‘But the Pain Won’t Disappear’

Even though it hurts, they don’t want to forget.

So Sheryl Hawkinson, director of the Southcoast Early Childhood Learning Center, remembers the enormous cloud of dust the car kicked up when it plowed into the playground.

So Jim Gottenbos, the first Costa Mesa paramedic on the scene, remembers forcing aside his feelings to concentrate on the task at hand: lifting a car off two tiny bodies.

So Nathan Pearson, now all of 5, remembers his mother screaming for him in the madness: “Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?”

“We have to remember it all, to remember every one of those little heartbeats. If we don’t, life can’t go on,” Hawkinson said Saturday afternoon, standing in the schoolyard that a man deliberately plowed his car into nearly eight months ago. “So I don’t want closure. I don’t want to forget it, any of it. We can’t.”

When 300 people flocked to the day-care and kindergarten Saturday afternoon to remember the victims and dedicate a granite plaque in their honor, they couldn’t be blamed for wanting answers: Why did Sierra Soto and Brandon Wiener have to die? Why would a man decide to “execute” children? Why did he pick that place, that evening?

What they’ve found is that there aren’t any answers. So far, not much has changed since the night itself, when counselors were still reminding mothers to breathe. And it will never make sense.

“Everyone was touched and hurt and broken,” Tom Bazacas told the crowd before Sierra and Brandon’s mothers, Cindy Soto and Pamela Wiener, untied a green velvet veil to dedicate the plaque, etched with the names and birthdays of the children.

Bazacas is the pastor of the Lighthouse Coastal Community Church, which is across Magnolia Street from the day-care center, and the man who presided over Sierra’s funeral.

“We want to move forward,” he said. “But the pain won’t disappear.”

On May 3, 1999, according to police, 40-year-old Steven Allen Abrams drove his Cadillac into the chain-link fence surrounding the preschool. About 30 children were frolicking in the small playground, climbing in and out of a plastic castle and playing tag around a huge tree as their parents were arriving to pick them up.

The car crashed through the fence, bounced off a steel swing set and stopped against the pine tree. The impact killed Sierra, 4, and Brandon, 3, and injured four other children and a teacher.

Abrams said that he was frustrated with a failed relationship and wanted to “execute” innocent children, according to police. He faces murder charges that could lead to the death penalty.

*

In the meantime, while Abrams sits in jail awaiting trial, lives--many lives--have changed.

Hawkinson, who founded the center three years ago, has had a tough time. During a memorial service in the weeks after the accident, she collapsed with a stress-induced heart attack and spent a week in the hospital.

She still sees counselors regularly, still keeps photos of the dead children on her desk. She wept openly during Saturday’s ceremony, especially when she gave smaller plaques to a dozen people, companies and agencies that have lent a hand over the past eight months, including the Costa Mesa Fire and Police departments.

Neighbors have complained about a wall that was built around the school after the accident, and two area residents have launched a drive to close the school. About 80 kids attend day care or kindergarten--nearly a third of them from low-income families.

Since Hawkinson suffered a heart attack at the first memorial, “this is the memorial service for me,” she said Saturday.

“Every day I turn the corner and come to work and think about it,” she said. “Every day.”

*

Gottenbos was on the first rescue truck that pulled up to the school after the emergency calls went out.

The Dana Point resident, who has been a paramedic for 20 years, has two teenage boys of his own. He’s seen dead children plenty of times, kids run over by their own parents’ cars. It’s always difficult, but this one will stay with him forever.

“A thing like this, when he sets out to do damage--indiscriminately--it hurts a lot,” Gottenbos said before the ceremony, standing in a crowd of about 15 other rescue workers in uniform. “You go home and give your kids hugs and hope nothing ever happens to them or any other children.”

Gottenbos worked to pull the Cadillac off Sierra and Brandon. Sierra was dead at the scene. Brandon died about 2 1/2 hours later at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach. Gottenbos’ wife--his fiancee at the time--is an emergency room nurse at Hoag and worked on the boy until he died. Gottenbos called her from the scene to see how she was doing.

“She wanted to know how things were here,” he said. “I said, ‘It’s something you don’t want to see. It’s something no one should ever see.’ ”

Jennifer Pearson remembers screaming. Screaming at nothing in particular. Screaming at Abrams himself--everyone assumed it was an accident at first--and then screaming again when he wouldn’t get out of his car to help.

“You were crying,” her son, Nathan, said in her arms Saturday.

“Yeah, I was kind of freaking out, wasn’t I?” she said with a smile.

Nathan, like several other kids, may have been saved by the pine tree. He was inside the playground castle, directly behind the tree, when the car came through. Jennifer was there too, just steps from the playground.

*

Since the accident, the family’s priorities have dramatically changed, she said. They talk about the tragedy frequently, and she’s sure Nathan, now a kindergartner at the center, will remember it when he grows up. Once in a while, he lets a balloon go to remember Brandon and Sierra.

Jennifer, a sales representative for a clothing company, used to feel guilty if she didn’t work her knuckles to the bone.

“Now I have no guilt about it,” she said. “Everything has changed. It’s all about our family.”

Pamela Wiener’s 2-year-old daughter, Shaya, now attends the center. She comes home singing many of the songs that Brandon liked to sing--”The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “The Wheels on the Bus.”

“It’s a joy to hear her do it,” Wiener said. “It brings back wonderful memories.”

Shaya goes with her mother to visit Brandon’s grave in Los Angeles frequently. She mimics her mother, blowing kisses to Brandon on the way out of the cemetery.

Brandon’s older brother, Justin, can’t bring himself to go with them, because it makes him uncomfortable, he said.

“But I think about him every day,” Justin said. “I really wanted a little brother.”