Santa Tecum wept softly as she hugged the clear plastic folder of photos to her chest. The snapshots of her daughter, Emily Garcia, were the way Tecum wanted to remember her: Laughing, smiling, dancing to banda music, her makeup immaculate as ever. Not lying in a casket at a public viewing after her sudden death this year — the last time she laid eyes on Garcia.
“It’s been very hard, I’ve been very, very sad,” Tecum said in a recent interview with The Times, speaking through a Spanish interpreter. “Emily would always hug me when she would see me. She was always loving in that manner.
” Garcia, 25, was found dead on a Tuesday in mid-October, in a truck parked outside the Hollywood shelter in the 1200 block of Lodi Place where she lived. Another person was also found dead in the vehicle. Los Angeles police have said that preliminary investigation indicates Garcia died of a drug overdose and that no foul play is suspected, but the case remains open and her family and friends are still seeking answers.
Their pleas have been raised at City Council meetings and on social media, with supporters saying too often the deaths of trans people are overlooked by elected officials and the media. Tecum and two of her other daughters stood beside Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez at City Hall last month, as he honored Garcia on Trans Day of Remembrance. She came to the U.
S. as an “unaccompanied minor,” he said, and as a young trans Latina living in L.A.
she had faced “unimag.
