Suddenly, They Were Gone

CINDY PALACIOS VALLADARES

She dreamed of

being a princess

Seeing the car speeding through the crowd at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, Veronica Reza did what any mother would do. With one arm, she clasped the stroller holding her 8-month-old son, Christopher. With the other, she tugged frantically on the arm of her 3-year-old daughter, Cindy.

But before Reza could reel in her daughter, the car's bumper caught the little girl and swept her away.

"I thought it was a bomb," Reza said Thursday. "I saw boxes flying. People were screaming. I tried to pull her toward me. A homeless woman got in the way. It happened in an instant -- like that!"

As she spoke, she held out an arm and tugged at empty air.

"If I would have pulled her by just a little more," she said, "I would have saved her."

Reza hadn't gone to the market for food. She had traveled 45 minutes by bus so her children could see their dad, Rafael Godoy Palacios, who works two jobs nearby, at a Chinese restaurant and a movie theater.

Their trip Wednesday was to have been a family adventure, far from their cramped apartment in Koreatown.

Sometime before 2 p.m., Veronica, 26, heard the screams of shoppers and instinctively clung to her infant. She tried to pull Cindy closer.

"She wanted to save her little girl," said Jose Reza, Veronica's brother. "She wanted to move her, but the car went too fast."

Cindy Palacios Valladares, one of Wednesday's youngest victims, was a bubbly child with a round face, a pouty nose and short, dark, curly hair. She loved dolls and teddy bears and playing tag. She liked watching TV shows about animals. With a neighbor's daughter, she would pretend to be a princess, imagining a life beyond the one-room apartment she shared with her mother, father and baby brother.

Veronica's Reza's cousin, Miguel Reza, used to take Cindy to the park. She'd giggle on the swings and trot to the slides, the 16-year-old recalled.

"For her age, she had a remarkable vocabulary," said Carlos Hernandez, a neighbor who had a pet iguana that Cindy liked to visit. "She was very well-spoken, as though she was a little adult. But she was playful like a child."

Sometimes Cindy would visit the apartment of neighbor Jose Recinos, who has a 3-year-old daughter and two parakeets that delighted Cindy.

Wednesday night, Recinos took a case of cold sodas to Cindy's parents, hoping to bring a small measure of relief to the family as they grieved in the stifling heat.