JOSEPHINE OTERO

Eleven-year-old Josephine Otero was known as "the new girl" among her sixth-grade peers at Adams Elementary School in the fall of 1973.

She started school after the term had begun -- something that tends to draw attention from a room full of 11- and 12-year-olds.

They called her Josie.

Josie was quiet and shy, but easygoing, remembers classmate Bill Partridge.

She would just laugh when some of the other kids would sing her the theme song from the "Josie and the Pussycats" cartoon, which was popular at the time.

Charlie Otero remembers his younger sister as pretty and thin with long dark hair.

Her given name was Josephine Estrella -- "Josie Star," he said.

She was the best student in the family. Despite holding a yellow belt in judo, she was deeply entrenched in her "girlie life." She liked her Barbie dolls. She wrote poetry. She painted and drew.

She was inseparable from her older sister, Carmen, the only other girl in the family.

"They were like two peas in a pod," Charlie said.

Josie could be sensitive, too. Charlie still remembers a sibling fight that ended with a tearful Josie accusing him of not loving her as much as he loved the rest of the family.

"It broke my heart that she even thought that for a second," he said.

-- Denise Neil