Family’s Morning Rush Turns Tragic

The day that saw 12-year-old Norma Vides seriously injured in a traffic accident, then killed in a rescue helicopter crash barely an hour later, began the way weekdays always began for her mother, Genoveva Anaya, and the rest of Norma’s family.

Anaya, 44, a Salvadoran immigrant, was raising a family of six in Sun Valley on her own. The morning routine--dashing off to school, packed into the family car--was rushed and distracted.

First Anaya would drop off her youngest daughter, 7-year-old Jessica, and her two grandsons--Jeffrey Carrasco, 7, and Kevin Leiva, 5--at Pinewood Elementary School.

Then she’d take Norma to Mount Gleason Middle School. Finally she’d drop off daughter Patricia and 17-year-old Pedro Anaya, a cousin, at Verdugo Hills High School. All three schools are in the Sunland-Tujunga area.

Then she’d drive home and get ready for her first job, at a hospital.

But Monday morning on Sunland Boulevard, a series of unlikely events conspired to take the life of a friendly girl with a bubbling imagination who loved poetry.

First, a city truck picking up recyclables was rear-ended by a white Chevy Blazer.

Shortly after, a second city trash truck stopped to offer assistance.

The driver of the first truck was setting out red hazard-warning triangles on the road when the Anaya family’s Toyota Corolla, driven by Pedro, approached. The trash truck operator attempted to signal the car to stop, but the Toyota struck the back of the parked second truck, crunching the front of the auto beneath the truck.

Norma--who, like everyone else in the car except Pedro, was not believed to be wearing a seat belt--was badly hurt. A Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter took her to Childrens Hospital. At 7:43 a.m. it crashed, killing her and three crew members.

Friends and neighbors were left trying to cope with a tragedy they could hardly begin to fathom.

“We will miss her,” Mount Gleason Principal Patricia Joe said in a statement about Norma. “The faculty, staff and students are saddened by her death. Norma was well liked by all. Our thoughts and prayers are with Norma’s family.”

Teachers planned to break the news to students today, but spent Monday night dealing with their own grief and recalling a girl who showed so much promise.

“She had no trouble making friends, and it was clear that her mother always wanted the best for her children, as you would expect from a good parent,” said Assistant Principal John McLaughlin.

The first time McLaughlin met Norma, she walked up to him and said, “Mr. McLaughlin, you know my sister,” he recalled. McLaughlin said that Norma closely resembled her 17-year-old sister, Patricia--long black hair, light brown complexion.

McLaughlin said a crisis team of counselors would be available at the school to speak to students and staff today. “The staff will have time to reflect on her death,” he said.

The family of seven shared a four-bedroom apartment in Sun Valley. Anaya’s husband had been with the family but returned to El Salvador, where he is waiting for his immigration papers, neighbors said. That left Anaya on her own to care for the six youngsters in her home.

Anaya worked a morning shift as a nurse’s aide at Good Shepherd Convalescent Center in Lake View Terrace and did the same work on the swing shift at Shadow Hills Convalescent Hospital.

Neighbors recalled her constantly being away from home working to pay the $600 rent, sometimes returning home in the afternoons, between jobs, to check on her family, and then heading for the second job, arriving home each night about 11.

“They’re nice people,” said Raymond Scarbrough, 53, who lives downstairs from the family, and whose niece played with Norma.

“She works two jobs to support the children. She works all the time. She’s hardly ever home.”

“I can’t believe that. I can’t believe that,” Scarbrough said, tears welling in his eyes, when he heard of Norma’s death.

One of Norma’s friends at the apartment complex, 9-year-old Yvette Medina, said, “She was nice. She said she wanted to be a teacher or a doctor.”

Another friend at the apartment complex, 11-year-old Anniebeth Torres, recalled Norma as a creative girl.

“She was funny. She had a good imagination,” Torres said. “She always made up games. Yesterday, we were playing guns. We were making all these poems. We were reading poems about witches.”

Just two days ago, Norma had written a poem about boys and witches. Anniebeth quoted part of it:

Look out, look out, boys.

Clear out the tracks.

The witches are here and they have all come back.

They hang them high but they would not lie still,

For cats and witches are hard to kill.

Times staff writer Eric Rimbert contributed to this story.