NEWSMAKERS OF THE YEAR

Steve Marble

In a day of wrenching and hellish images, it was the one that cut the

deepest.

A fireman, dressed in yellow with a red helmet, on his knees. His head

lowered. Before him was a small yellow blanket covering the body of a

small, young girl. Dead.

Was he crying? Was he praying? Was he simply trying to unscramble the

evil that had swept through a Costa Mesa preschool on a spring evening,

shredding lives and hopes and dreams in a powerful, unforgiving assault?

“I really can’t explain how or why,” says Gregg Steward, the veteran

firefighter who held vigil over the child’s crumpled body. “I just felt

it had to be done and that I was the one who was supposed to do it.”

Steward, a father and a 22-year department veteran, recalls thinking of

the mother, thinking that she’d probably want to be here with her

daughter, but, then again, she really shouldn’t be here. He remembers

seeing a woman and hearing her scream. She was taken into a classroom and

he thought to himself: Maybe this is her child.

A light breeze kicked up, tugging at the sheet. He held the sheet down

and stayed with the little girl.

“I had all kinds of thoughts -- if it was my child, if ...” His voice

trails off. “I sat with her as long as I could.”

The photo of Steward, with the hulking brown Cadillac and the thick oak

tree that finally stopped it, was never published. Editors agreed that

the families and friends didn’t need to revisit that moment.

But now, seven months after two little children were killed and five

others injured when a man -- driven by who knows what demons -- drove his

fat, full-bodied Cadillac onto a teeming preschool playground, it is

still a painful and raw image.

The May 3 accident -- though it was hardly that -- knocked the wind out

of a community that had had its share of problems and challenges, but

nothing quite like this.

Because it seemed to touch a deep place within residents, who reacted

with kindness and spontaneous compassion to the schoolyard tragedy,

rushing forth with prayer, assistance and resolution that such a thing

would never happen again, the Daily Pilot has selected the young victims

as its Newsmakers of the Year.

Sierra Soto was all of 4 when she was killed.

Brandon Wiener only 3.

Nicholas McHardy and Victoria Sherman survived, but were critically

injured.

Ian Wright, Jasmine Saltzman and Danielle Diaz -- a teacher’s aide --

were also injured.

A somber roll call.

It was 5:15 p.m. when the brown Cadillac came purring down the road,

stopped, backed up and -- witnesses would later swear -- sped directly

into the schoolyard. The driver, police reported, said he did it on

purpose, a direct aim, a grotesque assault on “innocence.”

The schoolyard was taken down by chaos. People ran, tried to help.

Parents arrived and searched frantically for their child. Some broke down

in tears. Others hugged. Sierra Soto’s mother, Cindy, was led into a

classroom, away from the mayhem, someplace to be comforted. And the whole

time the driver sat in his Cadillac, staring straight ahead.

“It was a devastating scene. It didn’t even seem real,” said Pam Wiener,

whose son died at the hospital after being rushed from the playground.

“It still doesn’t.”

By the time paramedics and firefighters pulled up, onlookers and parents

had lifted the car in a mad scramble to help the children. The emergency

crews broke into teams, but even with their precision work, the scene

remained surreal.

Mayor Gary Monahan arrived a short time later. He summed up the scene

simply: “It is insanity.” That evening, the City Council took a moment’s

silence in memory of Sierra and Brandon and offered their prayers for the

families and the others who had been injured.

Anger was the first emotion to spill over. A parent of one of the injured

children pledged “an eye for an eye.” Police Chief Dave Snowden said of

the driver: “I think this man will go to hell. I hope we can expedite his

trip.” Indeed, the driver may be headed in that direction. He is behind

bars, held on murder charges and could -- ultimately -- face the death

penalty.

Then came the good. Slowly at first, and then quicker and quicker, people

made the pilgrimage to the South Coast Early Childhood Learning Center.

They dropped off flowers. They wrote poems. Some brought their children

and, together, simply lowered their heads in prayer. Many of them did not

know the victims, but were moved by a greater sense that this was the

right thing to do.

“I explained the accident to them, that two little children went to

heaven and that we’re coming to give the families silent support,” said

Melinda Stark, an Irvine resident who brought her three children to the

playground.

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

The little church next to the preschool opened its doors and 500 poured

in to find refuge and, perhaps, meaning. A night manager over at the

nearby Diedrich’s coffee house set out a glass jar in case any of his

customers wanted to help out. It filled up. And the next day it filled up

again.

“It gave me strength I never knew I had,” Cindy Soto said of the

outpouring.

That Friday, only two days before Mother’s Day, Sierra Soto and Brandon

Wiener were laid to rest. “Tears in Heaven,” the plaintive song Eric

Clapton wrote in memory of his own young son, was played during funeral

services for Sierra at Mariners’ Church. During services at Mount Sinai

Memorial Park for Brandon, the rabbi read a Mother’s Day card to Pam

Wiener. A child she didn’t even know had written it, knowing that Brandon

could not.

The preschool reopened on May 12, nine days after the accident. The

police were on hand, passing out stickers, smiling and goofing with the

children who returned that day. But some weren’t there and everyone

remembered painfully that two would never be back.

Nine days of pain. Nine days in which Costa Mesa weighed good and evil,

innocence and the loss of it. Nine days spent proving that good, somehow,

would always win out.

Brandon Wiener was a fun-loving kid. His mom said he was smart,

inquisitive and loved to pal around with other kids. For some reason, he

loved the vacuum cleaner.

“He loved to pick up. And if he saw a vacuum cleaner, look out.” She

laughs gently at the memory.

Sierra Soto was a dancer, a fluid little young girl with striking looks.

One of her dance teachers said they’d never seen such native talent.

Among the notes left behind at the playground was one probably directed

to Sierra, though it seemed appropriate for all:

“May all our angels dance in heaven with God. It will get easier.”