ANTIOCH, Calif. — The message scrawled in marker on a bright-pink balloon – “Hi Sela, love you and miss you so much” – slowly faded from sight as it floated up into the clear sky above Holy Cross Cemetery.
It joined dozens of other candy-colored balloons carrying poignant messages memorializing 7-year-old Sela Mataele and her closest father figure, Ramiro Castro, who were killed in a horrific accident one year ago on April 12, 2021, at the hands of a repeat drunken driver.
While friends and family who gathered for the occasion all looked up, Sela’s mother, Corrina Rosalez, turned away. She stared hard at the ground, wiping her eyes so her two boys – who along with her were badly injured in the same accident – wouldn’t notice the tears.
It’s been an agonizing year for Rosalez, who’s had to put aside her grief to pay off mounting medical bills from the accident, relive the trauma by attending the court appearances of the driver who crashed into her family’s Corolla, and help her two sons try to cope with the tragedy.
“People tell me I’m strong, but I don’t feel it,” she said at the memorial gathering, sitting on the grass in front of Sela and Castro’s burial plots.
“I’m just not ready to deal with it, with any of it,” she said. “I’m emotionally not there right now. I know I’m here physically, but I guess I’ve torn myself away from a lot of people. And I don’t like hearing that it’s going to be OK.”
Rosalez can’t control the occasional memory flashes of that fateful day. They might strike when she’s sitting alone in traffic, or when her phone sends a random photo memory of a grinning Sela to the lock screen. That’s when images of the accident come flooding back.
She was falling asleep in the passenger seat that evening last April while Castro, her boyfriend of five years, drove the family home from dinner at Golden Corral Buffet & Grill in Concord.
Sela, Nicholas and Julian (then 7, 5 and 2) were settling down from a sugar rush in the back seat as the family’s Corolla coasted down West Leland Street toward John Henry Johnson Park in Pittsburg.
Suddenly, a speeding Camaro smashed into the rear of the Corolla, killing Castro at the scene and severely injuring Sela, who was airlifted to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland and pronounced dead there.
The Camaro’s driver, then-25-year-old Christian Ricardo Vargas, already had been on probation for a previous DUI and was arrested at the scene. Earlier this month, he pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and one count of causing a drunken-driving injury within 10 years of a prior DUI offense.
Rosalez is working on the statement she will read at a May 6 sentencing hearing, where Vargas faces a possible 21-years-to-life term.
During interviews over the past year with this news organization, Rosalez hasn’t spoken much about Vargas, other than to say she remains deeply angry at him. She’s been too preoccupied with the physical and mental price tag that comes from having her life ripped apart.
She started looking for work in November after her ribs healed, although some of her broken teeth still need to be fixed. After rent, utilities and groceries, what remained of her monthly welfare check went toward Sela and Castro’s headstones at the Antioch cemetery. Much of the $54,000 raised from the family’s GoFundMe paid for Sela’s funeral and a new car because the Corolla wasn’t insured.
After months of numbness interspersed with bursts of adrenaline, life without her daughter and partner had begun to feel starkly real.
“It’s hard with all these holidays coming up,” Rosalez said last fall. “Thanksgiving was Sela’s favorite; I made her hecka mashed potatoes last year and Ramiro was entertaining the kids all day. Now it’s hard for me to really like doing anything, even watching TV, because it just reminds me of them.”
Rosalez could have taken advantage of therapy services offered at the Walnut Creek hospital where she was treated but was too busy admonishing herself for not finding a job yet, so passed on that. “I need to hurry up and find something,” she said at the time.
The grisly crash prompted the Pittsburg City Council to discuss the need for more DUI enforcement and traffic-calming measures on West Leland Street, a major thoroughfare that drivers often use as an alternative to Highway 4.
“It’s a tough situation when the resources aren’t always there, but I think the community does come together to rally around individuals in need,” Pittsburg Vice Mayor Shanelle Scales-Preston said in an interview. “My heart just aches for her as another mother.”
Preston, who attended a community vigil for the family shortly after the accident with other city officials, said if Rosalez ever wants to hold another public memorial, “she just needs to say the word and we’ll be part of it.”
Heights Elementary School meanwhile has dedicated a campus bench in memory of Sela, the second-grader who radiated joy and greeted everyone with hugs.
As the one-year anniversary of the tragedy neared this month, Rosalez began working full-time as a caregiver in assisted-living for the elderly and disabled.
Though the hours can be long at times, “it reminds me of taking care of my kids in a way,” she said.
Close loved ones aren’t surprised that Rosalez pushed to find a job even as physical injuries and emotional trauma lingered for months after the crash.
“She’s a sharp woman,” said her brother-in-law, Kava Mataele. “I’ve known her since high school, and even before Ramiro, she did so much by herself for the kids. She’s going to do even greater things now, and we’re going to try to give her all the support she needs.”
While those who attended last week’s balloon release wore black T-shirts dedicated to Sela and Castro, the scene resembled a celebration more than a mournful vigil.
Seven-year-old Nico was playing games with other children on the cemetery grass, bouncing around with a jubilance that belies three surgeries and months of being in a wheelchair.
“It’s been a rough year,” said Rosalez’s aunt, Adrianna Rosalez, as she watched the children play. “They’re all up and moving now. Thank God, they’ve come a long way.”
At one point, Nico scurried up to his mother for the third time that evening to show her a new photo he had just taken with her cell phone camera.
“I’ll look later!” she told him. “Go play with your friends; mommy’s busy right now.”
But as Nico jogged back to his brother Julian, Rosalez held her gaze at them for a few moments longer, making sure her children were safe in a world she knows won’t always do the same.
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