similarities. Both have been single mothers. The girls were the same age. They are buried at the same cemetery. The girls even parted their hair the same way.

“It’s nice that we can come together and talk about it [because] it’s all I want to talk about,” Key-Marer said.

Susan St.Clair and her husband, Pacific Symphony conductor Carl St.Clair, lost the couple’s 18-month-old boy, Cole, in a swimming pool accident July 26, 1999, after the mother fell unconscious in a diabetic seizure. Later that year, Soto said, she met the mother at Pacific View Cemetery in Newport Beach where Cole, like Sierra and Lauren, is buried. Brandon Wiener is buried at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Susan St.Clair declined to be interviewed for this story. She recently gave birth to a baby girl.

The four women look to each other for support and for the advice no one else can give them.

They talk about their children, about spending the holidays without them. They talk of survival.

“Depressing is not the word--it’s too nice,” Key-Marer said. “People can attempt to understand, but nobody really knows. I can’t think of anything worse. I’ve thought of everything. . . . There’s nothing worse. I’ve lost my father . . . my best friend. I know how to grieve. But you don’t know what it’s like until it happens to someone who was part of you.”

And Key-Marer intends to follow in Soto’s footsteps by pushing for change.

Key-Marer wants cliff rails. Soto and Wiener lobby for more walls around playgrounds.

It’s what makes them go on.

Soto talks about protecting other children, about the foundation Sierra’s Light, which develops and distributes safety guidelines for preschools and child-care centers. There’s also the campaign for court-ordered treatment of mental patients who pose a threat. There are bills to lobby for, grant applications to write, politicians to contact.

But more than anything, there’s a need to channel grief into a cause and give meaning to Sierra’s death.

The four women do what they have done since losing their children: remind themselves to breathe, to go on with life as best they can.

“You don’t want to be here any more because your kid isn’t,” Soto said. “Other people, even in their darkest hour, will never reach that low point.”