Candace Bowers, 40, overcame abounding challenges in her life. Her mother died back she was a adolescent girl. She aloft two accouchement as a distinct mother.
Nevertheless, back a about accomplished her own activity problems, Bowers took in the woman’s babyish and clearly adopted her in May. Ancestors associates say the act of affection showed the Garden Grove woman’s character, consistently agreement the needs of others aloft her own.
Bowers formed as a waitress at Mimi’s Cafe, had a advanced amphitheater of accompany and enjoyed spending time with her children, 16-year-old Katie, 20-year-old Kurtis, and the afresh adopted Ariel, 2.
“Everybody admired her. She consistently had a smile on her face and would advice anybody,” Vicki Jeffries, Bowers’ aunt, said in a buzz account afore breaking bottomward in tears over Bowers’ death. “She had a big heart. She was aloof a sweetheart. She would do annihilation for anybody.”
There has been an astronomic access of association support. The football aggregation at Pacifica High School, which Katie attends, affairs to abrasion decals on their helmets anniversary Bowers during their abutting game. The Posse Bar in Westminster, area Bowers socialized, is captivation a fundraiser Oct. 21. And a fundraising website for Bowers’ canonizing costs and accouchement had aloft added than $30,000 by Wednesday afternoon.
Bowers admired country music and spending time outdoors, so a cruise with a adherent to the Route 91 Harvest Festival accumulated both. Back the cutting bankrupt out, the women awash beneath a table but absitively to seek assurance by running. In the chaos, they got separated. The aftermost time Bowers’ acquaintance saw her, she was active abaft her captivation her buzz in the air, Jeffries said.
Nobody could acquisition Bowers on Sunday night, so her uncle, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, collection to Las Vegas on Monday. Late that night, the ancestors accustomed the acceptance that Bowers was amid the fatalities.
Katie alleged her great-grandfather, Robert Lacayo, and asked him if he was sitting down.
“The affliction day of my activity was on Monday,” Lacayo said. Katie “called me and she tells me, ‘Pop, Mom’s gone.’ She started crying. She said, ‘Pop, what am I activity to do after Mom?’ It was the affliction activity you can anytime have. I can’t alike accurate it. I would accept adopted afterlife myself.”
Lacayo, a 78-year-old adept who served in the Korean War, wants to use his granddaughter’s afterlife to try to abatement the availability of advance weapons.
“Everyone abroad ability balloon this in six months, but we will never balloon about it. I won’t and her babe won’t and her little babe won’t and her son will never balloon about it,” he said, cerebration advanced to Thanksgivings and Christmases area there will be an abandoned bench at the banquet table.
“Thoughts and prayers are aloof not activity to do it,” he said. “People acquaint me ‘God works in abstruse ways,’ and ‘Think of the acceptable times.’ That doesn’t assignment back you’re hurting.”
