Confused Life Ends With ‘I Was 15’

The New Year’s Day story on the suicide of Velia Huerta Victorino bored into me until it struck a nerve. It was the last few thoughts in her farewell note that ripped at me: She apologized to her family for what she was about to do, drew a heart, wrote her name and this postscript: “I was 15.”

Could three sadder, more powerful words have been written?

It still hurts to think of Velia, because I knew her. Not personally, but in the way that we adults know troubled teenagers and the pain and confusion that their lives can be. It hurts because they think there’s no way out, when we know there is. It hurts because we realize that we didn’t fully grasp their sense of hopelessness.

Our story chronicled Velia’s various problems or traumas. They formed a portrait of a girl who fought life before surrendering. The story helped alert other parents to danger signs in teens.

But I knew there had to be more. So, whether out of a pervasive sadness over teen suicides in general or the specific, haunting echo of “I was 15,” I wanted to give Velia another moment in the newspaper.

In a steady voice Thursday afternoon, her mother, Evangelina, helped me. She had talked to our reporters about her daughter’s problems, but I told her I wanted to know about the other side, about what her daughter liked in life.

“When she was about 5 or 6, she liked playing T-ball,” her mother said. “I used to take her to games and watch her play. And cooking. I just taught her, like when she was between 6 and 10. Scrambled eggs, French toast, pancakes. She learned how to wash dishes. She’d say, ‘I don’t know how,’ and I’d say, ‘How do you take a bath? Pretend it’s you, and you’re washing the plates and cups.’ ”

Young Velia loved to dance. At first, it was random motion. Later came her own, calculated moves. She liked oldies, then moved into more modern music. “I’d try to dance like her,” Evangelina said. “She’d say, ‘Mom, stop that.’ ”

Velia exchanged letters with girlfriends. Her mom has some of them, and they reflect age-old subjects like how to meet boys and whether the girls had yet kissed a boy.

“She liked MTV,” her mom said. “She could watch that all day long.” She had trouble with reading and spelling but liked arithmetic. If truth be told, her mom said, Velia didn’t really like school.

Our story talked of her bouts with anger, but Velia had a happy-go-lucky side. She’d insist her mother buy disposable cameras so she could take pictures of her and her friends. She’d sometimes change clothes three times a day and, “just like me, had to have the right shoes to go with everything,” her mom says. One night when a counselor from the county came to check on her, he and Evangelina wound up going to the grocery store for pork chops, and Velia cooked dinner.

One night last year Velia got angry at her mother over a trivial thing but later apologized. The incident made Evangelina cry, with some happiness, because she thought her daughter was coming to grips with her anger.

Instead, Velia’s final, fateful decision came a few months later in October. For her 15th birthday just a few days earlier, Velia got a cake, a pizza, a rose and a cellphone. In the hour or so before she took her life, Velia watched a movie with her mother, who assured her daughter that, despite problems with girls at school, she and God loved her.

Like so many parents before them, Velia’s are left to mourn and lament and ponder myriad “if only” questions that won’t go away. Velia’s problems must have seemed like they came from all directions, and she got lost in the emotional blizzard that blew around her.

“Every morning I wonder how I can get her back,” Evangelina says, “and I know I can’t.”