A young woman graduates from tragedy to triumph

Heavynle Ceasar headed to New York for college last week. She took one big suitcase, a tiny heart-shaped pillow for the flight and the boundless good wishes of countless strangers whose gifts are helping ease her passage through grief.

Heavynle is the Lawndale teenager I wrote about in June after she lost both her parents in one torturous moment: One week before her prom, two months from graduation, Heavynle’s father shot her mother to death and then killed himself in the family’s condo.

She was just across the street, on campus at Leuzinger High, when her panicked sister called. She ran home, found her parents’ bodies and passed the evening answering questions in the back seat of a police car.

An honor student and cheerleader, Heavynle managed to soldier on — through senior prom, final exams and Grad Night at Disneyland. She celebrated commencement with her friends — their eyes scanning the bleachers for parents, Heavynle’s eyes fixed on her diploma.

She was determined to go on to college; she’d been accepted by every university she’d applied to. She didn’t know how she’d pay for it, or even what she’d study. But that was her parents’ dream, she told me — “I just want to do what they wanted me to.”

She chose St. John’s in New York City, as if by moving cross-country she could shake off tragedy’s lingering residue.

Dozens of readers responded to that column. Some shared their own stories of loss and steered Heavynle toward grief support. Others were short and to the point: I want to send money to help her. Does she have a college account?

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Heavynle didn’t have a college account. It never occurred to her that strangers might want to give her money. But checks — from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars — began landing in bunches in the Leuzinger High office. Principal Ryan Smith said he didn’t keep a running tally, “but I would estimate that your generous readers donated around $5,000 or so.”

Heavynle — pronounced like heavenly — was “all smiles” when she came to pick them up, Smith said. “She was visibly moved that people who don’t even know her would try to help her education.”

And she was stunned when she was offered a summer job in the mailroom at WME Entertainment, the Beverly Hills talent agency that represents some of Hollywood’s biggest players.

Entertainment agent Paul Haas had planned to donate to her college fund but arranged a job interview instead.

“The environment, the experience, being around different people. … I figured that was better than a check,” he said.

It was Heavynle’s first job, and it was more than a paycheck. It was a chance for a sheltered, blue-collar kid to hobnob with rich kids from big-name schools — the kind of classmates she’ll encounter at St. John’s, where tuition runs about $30,000 a year.

Breaking into the film business by working in the mailroom of a talent agency or studio has long been the stuff of storied beginnings.

And it was a place where no one knew what she’d been through, where she didn’t have to endure sympathetic looks or answer awkward questions about her feelings.

“We did not pry. We didn’t discuss anything,” said WME’s human resources manager, Carole Katz. “I wanted her to stand on her own two feet.”

She was younger than the others, mostly college students. “But she was insanely responsible and gracious and sweet. She handled herself perfectly.”

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A few weeks ago, new emails began trickling in, from readers who’d sent donations and wanted me to know that Heavynle had sent them “lovely” thank-you cards.

At Heavynle’s going-away party at her grandmother’s house last month, I asked — delicately, I hoped — who had nudged her to send those cards.

“I always write thank-you notes,” Heavynle said. “My mother taught me that.”

She looked me in the eye just long enough for me to see a memory flitting by. Then she turned her attention back to packing; trying to cram another pair of jeans in a suitcase, the price tag still on its handle.

Just one bag? I asked. She nodded. “I don’t have much stuff” — at least not much from this life that she wants to follow her to college.

She was proud of the deal she got on her luggage: Liz Claiborne, retail $320, bought “at Ross for like $69,” she said. And she was eager to meet her new roommates, girls from New Jersey and Atlanta, who won’t see her as a tragic figure but as an L.A. fashionista.

She had a great summer, her friends assured me; they joked about pool parties, beach trips and sleepovers.

Nobody at the party mentioned her parents; they just feasted on home-cooked food and hugged her through streamers and balloons.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about her loss as I watched her kneeling alone on the floor, trying to force her suitcase closed.

There’s a solitariness to being an orphan that no amount of money or goodwill can erase. I know that because I’ve been there.

I guess that’s why I wound up volunteering to make a run to the guy selling fruit from a cart on the corner.

Heavynle had been craving a mango all day, she said. Her friends brushed her off when she asked them to go buy some.

That’s when I thought of something she once told me: Her mother would surprise her with little gifts “just because she saw something she knew I’d like.”

She was surprised whenI offered to get it. But at that moment, when she wanted a mango, what she really needed was a mother.

I rushed out the door, afraid that I might cry, thinking of how I dote on my own daughters and how her mother doted on her. But I didn’t cry … not until the man slicing the fruit asked me if I wanted chili powder on it.

I had no answer. Her mother would have known.

sandy.banks@latimes.com