July 21, 2002, 6:54PM Faith, hope sustain Laura Ayala's loved
ones
By DANIEL J. VARGAS
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
Angelica Rebollar handles a wallet-size
studio photo of her daughter and slowly
caresses it with her thumb, top to bottom,
top to bottom. The image is one of
innocence -- a petite face with pouty lips
and chocolate-brown eyes.
A few seconds pass, and the mother
brushes tears from the tops of her cheeks.
Her attention turns to the cubbyhole of a
corner between her bedroom dresser and
nightstand, where hollow prayer candles --
spent from days of nonstop burning -- are
stacked neatly.
All 117 of them.
They are a measure of this mother's
anguish, marking every moment since her
13-year-old daughter, Laura Ayala,
disappeared March 10 after walking to a
nearby gas station in southeast Houston to
buy a newspaper.
As each 9-inch candle burns itself out over
several days, she places it on the pile and
replaces it with a new one. She'll do this
until Laura comes home.
In her grief, the 34-year-old has lit candles
with the images of Jesus Christ, La Virgen de Guadalupe, St. Jude,
St. Theresa, La Virgen de San Juan, guardian angels and other
religious figures, praying, even begging, for their help. She has
burned every religious prayer candle available -- with mottoes in
English and her native language of Spanish -- in hopes that Laura
will walk through the front door again.
"Every moment," the single mother of four says of how often she
thinks of Laura. "It feels so bad I don't know how to say it."
Last year in the United States about 725,000 children were reported
missing -- almost 2,000 cases per day. Most cases are resolved
within hours. However, according to a report by the state attorney
general of Washington and the U.S. Department of Justice's Office
of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, there are an
estimated 100 homicides a year involving a child abducted by a
stranger. The rest remain unresolved.
Houston police say Laura's case is the longest local unresolved
kidnapping of a juvenile in "several years." So far, 133 days. With
no witnesses and no real evidence except for her black sandals and
a newspaper found in the street, Laura's case is more baffling.
"It's frustrating for us, and I'm sure it's devastating to the family,"
says Lt. M.J. Smith of the homicide division. "Their loss never goes
away until we get some resolution."
As days and weeks go by, missing children fade from the media
limelight, if they were lucky enough to attract any. Searches by
police and volunteers are eventually halted. Calls of support taper
off. But the one constant is that the children never slip from the
minds of those who love them.
Especially not this diminutive Deady Middle School seventh-grader,
who never gave her lack of height a second thought and won people
over with a larger-than-life personality.
`La chaparra'
Laura stands a doll-like 4 feet tall. Doctors told her mother she
would be short but offered no real reason why.
Her younger sister, 11-year-old Griselda Ayala, towers over her.
Her 8-year-old brother, Max Moreno, is also taller, by about half a
forehead.
At Deady she was the smallest student on campus, even as a
seventh-grader. In sixth grade, she couldn't see over the main office
counter. Office workers had to lean over to speak to Laura.
"She was so cute because she was so tiny," says school lead
counselor Deanna Amaya. "You wanted to hold and squeeze her
like a doll."
Her aunt and godmother, Susie Rebollar, lovingly called her la
chaparra, Spanish for "shorty." Laura would just laugh. Amaya
called her "Baby Laura." And Mary Selvas, the teacher who led the
after-school Writers Club, affectionately called her a Hobbit after
members saw The Lord of the Rings. Laura giggled.
Not everyone, though, was nice to Laura. A few eighth-graders
sometimes poked fun of her small stature, especially in gym class.
They shouted "leprechaun" or "midget." But Laura's friend Juanita
Gonzalez says Laura simply ignored them.
"She acted like they weren't even there," she says. "She never
cared that she was short. It wasn't about her height; it was about
her. It was like she was taller than everybody."
A silent sadness
The small, two-bedroom apartment at Holy Family Apartments is
filled with noise from the television in the living room and music
coming from the eldest brother's bedroom. Yet a noticeable
absence of conversation makes it feel empty, hollow.
Family members go about their daily lives with a grief that is
painfully silent, perhaps not wanting to risk putting into words the
thing they fear most -- that Laura won't be coming home.
"I think about (Laura), but I keep it to myself because it's so sad,"
Rebollar says. "We keep things in our head because it hurts so
much."
Susie Rebollar says occasionally they wonder aloud and say: "I
wonder where she's at" or "I wonder if she's coming home" or "I
wonder how she's doing."
"Everything is always `I wonder,' " Susie Rebollar says, shaking her
head. "Every time I hear of a missing person I get chills. I get
flashbacks of everything we've been through," she says.
An older brother, 15-year-old Victor Ayala, doesn't say much but
writes short messages to her and tapes them to his bedroom wall.
"Come back Laura. We miss you Laura Ayala. We're waiting for
you. Please God bring her back. PLEASE GOD."
On the nightstand, four candles -- one of the Virgin Mary, La
Virgen de San Juan and St. Theresa and a simple white one -- keep
the hopeful vigil even though more than four months have passed
since Laura vanished.
Rebollar's Bible, in Spanish, is open to Psalm 25 (a prayer for
protection, guidance and pardon). Other times it's open to Psalm 27
(a psalm of fearless trust in God). A gold-and-white-beaded rosary
marks the page.
A double picture frame with photos of Laura is centered on this
homemade altar. Laura has deep brown eyes and straight, dark
brown hair with highlights. Her head rests on her relaxed,
intertwined hands. She's not smiling, but that's probably because she
has braces. The background is a loud purple, her favorite color. The
frame is flanked by prayer cards of the Virgin Mary, and a picture
of Jesus sits atop it.
This is where Rebollar prays. Before she goes to sleep, she kneels
and asks for Laura's safe homecoming and for strength. Sometimes
the other three children join her and plead to God to make them a
whole family again.
Laura's disappearance
The night of March 10, Laura bugged her mom for $2 to buy the
Sunday newspaper. She needed it for a school project.
Rebollar looked at the clock. It was just before 10 p.m., and
Rebollar told her it was too late -- to wait until Monday morning.
Laura said by then all the Sunday papers would be gone, and she
really needed it. Rebollar, knowing her daughter's commitment to
school, gave in and told her to take $2.
Laura, wearing a blue-and-white-checked dress and black sandals,
grabbed the money and went out the back door, unlatched the
wooden gate with her small hands and walked along the curb. The
store is about a 30-second walk from the apartment, literally just
around the corner.
She passed some overgrown ivy on the fence and a working
streetlight. Then she walked across dirt and pebbles, passing a large
trash bin and gas pumps before reaching the store's front door.
Once inside, she turned to the right toward the newspaper rack and
pulled one off the top.
Laura paid for the paper, got 25 cents change and left the store.
Griselda waited inside the apartment for her older sister. They were
about to sing along with the radio and pretend to be famous singers.
After five minutes passed, Rebollar became worried. She walked
out the back door with Griselda. Then past the wooden gate.
About 10 feet away they found Laura's black sandals side by side in
the street. The newspaper had been dropped against the curb.
Rebollar ran to the store, threw the door open and asked the clerk in
Spanish: "¿Dónde está mi hija? Where's my daughter?" Although
he didn't understand her, her tone signaled him to call 911.
A distraught Rebollar ran home and also called police.
Police investigation
The Houston Police Department's homicide division is investigating
Laura's disappearance as a kidnapping. After hundreds of
interviews and little movement, Laura's case is also taking an
emotional toll on police.
"We're still running down leads. It's slow," Smith says. "We can't
verify a single lead. We've put in so much work, and nothing.
"I've never had one go on this long."
The lieutenant, a 12-year veteran in homicide, and two investigators,
H. Chavez and Jesse Sosa, constantly work the case. They get help
from officers in the patrol division and two other squads. Up to
several pairs may work the case, depending on how many new
leads police get.
At the height of the investigation more than 27 people were working
the case. Including patrol officers, the figure was more like 100.
Smith doesn't believe Laura ran away but won't rule out that
scenario. However, police haven't found anything that leads them to
believe she left on her own, Smith says.
"This is still somewhat unusual -- that a child disappears without a
trace," he says.
Void at home
At home, Laura's absence is palpable.
Rebollar longs to see Laura around the apartment with her nose in a
book again -- whether it's a textbook or a library book. She also
yearns to hear her contagious giggle filling the apartment.
"She would always be in the apartment watching TV (Friends) or
writing," her mom says.
Max, to whom Laura was closest, misses playing Monopoly and
school with Laura. "She liked to be the teacher," he says.
Her mom says Laura wants to teach when she grows up. "So when
students have vacations, she would have vacations, too," Rebollar
says with a smile.
Even the simple act of falling to sleep brings Laura to mind.
In their tiny apartment, the teenage son has his own room.
Before the disappearance, Laura and the two youngest took turns
sleeping with Mom in a full-size bed, while the other two dozed off
on the floor.
The night Laura disappeared, it was her turn to sleep on the bed.
"She would always be moving around and moving her arms,"
Rebollar says of Laura's sleep habits. "She doesn't stay still when
she sleeps. And she always made these little noises at night.
"Now we don't hear them."
Mom and daughter took turns hugging each other as they slept.
Now when Rebollar rolls over, her embrace sometimes finds only a
cool bedspread, even though one of the other children sleeps with
her. Feeling alone, she does the only thing she can do.
"I imagine that she's there next to me," Rebollar says.
The Writers Club
Laura, an honor student, often asked for extra work or books to
read. A perpetual volunteer, she cleaned instructional film
transparencies and handed out papers for teachers. After school,
her favorite thing to do was in Room 241 -- the Writers Club.
The Writers Club is a voluntary after-school program for
middle-school students who express themselves in poetry and
journals. During the last academic year, they worshipped the written
word even more than the goodies that sponsor Selvas brought each
Wednesday.
"If you didn't see her after school, it was unusual. She was a
constant fixture," says JoAnn Von der Haar, the after-school
program coordinator.
Selvas described the group of 10 as tightknit. When you write down
your feelings and share them with a group, she says, you tend to
become close.
In the Writers Club, Selvas had a rule: Eat first, then pen your
thoughts silently for 15 minutes. It's a way to let the day's
happenings wash away. If students wanted to share them, they
could.
Sometimes Laura did. Other times she held back.
Laura's disappearance is so traumatic that several members of the
Writers Club wouldn't talk about it. A few did, and they longed for
her friendship.
Last fall, Christopher Cardeso was a sixth-grader who didn't have
many friends. When he met Laura, her sense of humor made it
easy to befriend her.
He liked that Laura wore purple-and-green-striped socks. "It was
different but in a good way," Christopher says. "That's a part of her
I'll always remember, because not everyone wore purple and green
socks."
Barbara Vivés, Cardeso's mother and a secretary at Deady, says it
took a week to get her son to leave the house after Laura
disappeared. "She was like a sister to him," she says.
The Wednesday before Laura disappeared, Selvas brought two pies
to the meeting: apple and sweet potato. "Laura took pieces of both
and ate both," she says with a smile.
Laura wrote a little in her journal and left early, but not before
turning in a permission slip to attend Saturday's outing to see The
Lord of the Rings.
"My last memory is seeing her sitting in my car," Selvas says. "We
had the radio on. She looked real happy and satisfied as we were
waiting for parents to pick up the other kids."
Then she watched as her little Hobbitt, who lived just around the
corner from Deady, walked home -- her frame getting smaller and
smaller as she shuffled along noisily.
Juanita Gonzalez was also a sixth-grader when she joined the
Writers Club, but even though she was one of the new kids at the
school, Laura welcomed her unconditionally.
"Most seventh- and eighth-graders say, `That's a sixth-grader. We
have more important things to do.' It didn't matter to (Laura)," she
says.
Juanita says Laura helped her and others be more outgoing. "I'm
missing the person who made me open up," she says. "When I was
around her, we would be silly and play around. We were crazy.
"I don't do that a lot anymore."
As each Writers Club meeting went by, Selvas says someone in the
group always wrote about Laura. Then they discussed their feelings
and consoled each other.
At their last meeting a student approached Selvas, who uses a
"magic" wand as a pointer, and said: "Wouldn't it be wonderful if
you could wave the magic wand and Laura would be back?"
Always on their minds
School let out in May, but still Laura weighs heavy on many
people's minds.
Selvas keeps a picture of her at home, and every time Selvas hears
of another missing child, especially the high-profile Utah case of
Elizabeth Smart (missing since June 5), she can't help but think of
Laura and where she is.
When she misses her, she thinks about Laura's floppy sandals that
were too big for her feet and made a clip-clop noise.
"I think it's the not knowing that's the hardest," Selvas says. "I'll
never forget her."
"I haven't forgotten her," she clarifies.
When Christopher thinks about his friend, he, too, can hear the
sounds of her sandals slapping against the ground.
"You always knew it was her coming down the stairs or the
hallway," he says.
Every day he takes the time to look at a picture of Laura and
wishes she would come back.
Christopher keeps the photo in his wallet, right in front so when he
opens it, he can see her. "I'm just thankful for that picture so that I'll
never forget her," he says.
In true Writers Club fashion, Juanita pens a poem about friendship
and her feelings after Laura's disappearance.
An excerpt reads:
Friendship is people who can trust
Each other, people who are there for
Each other, and caring for each other.
They are there for each other in times of pain.
So if you have a friendship take it seriously,
Because if you lose a friendship
You lose a part of your life.
"If anybody knows anything about her, please say something,"
Juanita says. "I really want her back."
Deady Middle School
When news that Laura was missing spread through the East End,
teachers and parents volunteered for searches. Rocio Rodriguez, a
Writers Club member, tried, but organizers told her she was too
young. Instead she posted and passed out fliers with Laura's
picture.
On the school's Internet home page (ms.houstonisd.org/DeadyMS),
administrators posted a link to a flier that reads: "Help Us Find
Laura!!!" It's in purple, her signature color.
Parents made T-shirts with Laura's picture. Students sent Rebollar,
who took two unpaid weeks off work, dozens of handmade cards.
One girl wrote: "School feels different without her. She is a really
cool friend." Another: "Lo siento mucho (I'm very sorry.)"
As the days went by, grief-stricken students filed into the
counselor's office. Amaya listened and comforted them. When the
students walked out the door, she cried, too.
Laura wasn't just another student. She was Amaya's office worker
and her "Baby Laura."
The rest of the school year wasn't the same. Laura, the girl who
bought Amaya small gifts for her birthday, Valentine's Day and
Christmas, wasn't there to greet her with an ear-to-ear smile.
"There are a few (students) you get close to, and she was one of
them," Amaya says. "She touched everyone's life. Her personality
was larger than life."
Amaya noticed that Laura was starting to mature as a teenager.
She recently had highlights put into her hair. She started wearing a
thin layer of makeup. And she got braces.
When she came across Laura's name for spring TAAS testing, she
broke down. The hardest thing she had to do was mark her best
office worker as being out of school.
"I miss her telling me that she loves me," Amaya says. "She told me
that lots of times."
In Deborah Vining's seventh-grade Texas history class, Laura sat
directly in front of her teacher. Vining noticed Laura had a mini
growth spurt after her sixth-grade year, her feet almost touching the
floor.
"She would smile at me with all those braces," Vining says. "There
she is -- all metal, and her feet dangling over the floor. When she
did her writing, she put her legs underneath her body, curled up and
kept writing."
After Laura's disappearance, Vining stopped herself at roll call and
reminded herself that Laura wasn't there but that she'll be back. No
one sat in her vacant chair.
Vining isn't sure why Laura needed a newspaper the night she
vanished. Laura was in a group of four whose assignment was to
do a presentation on a character from the Texas Revolution. They
were to meet Monday at a library to start work. Vining can only
guess that because the anniversary of the revolution is in March,
perhaps Laura thought there would be some information in the
newspaper.
"It's like she's disappeared from the face of the earth," she says.
"In my mind, she's temporarily away from us," Vining continues.
"She'll be back, and back in class. She'll be in the eighth grade and
back in the hallways."
Clip-clopping along to her next class.
A family waits
As the Smart kidnapping case in Utah continues to grab national
attention, Rebollar wonders why her daughter doesn't get as much
attention. Laura's classmates wonder the same thing. Elizabeth was
taken at gunpoint from the safest of places, her bedroom. Laura
was presumably plucked off the street just outside her apartment.
"I think (all missing kids) should get the same attention because
they're human beings," Rebollar says. "And the pain I feel is the
same."
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