The first thing you noticed about Crystal was her smile. The way her smile illuminated a room was matched only by the way her soul illuminated the lives of the people she touched.

Crystal was an extremely intelligent and gifted young woman. She is a perfect example that you cannot stereotype youth who live on the street. They are each unique and gifted in their own way.

Crystal had a solid, secure childhood. She often spoke lovingly and respectfully of her mother and described her childhood as healthy and happy. She had a high IQ, and was gifted in music and art. At the age of twelve she was reading at a third year college grade level. One of her favorite authors as a preteen was the existential philosopher Camus. Graduating three years early from high school and a gifted cellist, she was offered a full scholarship to Middlebury College.
At the age of sixteen, with a steady job and living away from home,

Crystal applied for and received emancipation in a Texas court, legally making her an adult. Crystal was a free spirit. She had a yearning and a passion to explore, discover and experience the world. Whenever I saw her, she always reminded me of a butterfly; beautiful, delicate and free to be herself.

But there was a wounded side of Crystal that few saw. As many brilliant and gifted children often are, she suffered from chronic depression. Her mother tried repeatedly to get her daughter the help she needed.

But with Crystal’s intelligence, charisma and distrust of the system, she was always able to slip through the cracks. She started self-medicating to ease the fears, pain and darkness of her depression.

A hopeless romantic, Crystal connected with a 29-year-old drifter from Tennessee. To her family’s disappointment, she turned down the music scholarship and instead, notified her mom that she was leaving home. She packed a small backpack and set out.

After traveling through several states, she and her new boyfriend ended up in Utah. She came into the Center a few times. She never said much, but was always warm and friendly to my staff and clients. Her infectious smile always seemed to improve the disposition of everyone she met.

She would come in, do her laundry and get some food. An avid reader, she would often quietly sit and read one of her many books on theology, music, psychology or spirituality, while waiting for her laundry to finish.

One afternoon, she was spotted by police coming out of her squats (a deserted building that homeless youth access to provide shelter and limited security).

Discovering she was from Texas and underage, in the possession of cigarettes and alcohol, they took her into custody. A drug test at the time came up negative.

Crystal repeatedly told the police, the District Attorney and the judge hearing the case that she was an emancipated minor in Texas, but no one would believe her.

Her mother, in a desperate attempt to get her help, asked the Court to order a mental health evaluation. Those pleas were ignored. She was sent back to her mom in Texas.

Back in Texas, Crystal met her mother, went home with her and then left again. Consistent with her approach for life, she listened to her heart instead of her head and set out once again to meet up with her boyfriend in Utah.

She rode freight trains from Texas back to Utah. Within a week she showed up at our Center early one morning, looking exhausted and dirty, but excited to be back.

She found something to eat and started her laundry, then talked with joyful expectation about re-connecting with her boyfriend. She said they were meeting around noon down at the railroad tracks so they could catch a freight train to Florida. She was so excited to see him. She expressed high expectations that her life was finally getting on course and she felt confident her future was going to be bright and positive.

Finishing her laundry, she packed up her things and left the Center a little after twelve noon. She was so excited, barely being able to contain her excitement to meet her boyfriend and begin their new life together.

Less than two hours later, Crystal was dead. Her beaten body was found near the railroad tracks. A medical exam showed she had been strangled to death, and then placed in front of an oncoming train. When news of her death reached the Center, we were all decimated. Many of the staff and clients, male and female alike, cried at the news. My staff was in shock. We had seen her less than two hours before her death. We could not believe she could be gone. Not Crystal. She was a woman of magic and life. We all struggled to wrap our minds around the news.

Evidently, the much anticipated meeting didn’t go the way Crystal had hoped. Her boyfriend was a very insecure and jealous man, ten years older than she. He accused Crystal of being disloyal to him and sleeping her way across the country. She truthfully denied the allegations, but he refused to believe her. The argument turned physical and he beat her unconscious and then strangled her.

He placed her petite, lifeless body across the railroad tracks trying to make it look like an accident and hoping it would hide any evidence of his involvement. He quickly left town and moved from state to state, evading the law.

Homicide detectives made Crystals case a high priority. Through investigating and interviewing several witnesses and collecting any of Crystals property that showed his fingerprints, evidence quickly pointed to her boyfriend, who was captured a few months later after evading the law and being profiled on "Americas Most Wanted".

Because most of the evidence was circumstantial, he was allowed to plead down to a lesser charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years incarceration.

Those of us who met Crystal will always remember her. Her smile is tattooed on our minds and her loving joyfulness has been engraved into our souls. We will always love her. She will never be forgotten.

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