Enjoying Life was the Goal
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
rafu shimpo sports editor
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2008

Palos Verdes senior Sakura was ‘always smiling.’ His funeral takes place today.

MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS/Rafu Shimpo
Signed soccer balls and gloves, along with flowers and t-shirts comprise a makeshift shrine in the PV goal.

Robert Casillas/The Daily Breeze
As goalie, Sakura helped the Sea Kings to the 2006-07 CIF championship.

PALOS VERDES.–Wednesday, 2:50 p.m.. The peal of the day’s last bell reverberates through the open corridors of Palos Verdes High School. Almost instantaneously, waves of students fill every vacant space. Shouts are hurtled toward some underclassmen. A group of four or five girls murmur to one another then burst into raucous laughter.
But the hollering and giggles subside near the three ten-foot lengths of yellow butcher paper hung on a bulletin wall in the center of campus. This is not the spot for levity. This place is reserved for Andrew.
Messages are scrawled on nearly every available space on the paper. Odes like, “Thank you for teaching us how important life is,” and “I met you only once or twice, but you made me smile.”
As friends and family gather with heavy hearts today for the funeral of Andrew Sakura, perhaps we can all take a moment to reacquaint ourselves with what brings joy to our lives. Andrew touched a great many lives in his 17 short years, lives that, despite the overwhelming sense of loss, are richer for it.
Hundreds turned out for a candlelight memorial on March 9, on the soccer field at Palos Verdes High School, where Andrew staged some of his greatest moments as the Sea Kings’ goalkeeper. Dr. Bruce Sakura spoke to the gathering of students, parents and total strangers about his son, reminding all in attendance about cherishing every moment.
“He was a good kid,” Dr. Sakura said. “He’s just like his dad; strong-willed and hard-headed. Recently, we had gotten along so well.”
With his wife Karen at this side, Dr. Sakura urged everyone to drive safely, to slow down and respect the forces of the road.
Andrew was driving his father’s 1998 Chevrolet Corvette just before 8:30 p.m. on March 8. With his girlfriend, Lillian Harwell, in the passenger seat, Andrew blasted the powerful sports car down Crenshaw Boulevard in Torrance, south of Sky Park Drive. Traveling at a high rate of speed, he lost control and skidded across the center divider and into oncoming traffic. The dividing wall at the curve in the road prevented the opposing drivers from seeing him before the crash.
The Corvette was struck on the driver’s side by a Jeep Cherokee, driven by 28-year-old Julia Graylow of Redondo Beach. She suffered a severely broken jaw and the loss of several teeth. Lillian suffered moderate injuries and spent several days in the hospital.
Andrew died in surgery at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Torrance Police are still investigating whether street racing was involved, but all indications point to this being simply a tragic accident.
“He always said, ‘It’s not where you are, it’s who you’re with,’ and that is so true,” said Palos Verdes senior Denise Yavas. “A lot of the time, we just ended up driving around because we couldn’t figure out what to do and it was still just as fun. One time, we took a group of cars to an open lot and turned up the music and just danced.”
On March 10, the Monday after the accident, word of Andrew’s death had already swept across the PV campus before school began. Several students had posted tributes to the young man on various Websites and chat rooms.
“I can’t believe you’re gone,” one posting read. “I just expect you to roll up in your Mustang and just be like, ‘What’s up guys?’ I want that so bad, man.”
A makeshift memorial sprang up almost instantaneously, inside the soccer goal where Andrew patroled for the Sea Kings. It grew in size quickly, with flowers, wreaths, posters, t-shirts and signed soccer balls and goalie gloves.
“The team is really banding together, they’re devastated,” said PV assistant soccer coach Derek Larkins. “This is a big wake up call for a lot of them. At the same time, I think their true maturity and personalities are coming out. They’re all very good kids and they care very deeply about their teammate.”
The Sea Kings were co-CIF champions in 2006-07, something for which Andrew deserves a lot of credit, Larkins said. This season, three matches in the December tournament at South Torrance went to overtime penalty kicks, with Andrew denying the opponent each time.
“We won all three of those games and we never saw a goalie performance like that,” Larkins recalled. “He was so acrobatic and loved throwing his body. Some of the saves he made it was, ‘Are you kidding me?’
“He reallly loved being a part of the soccer program and you especially saw that this year. He was always giving high-fives to his teammates, giving high-fives to me. He was just really excited about life.”
PV teammate Jonah Batista said he had hoped someday to work in the medical field with Andrew, who had planned to study pre-med at Santa Clara University this fall.
“I wish Andrew had a second chance. We had so much planned,” Batista said. “Now that can’t happen. It’s so different. I still expect to see him in school. I expect to see him in front of me. I’m just in denial, like he’s absent.”
In the days following the crash, fellow students and friends have been swapping stories about Andrew, taking refuge in fond memories of the guy who “was always smiling.”
“He also loved eating,” Yavas said. “He was a really messy eater. He was very protective of his food and loved ketchup so much. so so much!
“Every memory I have of you is with a smile on your face,” a student named Olivia wrote on the butcher paper.
“We hung out and he was really cool,” said schoolmate Seth Escobar. “This is not true. I can’t believe I won’t see him after school today or any other day.”
At the Sunday vigil, Dr. Sakura struggled to speak at times, but resolved to deliver his words to an audience of Andrew’s peers.
“He was a good kid, and it was completely unfair. He was not drinking and doing drugs...and he has to be the one.”
Dr. Sakura said he had complete faith in Andrew’s abilities as a driver, that he’d responsibly driven the Corvette on many occasions, as well as dirt bikes and street bikes.
“Unfortunately, we all make mistakes. Usually it’s not a fatal mistake,” he lamented.
The shrine between the goal posts continued to grow, with nightly candlelight observances through the week, and tributes continued to fill the butcher paper on campus.
Andrew’s funeral is scheduled for 1 p.m. today at Rolling Hills United Methodist Church, with burial at Green Hills Cemetery. A reception at Palos Verdes High School will follow.
In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Palos Verdes High School track and field project, made payable to Sea King Capital Project, Andrew Sakura Memorial Fund, P.O. Box 818, Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274.
On her MySpace page, Yavas wrote, “Remind your parents that you love them, as often as you can.”
On his own page on the same website, Andrew had written, “Hold on to the things that mean the most to you. Because once you lose them, that’s when you’ll know how much they really meant to you.”
Additional reporting by English Section Editor Gwen Muranaka