| Always with a smile By TY PHILLIPS Tuesday, January 28, 2003 Sharon Rocha lies in a hospital bed at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto, woozy from the combination of painkillers and pain. It is May 4, 1975. A nurse cradles a tiny baby girl and hands her to Sharon, who gently takes her daughter into her arms. Sharon stares at the child, and the two melt into one. The pain disappears. Laci is here. "My first thought was that she looked like my grandmother," Sharon said. "She was all wrinkled up. We got over that one real fast. Well, as soon as the wrinkles went away." During her pregnancy, Sharon had sensed that there was something different about this child. Something special. It was the way the child felt inside her. Sharon understood the feeling once she had had time to memorize the intricacies of Laci's face. Happy people get the best dimples. "I always knew she was going to be a good, happy baby," Sharon said. "Within a few days, she was sleeping through the night. When I would go get her out of her crib, she would always wake up with a smile on her face. All her life, she has been a happy person." -------------------- Laci giggles, intently watching her mother work the new tool free from its box. It is an early spring day. Laci is about 5 years old. Her excitement bubbles into innocent laughter as her mother shows off the prize. It is a weed puller. "Can we go do it now, Mommy?" Laci asks. Sharon nods, and the two head outside. Children do not need much to be happy. "That was the beginning of her interest in horticulture," Sharon said. "She would always ask me,'Can I go pull the weeds?' What am I going to say, 'No?'" Sharon watched through a window as Laci --or hours upon hours-- worked and played in the dirt. She quickly recognized the difference between plants and weeds. From that time on, wherever Laci lived, she surrounded herself with the fresh, green life found in vegetable gardens, flowers, plants and trees ----------------------- The sun slowly rises over the Rocha family dairy west of Escalon. It is a frosty morning in the early 1980s. Hundreds of cows stand in a vast, steaming sea of mud and manure. Laci and her older brother, Brent, attempt to cross. Laci's tiny feet swim inside a pair of her father's big rubber boots. She curls her toes upward to keep the boots on. After a few steps, one of the boots sticks in the mud and Laci helplessly falls forward. Her arms sink to her elbows into the muck. Her face is a few inches from touching the mud as her hair brushes the surface. She yelps out for help. Everyone around begins to laugh uncontrollably. Laci is angry at first, but her displeasure soon disappears into the innocence of raw laughter. "It was a great place to grow up," Brent Rocha said. "We always had a good time out there. As a kid on a dairy, you kind of have to make your own fun." Laci and Brent were young children when Sharon and Dennis Rocha divorced. The children moved to Modesto to live with their mother, but often spent weekends at the family's dairy. The children sought adventure whenever one presented itself, and they created it when it did not. They raced around on four-wheelers and spent countless hours in their grandfather's swimming pool, playing games like tag and Marco Polo, or doing flips onto floating mattresses. Even though Brent was four years older than his sister, Laci never had any trouble fitting in with him and his friends. As they moved through their teens, Laci slowly began to blossom into a beautiful young woman. The change was not lost on Brent's friends. "She has always been so fun and outgoing," Brent said. "After a while, all my friends were saying things like, 'Man, your sister is really cute.' When she was 13 or 14, she still wanted to hang and I was kind of like, 'No, I don't think that's such a good idea.'" +++++++++++ HOME INDEX INCONSISTENT STATEMENTS CASE INFO LACI LACI'S FAMILY LACI'S ALBUM Thank You Letter/Wedding Pictures |
| WHO WAS LACI? |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| IN LOVING MEMORY OF LACI & CONNER PETERSON |
|