From Dark Sorrow to Bright Tomorrow

There came a day for Debbie Torrez--three years after the murder of her older sister--when the despair of the past converged with the bright promise of her future.

Debbie was just 13 and still an eighth-grader when her sister Cathy was found stabbed to death and stuffed in the trunk of her Toyota. The killing of the popular college honor student six years ago shocked Orange County and traumatized the family’s hometown of Placentia. During a stormy week in February of 1994, the community had rallied behind a futile search for the missing 20-year-old, then braced for the anguishing hunt for the killer once Cathy’s body was discovered in a parking lot.

In the fall of 1997, police finally made an arrest in the case. They took into custody a cousin of the victim’s former boyfriend, who had already been named as the prime suspect. To make matters more tense in the tight-knit community, there were also family ties between the victim and the suspect--and they all lived on the same block.

For Debbie and her family, another shock came three days later when police released the arrested man for lack of evidence. No charges have been filed against him or his cousin, the former boyfriend, though police told me this week no suspect has been ruled out.

In the aftermath of those upsetting developments, Debbie and her family underwent yet another round of media interviews. One story focused on Debbie’s struggle to succeed after the loss of a sister she had cherished as a mentor and companion. The youngest of four children, Debbie had gone on to make top grades in high school, working as a tutor during lunch hours, serving as student body president and homecoming queen.

Then came that bittersweet day of promise mixed with despair. During one taped interview for a local television station, Debbie was awash in emotions. She felt the hurt and frustration of having waited so long for justice, just to watch it slip away. And she felt betrayed by a legal system she believed in so much she had become a top-ranking Explorer Scout for the Placentia Police Department, where she grew close to officers and became a living reminder of her sister’s unresolved murder case.

She was angry, too, at prosecutors for choosing not to file charges. Their reluctance infused her with a new resolve to work harder and do more with her own life. She felt like shouting:

“Wait until I’m attorney general and I’ll file it myself!”

That same day, a call came into the office of Debbie’s counselor at Valencia High School. It was from Parham Williams, the dean of the law school at Chapman University. He had seen the stories about Debbie’s achievements despite the tragedy and decided that she was the kind of person Chapman was seeking to attract, a young woman of character. The university was willing to offer Debbie its presidential scholarship, the largest grant given by the private institution.

Counselor Becky Marchant called her student and excitedly told her to get to school right away. Rising above the topsy-turvy emotions of that morning’s interview, the teenager returned the dean’s call and accepted the $12,000 annual scholarship on the spot, before even applying to Chapman, where she’s now a sophomore.

Debbie’s mother, like many Latinas, didn’t like the idea of her daughter moving away to college, even if just to neighboring Orange. Marchant also realized that it would be a tough transition for a girl from a tight-knit community like Placentia and a racially diverse high school like Valencia to attend a campus with fewer Latino students. So she personally escorted Debbie to the campus one day, hoping to help her feel comfortable with her new college environment.

During that visit, the two women walked to the Orange Traffic Circle. They dashed out to the green oasis in the middle of all the traffic, and there they made wishes while throwing pennies into a fountain.

This moment is wonderful for you, she told Debbie. It’s the start of a new chapter in your young life. No one can say how it will turn out, but great new possibilities are in front of you now.

This week, I asked Marchant if her wishes had come true.

“Oh, they’re coming true right now!” she said. “Look at how well she’s doing. Oh, my gosh!”

Debbie, now 19, is studying political science and still considering a career in law. She is active as ever: co-chair of the campus chapter of MeCha, the Chicano student organization, and member of the Campus Peer Conduct Board, which disciplines students charged with minor violations such as drinking and loud parties.

Her first year away from home, living in the dorms, was good for her. She needed an escape from the fishbowl intensity generated by the case in her community. But this year, she went back to her old high school to take a job as a bilingual aide and helps students with their college applications.

“OK, I’ve had my time away,” thought Debbie. “Now I want to do something that’s helpful.”

Debbie learned from her sister’s death that people need community. Friends, neighbors and total strangers joined the family during their search for Cathy. She won’t forget that lesson.

“In this day and age, not a lot of people are out there to help their neighbors,” said Debbie, who participated in a national day of fasting for farm workers. “It makes you realize that if you don’t help, no one is going to come out and help when you need it.”

Debbie has stayed close to people who crossed her path in trying times. Like Marchant, the counselor who’s now her boss. And Placentia Police Officer David Douglas, her Explorer advisor whom she considers “like a second father.”

Debbie believes she meets people for a reason. She has a vivid memory of a female detective who was among the first to arrive at her home to investigate her sister’s death. She was tall, wearing a gun at her side and a caring look in her eye.

“I had never seen a woman like that,” said Debbie. “She was feminine, yet all powerful and stuff. And she had this compassionate look to her. She wanted to find out who did it as much as we did.”

That detective was Donna Rose, now an Orange County D.A.’s investigator. Rose told me she has kept a watch on Debbie from a distance. When they first met, she worried that the young girl would get lost in the chaos of the crime. Naturally, people focused on her grieving mother, but wasn’t the loss just as great for Debbie and her two older siblings?

Debbie’s ability to overcome the blow and emerge stronger for it is a “credit to her character,” Rose told me. “Given the set of tragedies she was dealt, she would have had every reason to give up and never try to compete with Cathy’s memory.”

It’s her sister’s memory that keeps Debbie going.

The sister who was seven years older but still her best friend. Who congratulated her for making the honor roll by putting $5 in an envelope, which Debbie saves. Who took her to class at Cal State Fullerton, “an awesome place” for a young girl. (“Wow, you go to school here?”)

On her dresser in her tiny but tidy room near campus, Debbie keeps a double picture frame with matching graduation photos of her and Cathy, seven years apart. She labeled them: “Two of Hearts.”

“To this day, I still miss her in my daily life,” said Debbie after taking one of her mother’s frequent calls to see how she’s doing. “But as much as I miss her, it hasn’t made me angry at the world. It makes me appreciate my opportunities.”

The same opportunities her sister was prevented from pursuing when her promising life was cut short.

“It’s like, in her memory, you pull yourself back together,” said Debbie. “For her sake, you have to get up and you have to keep going.”

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or agustin.gurza@latimes.com