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Sarah's stone: A mother's monument razed Pavers erase stone in California marking site of local girl's death MAY WONG - Santa Cruz Sentinel SANTA CRUZ -- Once there was a stone to mark the spot where Sarah Ann Mercer of Eagle Point was struck and killed by a car while jogging here two years ago. But its existence was short-lived, cut short unexpectedly like the life of the young woman it was meant to memorialize. Sarah's mother wants the stone back. "California, you take my daughter and then erase her stone. Can someone help me find it?" Carole Mercer scrawled one day onto a paper towel. Mercer wrote those lines -- part of a short piece of prose -- after she learned in July that the stone she painstakingly embedded on a dirt strip on the side of Empire Grade Road had vanished. It disappeared after the area was paved over with asphalt. The flat rock, taken from the Rogue River a few miles outside Sarah's home town of Eagle Point, was engraved with Sarah's name and the dates of her life: September 30, 1977 to May 24, 1997. The 19-year-old UC Santa Cruz sophomore was killed on impact that night as she was crossing Empire Grade Road at the spot known as "twin gates," 2 miles north of the campus' western entrance. The 18--year--old driver who hit Sarah has since settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Mercer. The accident happened at about 8:30 p.m. on a straight stretch of the rural, mostly serpentine road, between the gates leading to the fire roads to Gray Whale Ranch State Park and the Chinquapin trail on UCSC's northern end. Mercer visited her daughter's death site for the first time in June. Two years had passed since she lost her only child, and the university's Merrill College had invited Mercer to speak at its graduation ceremony -- the one in which Sarah would have walked across the stage. Mercer drove 11 hours to Santa Cruz, carrying with her a pick, shovel, five gallons of water, a bag of quick--setting concrete, reinforcing steel and the Rogue River stone. Mercer chose a rock from the river she and Sarah floated down together at least once every year. And, Mercer said, Sarah once told her how she hated white crosses as roadside memorials. It took Mercer nearly three hours to plant Sarah's stone. "My mouth dry, my heart beating, my eyes wet. I swing the pick, pound the rebar and mix cement," Mercer continued on the paper towel. Mercer made a shallow depression in the dirt and laid the stone flat onto the ground next to an old wooden and barbed wire fence. A passing bicyclist offered his help. And a man who said he was steward of the meadow nearby informed her the ground was an Indian camp thousands of years ago. Mercer said she made sure the stone couldn't easily be knocked loose, and left behind some rose petals and hawk feathers. The next day, Mercer spoke at the Merrill College graduation. She talked about how her daughter's bright future ended tragically and how eight scholarships and the new city library in Eagle Point were being named in her memory. A National Merit Scholar and the 1995 Eagle Point High School salutatorian, Sarah was being groomed at UCSC to become a Rhodes Scholar. She was studying French literature and had planned to leave for France in the fall of 1997 to study abroad for a year. After the ceremony, Mercer brought the blue and gold painted flowers that UCSC staff and students gave her to the memorial marker. Then she headed home, sick and running a temperature. "It was a very traumatic journey for me," Mercer said in a recent telephone interview. Chief Ranger Bob Culbertson of the Santa Cruz District of State Parks, whose son graduated from UCSC this year, was sitting in the audience when Mercer gave her speech. Culbertson recalled he was moved by her words. So when Mercer called him a month afterward, inquiring about her daughter's missing stone, he was already familiar with the sad ending of Sarah's life on Empire Grade Road. But, Culberston said, that's when he first learned how a State Park's paving project compounded the tragedy. "I was prepared for vandals, but I wasn't prepared for someone to pave over it or dump it," Mercer said. Without getting anyone's permission, Mercer had placed Sarah's stone on UCSC property that provided public access into nearby Gray Whale Ranch, which became a state park last year. This year, the area where the stone was embedded became part of a parking lot project. As one of the county's conditions of approval for the project, Culbertson said State Parks had to replace the dirt area with an asphalt apron. In late June, the state contracted out the work. Culbertson would not identify the contractor. "We had no knowledge there was a monument there and we couldn't tell the contractor to watch out for it," Culbertson said. "The contractor did the job according to the specs and left." Culbertson said he did not know what happened to the marker, whether any worker had actually seen it or if a piece of equipment had destroyed it. After Mercer told him about the missing stone, Culbertson said the contractor and the State Parks maintenance staff looked for it. "It was nowhere to be found," Culbertson said. "And the contractor couldn't recall anything." Mercer said she is not angry at the state agency. "They were helpful. They weren't rude. They didn't brush me off," she said. "But nobody was forthcoming and said, 'Well, we'll fix it' or 'what would you like done?"' Sarah's former college dorm mate, Amber West of San Luis Obispo, discovered the stone missing and called Mercer in Eagle Point with the news. She recalled going up to the site with Sarah's former boyfriend several weeks after the stone was put in place to show it to him. "We looked around. We even dug under the dirt," West said. "There was a lot of fresh asphalt there, and rocks and dirt just freshly turned." West went to UCSC and started asking questions. Eventually, she spoke with Dean Fitch, the university's supervisor of grounds, who in turn directed her to State Parks. West can't help but wonder how Sarah's stone was overlooked. "If they did take it out," she said, "they should have asked someone either whether it should be put back in or returned to someone -- just something other than throwing it away like it was a piece of dirt and hauling it to the dump." Mercer knows now that the new marker she wants installed for Sarah would first have to be approved by UCSC. "Having no other children, it's real important to me that she's not forgotten and that's why I'd like a stone marker there," Mercer said. Today, except for a few clumps of dried flowers hanging from a wooden fencepost, there is no distinguishing mark at the site where Sarah died. The former home of Sarah's stone lies on a narrow strip of gravel next to the paved apron that still smells of fresh asphalt. Fitch, the campus' grounds supervisor, said he would support a proposal for a new stone for Sarah if it ever goes before campus' committees for approval. "I'm willing to pay for it," Mercer said. "But somebody else has to put it in because I can't do it again." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA