Pete Stidman

MISSION HILL GAZETTE

“It’s surreal,” said Mission Hill resident Maureen St. Guillen of the loss of her daughter Imette St. Guillen, brutally murdered in New York City Feb. 25. “At the beginning you feel like you’re not a part of it, you’re just looking down on it. And then every day you ask why. And we’re waiting, and we’re waiting.”

The St. Guillen family is now focused on how Imette St. Guillen lived, not how she died. One of their goals is to raise enough funds for an endowment for a scholarship in her name at the Boston Latin School.

Press coverage of the murder has been enormous, from the moment Imette’s body was first found, to the indictment of Darryl Littlejohn, 41, and beyond. Maureen St. Guillen avoids reading any of it.

“I’ve never seen anything and I’ve never read anything,” said St. Guillen, sitting in a café at Brigham and Women’s Hospital with her daughter Alejandra and her daughters’ stepfather, Frank Holbrook. “I’ve separated myself from that entirely.”

“We really wanted to work with the press in the beginning, to keep the case alive,” said Alejandra St. Guillen, adding that she avoided seeing most coverage but saw a few items. “I heard things that were untrue about Imette, but it wasn’t like we were constantly having to battle that. One paper in New York called her an upper-middle-class white girl. That was comical.”

“She was born and brought up in Mission Hill, and she’s not white,” said Maureen St. Guillen, hearing of the mistake for the first time. “We lived on the third floor of a three-family. I was a single parent. Her father passed away in 1990. It’s the furthest it could be from the truth. Plus she was Hispanic.” Selmundo St. Guillen, Imette’s father, came to the US from Venezuela.

The St. Guillen family lived in Mission Park when Imette was born in 1981, and moved into a co-op in the “old neighborhood” section of Mission Hill in 1984, near Fenwood Road and Francis Street. Maureen St. Guillen still lives nearby.

Imette’s care for others, noted by anyone who knew her, began at an early age. Anne Steinberg, who taught Imette when she was a second-grader at the Farragut School, developed a close relationship with the St. Guillens and kept up with Imette’s busy college career.

“I actually met Imette in the first grade when someone knocked her over and I had to care for her,” said Steinberg. “I think her kindness was what really drew me to her when she was in my class. She was always protecting everybody. I guess I kind of knew she would go into the field she did. She was a little girl but she had a big heart.”

Growing up in Mission Hill, Imette St. Guillen kept herself busy in myriad ways. She was part of the swim team at the YMCA on Huntington Avenue, taught gymnastics after school at Ohrenbeger Elementary in West Roxbury and volunteered one summer at the Franklin Park Zoo. She also volunteered to read for blind people at the Perkins School in Brookline and regularly visited an elderly neighbor and helped with chores.

After graduating magna cum laude from Boston Latin School, she majored in criminal justice at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She was in the honors program at John Jay University working toward a masters degree in criminal justice at the time of her death.

“Maybe that’s why they think she’s from upper middle class,” speculated Maureen St. Guillen. “But everything she did, she did on her own. A lot of opportunities she had were because of her dedication to hard work. She would save whatever she had and make things happen for herself. Education is the one thing that young people can do to help themselves. If this scholarship can help, that’s fabulous.”

“One of the sad things in terms of Mission Hill, and the incident, is that both my kids benefited from the Carol DiMaiti Stuart Foundation scholarship, which was set up for Mission Hill residents who went on to undergraduate schools,” she recalled.

Carol DiMaiti Stuart was murdered in Mission Hill in 1989.

Now the family wants to bring the funding of the scholarship in Imette’s name at the Boston Latin School to at least $50,000, creating an endowment that will continue indefinitely. The fund is already gaining steam, and a similar scholarship at John Jay University in New York has already collected over $150,000.

“Our neighbors have been remarkable,” said Maureen St. Guillen. “Everyone, even people you don’t know. But the good thing about this neighborhood is that you know who lives in every single house within a five block radius.”

“They come over all the time,” said Alejandra St. Guillen. “If they’re going somewhere they ask us to go with them, just to keep us busy.”

Friends of the family at Brigham and Women’s Hospital organized a catered reception for Imette’s wake, which, by Maureen St. Guillen’s account, was lovely.

Michel Soltani of Mission Bar and Grill has offered his space for a possible fund-raiser for the Imette St. Guillen Scholarship Fund, date to be announced.

Boston Latin School has scheduled a memorial service June 1, at 5:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the school, and the Boston Latin School Association has scheduled what may shape up to be a large fundraiser at the Boston Convention Center downtown for Sept. 16.

“We want Imette’s name to live on in a positive way,” said Alejandra St. Guillen. “We want to focus, not on how she died, but on how she lived. When someone receives the scholarship in her name, they will think about her life and what education meant to her.”

Donors can direct their funds to: Boston Latin School, 101 Huntington Avenue, Suite 200, Boston, MA 02199. The donation should clearly indicate the Imette C. St. Guillen Scholarship Fund.