Editorial: South Valley remembers Sierra LaMar 10 years later

With the 10-year anniversary, some of the volunteers and Sierra’s family gathered in private to remember the teenage girl

This editorial is the opinion of Gilroy Life

Sierra LaMar was a happy, go-lucky Sobrato High School student when she vanished 10 years ago. For many years after the popular cheerleader disappeared while walking from her mother’s home in north Morgan Hill to the school bus stop the morning of March 16, 2012, hundreds of dedicated volunteers fruitlessly searched for her remains.

Initially, more than 750 people turned up at the search center. They came from not just Morgan Hill and Gilroy but throughout the Bay Area. Some came from as far away as San Diego and a few from other states.

According to some of the organizers, the attempt to find Sierra was the longest continuous search for an individual in U.S. history. The volunteers spent more than 1,130 searches in a 15-mile radius from the site of Sierra’s home — for a combined 50,000-man hours of search time. They faced hot summer days, and rainy, cold winter days, scanning local woods, ravines and thickets for any clue.

Those who could not take part in the search found other ways to help. Among them were the “kitchen ladies” who cooked breakfast and lunch for the searchers. A family atmosphere was created in the search, one that helped many people heal from personal losses in their own lives.

With the 10-year anniversary, some of the volunteers and Sierra’s family gathered in private to remember the teenage girl who was 15 years old when she, without warning, went missing. Her father Steve LaMar in a recent interview with NBC Bay Area News commented about the pain that comes with the March 16 date.

“It’s hard for Marlene and Danielle and I, but we just kind of remember it. We’d rather think about the happy times,” he said to reporter Robert Handa. “I’m always hoping we’ll someday find her, of course. To be able to have closure would be good.”

The unselfishness of the growing legion of the volunteers astounded Steve. Many spent their weekends throughout several years in an organized effort to find her. The story became national news, forcing people across America to face the possible threat of a parents’ biggest nightmare, the disappearance of a child.

We had hoped that a sense of closure might have come with the sentencing of Antolin Garcia Torres, convicted in June 2018 for the kidnapping and murder of Sierra LaMar. DNA evidence played a key part in the jury’s deciding he abducted her and killed her. The material on Sierra’s clothing (which were found in a field near the bus stop) and in Garcia Torres’s 1998 Volkswagen Jetta provided overwhelming evidence of his involvement in her disappearance.

Torres is kept at Corcoran State Prison. He insists he is innocent.

Her friends and family remember Sierra as a vibrant young woman who loved people and lived her life to the fullest. On the week of her disappearance, she was planning to write an essay about suicide and depression for one of her classes. A friend was going through a trying time and she wanted to express thoughts about sadness we all at times feel.

We know it’s a long-shot, but we hope Torres might one day give information on her remains. This would go a long way toward bringing a sense of closure to the family, friends and community who loved the teenager who loved to sing and dance and make people happy. Sierra was indeed “Everyone’s Daughter.”