Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival
Selected Book Details
- Hardcover
- Author: Carmina Salcido, Steve Jackson
- Publisher: William Morrow
- Release Date: October 2009
- ISBN-10: 0061210056
- ISBN-13: 9780061210051
- List Price: $25.99
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
Summary
On April 14, 1989, for reasons still debated today, Mexican immigrant RamÓn Salcido went on a violent rampage in the idyllic Sonoma Valley wine country where he lived and worked. In the course of just two hours, he killed his wife, Angela, her two younger sisters, his mother-in-law, and the man with whom he suspected Angela was having an affair. He then slashed the throats of his three young daughters—four-year-old Sophia, three-year-old Carmina, and twenty-two-month-old Teresa—leaving them for dead in the county dump. A little more than a day later, the bodies of his daughters were discovered. Miraculously, tiny Carmina was still alive and able to tell her rescuers, "My daddy cut me." In Not Lost Forever, Carmina Salcido explores the events surrounding these headline-making murders with extraordinary clarity and composure. Reaching back to understand the events that traumatized her in childhood—and weaving them together with the recollections of detectives and witnesses—she reconstructs the story of her father's crimes, and their aftermath, in sobering detail. Yet Carmina's story doesn't end there. Those who remember her as the tiny victim of these murders will also be shocked by what followed: how she was adopted by a Catholic extremist family who tried to change her name and bury her past; how she tried to escape their sheltering influence by joining a Carmelite convent and then a ranch for troubled girls; and how the psychological trials she endured along the way nearly broke her spirit—until, at last, she found peace by turning to the one relative still alive to share her grief: her grandfather. As a young woman, Carmina returned to California to share her experiences and discover the family that was brutally taken from her. The devout Catholic also returned to look into her father's eyes on death row and confront the man who took away her entire family. With clear-eyed candor, courage, and grace, this brave young woman takes readers along on her miraculous journey of survival, discovery, and hope. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Disturbing
Rating: 
I liked the first 1/2 of this book. Like most true crime books, it followed an effective formula. It introduced us to the key characters, provided background information, and walked us through the crime and its aftermath.
The second half of the book was depressing in dickensian proportion. Carmina Salcido, the surviving victim of the murderous rampage by her father is put in the custody of her eccentric grandfather who belongs to an extreme offshoot of pre-Vatican II catholicism. Unable or unwilling to cope with raising a small child, he allows Carmina to be adopted by a prominent family who echoes his religious views and signs over trust funds accumulated by public contributions to the boozy and fanatical step-parents. While growing up, Carmina is cloistered on the family farm which seems like a hundred miles from nowhere. Carmina is verbally and phsychologically abused by the adoptive parents and inadequately homeschooled. Not surprisingly, her trust fund to be used for her future education and expenses is depleted. At 17, Carmina (known as Cecelia) decides to go to a cloistered convent as a novitiate in order to 'escape'. After Carmina goes through a continued bout with depression, she is bounced from the convent and goes to an extreme catholic cowgirl camp to get straightened out. After she is booted out of the camp, her grandfather rescues her. At this point things seem like they will lighten up, but it just doesn't. She bounces around from her grandpa, uncles, boyfriends, con artists and even reconnects with her death row new-born religious fanatic father who preaches his own revisionist history of the crimes and abuses he committed. The end shot of this book is that the little girl lost is NOT LOST FOREVER implying that Carmina has found herself. The only thing that I was convinced of was that this young lady needs help.....an education, counseling, anything that can relieve 23 traumatic years. I felt bad by the end of this book because nothing seemed resolved and I had more questions than answers about where this sad story was going.
Wrenching, moving account of human triumph
Rating:
Years ago, I took a class on the literature of the Holocaust. Reading those memoirs was horribly traumatic, haunted me, and my family could not understand why I persisted. I read those books for the same reason I read this one. Their authors have reached out to me, to all of us, and they deserve a witness. And as much as it hurts (and terrifies) to know that human beings can bring this kind of darkness in the world, it also inspires me to try just that much harder to add light. It also gives me hope to witness how strong human beings can be. Certainly, Carmina Salcido is strong.
This is a not even remotely lurid account of a horrific crime and the tragic impact it had on a victim's life. Carmina was only a toddler when her father brutally killed most of her family. Though she, too, was meant to die, she survived and was forced to struggle in a new home, with a new family who were not equipped to helping her deal with her suffering, and who seem to have been far more interested in promoting their own agendas to really try. Carmina's story is certainly a sad one, but she doesn't dwell on her misery. Even as she untangles the story for the reader, she focuses on survival.
Her story, written with the assistance of Steve Jackson (an award-winning journalist and best-selling author), is beautifully crafted, simple and powerful. I don't see how it can fail to touch your heart.
Fabulous story of survival - Highly Recommended
Rating:
Sonoma County, California --- picturesque with its acres and acres of vineyards, also has a seedy side with impoverished small towns, the areas the tourists never see. In the town of Boyes Springs, not too far from Petaluma, field worker Ramon Salcido lived with his wife and three preschool-aged daughters. His marriage to Angela Richards was rocky. Only in her 20s, Angela wanted independence but Ramon wanted to know where she was every waking moment. He either accompanied her or spied on her to know her whereabouts. A very jealous individual, he believed Angela was seeing another man.
On April 14, 1989, Ramon, high on drugs and booze, went on a murderous rampage. The dead included his wife Angela, her mother Louise, Angela's two pre-teen sisters Ruth and Maria, and the foreman of the Grand Cru winery, Tracey Toovey. Wounded, but certainly meant to die was Ken Butti, Ramon's boss, along with his wife, Teri. All the murders were discovered in their heinous detail, victims being either shot at point blank range or stabbed multiple times. After the body of Angela was discovered, the big question remained, where were her three little girls? A thread of hope was held out that perhaps Ramon had taken them with him when he escaped. The search was on to find little Sofia four, Carmina three, and Teresa 22-months-old. It wasn't too long before Ramon was found in Mexico - but the girls were not with him. Sheriff Mike Brown and his staff at the Violent Crimes Investigation Unit feared the worst.
Thirty-six hours after the murderous crime spree began, a man saw what he thought were dolls in a local dump. He didn't think much of it. Until one of them moved. He rushed to her. It was little Carmina, the only survivor of what may have been Ramon's most heinous deeds --- slicing the throats of his three young daughters.
But this story isn't just a true crime tale, although this book would appeal to those who enjoy the genre. It is a story of a little girl's survival and her struggle for happiness. Her maternal grandfather wanted to adopt her but he was too grief stricken himself after the loss of his wife, three daughters, and two granddaughters. Little Carmina was eventually sent to live with a family in Missouri, who were members of a very conservative sect of the Catholic church. Unfortunately this couple was older, their children grown. Being homeschooled, little Carmina did not have much socialization during her 14 years with the her adoptive family. How Carmina was able to pull herself up from the depths of despair (and even though she was only nearly four years old, she remembers everything that happened to her), is what will be remembered in this story of survival.
Some people reading this book are likely familiar with this story either from media coverage of the story in 1989 or from a recent ABC 20/20 episode (available online and very worth seeing). And many likely wondered what had become of the youngest survivor of Ramon's heinous deeds. This book answers those questions and then some. Many also wonder what Ramon's motives may have been, this reviewer had her suspicion verified on pages 174-176 while reading the opinion of the deputy probation officer in the case.
This book, most of it written in the first person from Carmina's point of view, is one that is impossible to put down once started. Immediately after finishing the book I searched online for newspaper articles and other accounts of Salcido's rampage as well as the 20/20 episode which is an excellent companion piece to this book and the story of a girl who was NOT LOST FOREVER as it was feared by many people who had worked on this case or had their hearts lost to his adorable little girl with a great amount of strength. I hope that Oprah discovers her story and features her on one of her programs. This book is highly recommended for not its horrible crimes, but for the resilience of one brave young girl.
Why we should focus on victims
Rating:
NOT LOST FOREVER is an excellent example of why we mustn't lose site of victims' stories in our true-crime literature. The ripple effect of a crime doesn't end when a killer goes to prison, nor even when he is executed. It can reverberate across generations, and at the very least, direct victims often suffer with the physical and psychological wounds until the day they die. So it will be for Carmina Salcido, whose gripping story I watched unfold from a newsroom where she was found.
Steve Jackson's austere, muscular prose and Carmina's story are an excellent match. They speak for so many forgotten victims of violent crime.
A survivor's story about tragedy and triumph.
Rating:
Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival by Carmina Salcido and Steve Jackson is an autobiographical memoirs of Carmina Salcido, the survivor of the Ramon Salcido slayings. Carmina was only three years old when her father went on a murderous rampage killing her mother, two sisters, grandmother, two nieces and a winery worker. This book not only chronicles the events leading up to the murders but it also follows the life of young Carmina and her upbringing along with many other obstacles such as living in a strict Roman Catholic household, a harsh and sterile upbringing. her never ending perseverance to overcome everything whilst keep her head up and moving forward even with the family tragedy dangling over her head like the Sword of Damocles. The book's co-author keeps the story moving along with interviews and well researched news items. Carmina's life is one story that must be heard because there are a lot of people who are in similar households or know those who are living in them. Hopefully her story will be able to inspire others and become a cautionary tale for those who can snuff out potential situations in the future.
I remember her story well growing up. I used to deliver newspapers before going to school and the Salcido murders were really big news in Northern California. But beneath the tragedy, there was a survivor who has managed to overcome everything to live a product life. I have to highly recommend this book. Not only for fans of true crime but for those who want to read a inspirational story about a little girl who has overcome many obstacles in her road of life living with a never-say-die attitude.
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