Carmina Salcido - Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival

Carmina Salcido sits in the front passenger seat of the

Sonoma County, where I was raised for the first three

The morning fog hangs low on the hills as the

The first stop in Boyes Hot Springs is an empty

The Salcido family moved into a small, one-bedroom duplex house

The car rolls slowly down Baines Avenue as Carmina points

The car swings around and back past the house on

One person who worried about our family that year was

Early that same morning, Detective Sergeant Mike Brown picked up

Immediately to the north of the Kunde Family Estate winery

They must have driven this same way, Ramn and his

Just before seven oclock that morning, thirteen-year-old Vern Inman was

It was midnight before Mike Brown had finished his initial

The view at the Petaluma dump hasnt changed much over

A gentle breeze rattles the dry brown grasses at the top

The next day my sisters and I looked out at

As the community struggled to make sense of the murders,

Carmina stands quietly on the gentle slope of the Calvary

Carmina turns from the graves and walks purposefully back to

On April 19, 1989, as most of the country was

Can we start from when you were first considering these

Early on the morning of September 17, 1990, a line

The penalty phase of my fathers trial was marked by

Ten days after my father murdered my family, I turned

Mrs. Swindell and Elaine flew to California to pick me up.

Life with the Swindells was lonely and stifling, especially for

Just four years after my fathers rampage, Sonoma County residents

Every time we left the Swindells property, I was reminded

Despite the Swindells negative example, I never lost touch with

On the weekend I joined the order as a postulant,

My sudden departure from the convent and admission to the

After my escape from the girls ranch, Grandpa took me

Twilight settles like melancholy over the Valley of the Moon,

In June 2008 the California State Supreme Court rejected Ramn

C armina Salcido sits in the front passenger seat of the sedan gazing out the window as the car races along the serpentine highway between the towns of Sonoma and Petaluma, California. The hills on either side of the road rise and fall, rolling toward the horizon like giant swells on a straw-colored ocean. Remnants of the morning fog drift over the brush-filled gullies between the hills, lingering briefly on the shadowed side of their peaks, ghosts reluctant to leave a favorite haunting.

The grass on the nearby hills is short, grazed to parklike uniformity and guarded by lonely umbrella-shaped oak trees. Other hills and bottomlands next to the highway have been given over to neat, terraced rows of grapevines. It is September 2007, and the wine-grape harvest in this beautiful country north of the Bay Area was early this year. Most of the fruit has been picked, largely by Mexican farmworkers, and is going through the process of crushing, fermentation, and storage in oak barrels that will turn it to wine. A few dark blue bunches still hang heavy on the vines, but autumnal yellows, reds, and oranges are coming to light as well.

Sean Kingstons Theres Nothing comes on the radio. Hopeful about love, its one of Carminas favorites.

Theres nothing in this world

Theres not another boy that could make me feel so sweet

Like her mother, Carmina is a strikingly pretty young woman. She has large, topaz-colored eyes, a wide, engaging smile, and a delicate, upturned nose. She laughs a lota surprisingly big, unself-conscious sound. Considering what shes been through since she was not yet three, its a wonder she laughs at all.

The sound is incongruous with a thick white scar that circles her throat from just below her right ear to just below her left. Another round scar marks the spot at the bottom of her throat where the surgeons placed a tracheotomy tube.

That was over eighteen years ago. Today she is revisiting the landscape of that horrific pasta tour that takes her to Boyes Hot Springs, a run-down working-class community on the northwest edge of Sonoma; to the house on Baines Avenue where she spent the first three years of her life; then out the two-lane, tree-shrouded Sonoma Highway, otherwise known as Highway 12, to the vineyards and winery at the Kunde Estate and the Dunbar Elementary School and what was once the Grand Cru winery near Glen Ellen.

Each stop is another chapter of what a local newspaper once breathlessly labeled the Rampage in Sonoma. As Carmina tells the story, some of her memories are as vivid as yesterday; some are fuzzy and dreamlike yet nonetheless real to her. Certain experiences, even painful ones, she recalls with a shake of her head, as if they had happened to someone else. Can you believe that? shell say. Others bring tears to her eyes and a hitch to her voice.

Much of what Carmina knows about April 14, 1989, and what happened afterward comes from reading old newspaper and magazine clippings at the library, and from the documents, letters, and photographs that occupy twenty-six boxes of evidentiary material in the possession of the Sonoma County District Attorneys Office. She has filled in some of the blanks with the recollections of other people who were living in Sonoma at that time. Some of these stories are real and reliable; some are exaggerated; some are pure fiction. She knows all that. Still, she is trying to piece together their memories and explanations into something true.

Even the self-serving excuses of her father, Ramn Salcido, who still waits for the executioner on death row at San Quentin State Prison.

Up ahead, Carmina spots the turnoff shes looking for. Later the tour will move on to the Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Petaluma, then to the house of horrors in Cotati, and finally to the Santa Rosa home of Mike Brown, the Sonoma County detective who headed the investigation of the murders. But now, first, the car pulls onto a gravel road and up a hill near a rock quarry.

As the car crunches to a halt at the entrance to the Petaluma dump, Carmina is finally overwhelmed. In the years since she returned to California to learn the truth about her family, she has visited each of the other sites, some of them many times. But never here. Her grandfather pointed it out, but he couldnt bring himself to take her.

Every time I drive past this place, she says, I can feel this almost magnetic pull trying to get me to stop. You could blindfold me and I would still know when we were going by.

The view hasnt changed much in the intervening years; only the seasons, her age, and the circumstances are different. In April 1989 the leaves on the grapevines along the highway were the freshly minted color of lima beans. The wild grasses at the dump were as tall as the almost-three-year-old girl who sat among them, waiting for rescue.

For a moment now, she seems to have second thoughts. She hesitates to leave the safety of the car. Then, with a sigh, Carmina gathers her courage and steps out. Glancing at the nearby ravine, she takes note of the embankment, then quickly looks away, swaying unsteadily in the sunlight.