Finding Her Way

Stephanie Blaire stands in the pitcher’s circle, her thoughts drifting.

She looks at the College of the Canyons catcher and the memories rush back, making it hard to see the flashing fingers through misty eyes.

“Once in a while, I think of her when I’m out there, but it’s getting better,” Blaire said.

Used to be that Blaire’s focus never wavered. Used to be that some of her greatest happiness came while hurling a softball toward her sister Lauren, a catcher and best friend.

The two played travel ball together for years and were joining forces at Saugus High, Stephanie the upstart junior right-hander and Lauren the established senior catcher who was drawing interest from college recruiters.

“We talked about the [coming] season a lot,” Blaire said.

They plotted and dreamed until the January night in 1998 when Lauren was pulled lifeless from a car wreck, leaving behind a devastated family and a disconsolate sister to pick up the pieces.

It has been a long healing process for Blaire. She pitched well as a junior, but missed her senior season after becoming pregnant, her emotions again under siege, especially as she arranged the baby’s adoption.

Blaire’s recovery bounded forward last season when she returned to softball, pitching splendidly for Canyons and laying the groundwork for this season, her third without her sister behind the plate.

“I wanted to continue playing because that’s what [Lauren] loved and that’s what I love,” Blaire said. “She probably would have done the same thing.”

*

Students at Canyons are reeling in the wake of Nolan LeMar’s death. The Hart High graduate and outfielder for the baseball team was killed in a head-on collision when a suspected drunk driver crossed the median of Soledad Canyon Road near Saugus Speedway on Monday evening.

Blaire knows all too well those emotions.

More than three years ago, it was girls’ night in.

While some Saugus students attended a nearby dance at another high school on Jan. 10, a Saturday, Lauren and Stephanie stayed home to watch videos with friends. They laughed and munched on snacks and carried on the way teenagers do.

“We were just hanging out, having fun,” Blaire said.

When the gathering fizzled after midnight, Lauren drove a friend home and Stephanie went to the bedroom they shared, climbing into her bunk bed to wait. She soon figured something was wrong.

“I got pretty worried because it was taking her too long to come back,” Blaire said. “I paged her like five times and she wasn’t answering.”

Blaire grew impatient and alerted her mother, Donna. The two went looking for Lauren and learned the unthinkable truth at an intersection dotted with flashing red lights.

“When we came up to the flares, a cop who lived on our street came up to us and told my mom he was sorry and patted her on the arm,” Blaire said. “He didn’t know how to say it.”

The impact killed Lauren, 18, instantly.

She had dropped off the friend and was turning left from Plum Canyon Road onto Bouquet Canyon Road when James Michael Bent, his blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit, ran a red light and slammed his sports utility vehicle into the Acura Integra.

There were three empty beer bottles in his car, one unopened and one spilled.

“We don’t even call it an accident,” said Nick Blaire, father of the sisters. “We call it a collision, because there wasn’t really an accident.”

*

Friends, schoolmates and teammates poured their support on the family. Many left candles, flowers and pictures, and wrote messages in chalk, at the crash site.

“I will never forget you,” read one message.

Months later, on Easter, Stephanie painted an egg and left it for Lauren.

At Saugus, the junior varsity field was dedicated to Lauren, a plaque in her honor was placed behind the backstop on the varsity field and players wore black arm patches with the initials “L.B.” Stephanie switched her uniform from No. 16 to Lauren’s No. 26.

“Lauren’s friends became very close to Stephanie,” Donna Blaire said. “For two years after Lauren died, they were here constantly.”

The group included Valarie Reyes, among Lauren’s closest friends. Reyes replaced Lauren as catcher for Saugus and played second base at Canyons the last two seasons, becoming Stephanie’s teammate last year.

“I met Stephanie through Lauren,” Reyes said. “We weren’t as close as we are now. We are like sisters. . . . It was a tough time for all of us. I think she did a great job pulling through.”

For Blaire, pitching to Reyes at Saugus was comforting--and painful. Reyes resembled Lauren, and Stephanie could hardly stare into the catcher’s mask without thinking of her sister.

Besides, it was supposed to be a special season for the girls. Stephanie was on track academically after sitting out her sophomore season because of poor grades and Lauren had dropped from 200 pounds to 130 after extensive workouts.

“It was hard,” Blaire said. “We both loved the game. It just encouraged me to play.”

Blaire finished the regular season with a 13-6 record and a 0.90 earned-run average, but the four-time defending-champion Centurions placed second behind Hart in the Foothill League. Saugus lost to Rio Mesa, 4-3, in the first round of the Southern Section Division II playoffs in May.

Five months later, Blaire and her family took solace in a much more important victory when Bent was sentenced to 10 years in prison for vehicular manslaughter. Bent, 30, who had previously been arrested twice for driving drunk in Maryland and Delaware, avoided the more serious charge of second-degree murder sought by the family.

“Neither he nor his family ever apologized to us,” Donna said. “That has bothered us a lot. There’s something wrong with him, not expressing any remorse. For me, it’s beyond my comprehension.”

*

Many of the kids who shuffled in and out Blaire’s home after Lauren’s death were there to console her. And as Blaire and her family grieved, she drew close to a young man. Perhaps too close.

“Our family was in turmoil,” Donna said. “Stephanie was hurting. I think the guy tried to help her and ended up not helping her. It was a case of Stephanie feeling needed.”

The pregnancy cost Blaire her senior season. She didn’t consider an abortion, but neither was she ready nor equipped to raise a child. The only option left was giving up the baby boy for adoption.

“It was the most difficult decision I had to make, but it was a great decision,” Blaire said. “I met the family before I had the baby. They are great people.”

After the birth, Blaire began thinking about pitching at Canyons, among the leading softball programs in the state. She enrolled at the school in the fall of 1999 and was practicing with the team when her college career was nearly derailed.

That November, Blaire and a friend were riding in teammate Corrie Atwood’s car when it was broadsided by a teenager who ran a red light. Blaire sustained a concussion and injured her back, keeping her out of practice for about three weeks. Her friends were battered and bruised.

“It was pretty scary,” said Atwood, a sophomore second baseman at Canyons. “I was worried about [Blaire] because of what happened to Lauren.”

*

Blaire, 19, returned to softball with a flourish. She was 11-0 with a 1.14 earned-run average in the 2000 regular season, helping the Cougars claim the Western State Conference Southern Division title with a 21-0 record.

The Cougars are 23-11, 15-3 and lead the division by two games over second-place Bakersfield after defeating Glendale, 5-2, on Thursday. Blaire is 7-2 with a 1.94 ERA in WSC play.

“As a coach, you know that the game is not going to get away from you as far as pitching is concerned [with Blaire throwing],” Coach Ray Whitten said. “She’s done remarkably well.”

The family, Donna Blaire said, came through the tragedy with more appreciation for each other. Lauren was her second child to die, following son Dougie, who succumbed to leukemia at 6 in 1979. There are five children remaining, ranging in age from 32 to 10.

“When Dougie got sick, we basically lived at Children’s Hospital,” Donna said. “When he died, I started thinking I could never have enough kids.”

Nick and Donna try to spare other families the fate that befell Lauren. Nick, an accounting manager for an insurance company, and Donna, a playground monitor at a Valencia elementary school, volunteer talking to kids about the perils of drinking and driving.

They are part of a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department program called “Every 15 Minutes,” named for the frequency of drunk-driving deaths nationwide. The program, started by the Chico Police Department in 1995, has spread to schools across California.

“We tell the story from the reality of it,” Nick said. “We just feel it’s our obligation. We need to bring the message to teenagers.”

Through the program, Nick and Donna honor Lauren, making sure something positive comes from her death. It also helps them forge ahead, and they want Stephanie to do the same.

“She has to live her life,” Nick said. “She can’t always live under that shadow. She has to learn to live with it and go on best she can.”