Article about Rachel
Joy
APRIL 20, 1999 - LITTLETON,
COLO.
Slain student's car becomes a shrine
By Steve Caulk
Scripps Howard News Service
Rachel Scott Young people leaned across the hood of a red Acura
Legend at Clement Park Wednesday, painfully aware they would never again see
Rachel Scott at the wheel. A budding playwright, thespian, public speaker and
musician, Scott touched the lives of everyone at Columbine High School who
followed the arts, and now they longed to touch her back. They expressed their
grief by turning her automobile into a shrine. Flowers covered the car, left
where the 17-year-old Scott parked it before she went to school. By Wednesday
afternoon balloons and a white teddy bear appeared. Still incredulous that their
friend could have been a victim of Tuesday's shooting rampage, people hugged the
fendors, kissed the windows and huddled around the vehicle. At one point, in a
spirited effort to console themselves, they began to chant, "We are ...
COLUMBINE! We are ... COLUMBINE!" But when the chanting stopped, a voice sobbed,
"Why did this have to happen to us?" Sarah Arzola, stood to the side, unable to
face the truth and unable to tear herself away. She displayed half a necklace
charm reading, "Best Friends for Life." "Rachel has the other one," she said.
"We were complete opposites, but we were best friends." She and others at
Clement Park Wednesday described Scott as ambitious, goal-oriented and driven by
her dreams. She appeared last month in a school production of a play called
Smoke in the Room, and the performance prompted freshman Tammy Gordon to
introduce herself. "I just had to tell her how good she was," Gordon said,
adding that Scott made her laugh and made her cry. Scott's love of theater
inspired her to write her own play, Arzola said. "It's about a guy in the '20s
who takes everything for granted and then loses it all," she said. "He's a piano
player who makes up his own music. He can't read music, so he just does it from
his head. That's what Rachel used to do. She couldn't read music, but she played
really well, and she wrote music in her head." Scott also produced videos, said
her friends, and she dreamed of becoming a movie producer. She and Arzola
created a video that chronicled last year's homecoming activities. None of her
videos ever had a violent theme, said Chris Reilly, a junior in her video
production class. "She was the nicest person I ever met," he said, "a very big
Christian. She was friendly with everybody, even the gangsters. It seemed that
she was really nice to them. I was shocked when I heard they shot her, because
she was so nice to them." Sue Arzola, Sarah's mother, said she was thankful for
her daughter's friendship with Scott because Scott was such a good influence.
"She and Sarah talked about becoming youth ministers, and how they were going to
write poetry," she said. Scott, who has two brothers and two sisters, was a
member of the Orchard Road Christian Center, said her cousin, Sarah Scott. The
cousin honored her with a poem of her own: "Slipping away from the world today,
Angel of mine, you found your way."
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a
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