Tree in Kenner Park Lives On in Sandra Cantu's Name

Yards away from where 8-year-old Sandra Cantu used to attend school, a crepe myrtle now stands in her memory.

The family of the slain Tracy girl met at Kenner Park this morning to watch the city plant the 8-foot-tall sapling, which should sprout pink blossoms every spring for decades to come. Pink was Sandra’s favorite color.

“A tree is representative of life and strength and hope,” said Tracy police chaplain Dan Higgins before Sandra’s mother and grandmother scooped the first shovelfuls of dirt around the young tree.

Children peeked through the fence from Sandra’s old campus, Jacobson Elementary School, during the brief ceremony. Sandra’s mother, Maria Chavez, smiled. Sandra’s older brother Thomas Fortin, sister Miranda Chavez and grandparents Dolores and José Chavez held hands with Higgins and prayed.

The tree is planted by some picnic tables in the neighborhood park, a couple blocks south of where Sandra’s family lives in Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park.

The now-slender myrtle should reach about 20 feet and live for about 30 years. On the ground by the tree lies a brass plaque inscribed with the words “In remembrance of Sandra Cantu” and the girl’s birth and death dates.

A tree symbolizes new beginnings, said Tracy Unified School District trustee Walter Gouveia. He said he hopes that Sandra’s tree will offer shade for children and families who visit the park.

The tree is Sandra’s second memorial in Tracy. A third one should get built the summer in the form of a $46,500 school playground donated by Landscape Structures Inc. In late May, a Southern California couple donated a hand-built pink-and-purple playhouse to Jacobson School in Sandra’s memory.

Sandra went missing on March 27, prompting a massive citywide search. Ten days later, her body turned up in a black suitcase in a dairy lagoon north of Tracy. Police accused a neighbor woman — 28-year-old Melissa Chantel Huckaby — of kidnapping, raping and murdering the girl.

Huckaby is due back in court in September for a preliminary hearing after pleading not guilty last week to the charges. She remains in solitary confinement at San Joaquin County Jail in French Camp.