You could fill an entire newspaper or website (as some do) with senseless, saddening deaths, but this one from upstate has lingered with me, like the local death of baby Luis Angel Garcia. In Sacramento, Rodrigo Rodriguez, a scholarship student at UC Berkeley, was gunned down seemingly at random outside his family's barbershop last week.
Even a most cynical reader cannot turn away from this story without the hollow sensation of sorrow:
He had commuted every weekend for the past three years to spend time with them. After graduating high school with honors, he was the first member of his family to attend college and received a full-ride scholarship that would have covered all his expenses until 2015.
"He did it all on his own," his father said. "We didn’t pressure him; we couldn’t help him; he was doing his thing. He was going to stay in Berkeley until (2015) and was going to go all the way with a master’s and everything."
Rodriguez had a passion for cutting hair that started off in his family’s backyard. His backyard business grew as many people in the neighborhood stopped by to get haircuts, so his father began to create an informal barbershop at their house.
* Other stories at Sacramento Bee, KCRA-3, and this Sac Bee follow-up.