In the summer of 2000, Arthur Valenzuela became Fresno's 11th homicide victim of that year.
More than nine years later his mother, Lupe Gastelum, still is waiting for justice.
"It gets me," she said. "It will always get me."
On Saturday, Gastelum stood along M Street at the Mariposa Mall in downtown Fresno, quietly holding a picture of her son. Her goal: to make sure he is not forgotten, and to make sure police continue to pursue the investigation into his unsolved murder.
Around Gastelum, other families were doing the same, in a vigil organized by Nellie Carrillo, founder of the group called Mothers for Justice.
There were family members of Jaime Michael Moreno, a 16-year-old Parlier resident who was killed in a drive-by shooting this past summer. And Anthonette Hilliard, the mother of Darryl Rene Hilliard Jr., who also was killed in a drive-by back in 2004. And Angie Zapata, whose son Joey was killed in 2007.
The common theme for the disparate group gathered Saturday is that the murders of their family members remain unsolved.
Some had other reasons for showing up Saturday.
Reedley resident Santa Cruz Gonzalez is trying to convince police that the December 2007 death of her daughter -- Parlier resident Joy Cepeda -- was a homicide, and not a suicide.
Gonzalez said her 22-year-old daughter "would have never, ever left her son," who was 4 at the time of her death.
Gene Cervantes has looked into the death, and has serious doubts that it was a suicide as well. "I'm convinced there's foul play," he said.
Cervantes, a Calaveras County resident who is a victim advocate for the national organization known as Citizens Against Homicide, came to Fresno with his wife, and they set up a table at the invitation of Carrillo.
Mothers like Gastelum, Zapata and Hilliard all look to Carrillo, whose son David Gomez was shot to death Nov. 7, 2002, in east-central Fresno.
In 2007, Fresno police announced they were looking for Gilbert James Torres as a suspect and that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. He remains at large.
Cervantes, the Citizens Against Homicide advocate, said there is always hope of closure -- and he is an example of that possibility.
Starting this month, he will be spending a lot of time in Fresno, attending Phillip Woodley's murder trial.
The Selma resident is charged in the July 2005 stabbing deaths of his father and stepmother in their Tarpey Village home.
The stepmother, 71-year-old Angie Woodley, is Cervantes' cousin, and he believes the work of Citizens Against Homicide helped bring Woodley to justice.
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