DEA Agent’s Slaying Motivates Sister

SIMI VALLEY —  For Myrna Camarena, Red Ribbon Week isn’t just seven days of donning ribbons or wearing pins with anti-drug messages. The 43-year-old San Diego secretary is connected to the growing anti-drug observance in the most personal way.

After all, it was the violent death of her big brother Enrique “Kiki” Camarena by drug traffickers that sparked the creation of this national event. The government’s examination of the 1985 murder of her brother, a federal drug enforcement agent, has become one of the most extensive in U.S. history.

Since his death, the soft-spoken woman, whose No. 1 fear had once been speaking in public, has been on a crusade.

Myrna Camarena flies across the nation in late October each year to tell the story of her brother, who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered at age 37 while working in Guadalajara, Mexico.

“Sometimes Red Ribbon Week tends to get commercialized because the kids aren’t aware of the history of it and neither are the teachers,” said Camarena, adding that her main mission is to keep the memory of her brother alive. “I don’t want this to get so commercialized that nowhere is his name mentioned.”

While fighting jet lag after making speeches during the past nine days for schools and organizations in Arizona, Washington, New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Camarena still managed the last leg of her national tour by making her only California appearance Thursday night at Simi Valley’s Royal High School.

Camarena said she sometimes has to take a deep breath before recounting the painful tale of her brother.

When authorities located her brother’s body, Camarena was performing secretarial work for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Istanbul, Turkey. Her boss said he had a message for her that he wanted to deliver personally.

“They said Bill is going to come over, and I thought, why can’t he tell me over the phone,” Camarena recalled. “Why would he come over on Sunday for a work-related matter?”

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When her boss told her that Enrique had been killed, Camarena passed out, she said. Her brother, who had been missing a month after being kidnapped while walking to his car near the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara, was found dead in a park, his body so decomposed that dental records were required to identify him.

Witnesses had stated that Enrique Camarena had been tortured with burning cigarettes and beaten after his kidnapping.

For Myrna Camarena, her seven other siblings and her parents, the death of Enrique was almost too much to take. Her parents had already endured losing another son during the Vietnam War in 1965.

But Camarena said parents in Virginia and California, as a gesture of support, began wearing red ribbons in honor of the slain DEA agent. Within a few years, the final week in October was set aside by schools and civic organizations to emphasize an anti-drug message.

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Despite her initial shyness, Camarena has since made hundreds of public appearances. During one early speech at a Texas school, she froze with stage fright and had to be prodded to speak by her mother, who was there.

Yet, her theme was always clear--to use her brother’s death as a concrete example of someone greatly affected by drug dealing and drug use.

“I tell them: ‘Drugs don’t respect anyone, anywhere,’ ” Camarena said. “It can affect your family just like it affected mine, and it is very, very devastating.”

After one speech in Portland, Ore., last year, Camarena experienced a deep sense of gratification. Someone had mailed her an anonymous letter on a pink paper that read: “Because of what happened to your brother, I have stopped dealing drugs.”

“I got a little emotional,” she said.

Ventura County educators said they appreciated Camarena’s willingness to help educate students here about the origin of Red Ribbon Week.

“When we hear about things like that, it helps us to put it in perspective and to understand we’re part of a larger picture,” said County Supt. of Schools Charles Weis.

It may be especially important to point out the history of the event considering that the focus of Red Ribbon Week is evolving into much more than an anti-drug week.

“At the younger elementary grades, they’re really talking about healthy bodies and wellness, and the whole thing of eating right is also part of Red Ribbon Week,” Weis said. “If we can talk to young kids about doing good things for their body and eating right and being healthy and well, obviously that’s the antithesis of being a drug user.”

For Camarena, her desire is to complete the task her brother set out to do.

“He was killed before he could finish it, and that was to one day make this place a drug-free world,” Camarena said. “He’s gone, but I’m here to finish it for him.”