For weeks, the 20-year-old had been trying to climb out of an ever-deepening hole. On Feb. 8, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter she named Victoria Guadalupe, but the baby was placed in the care of the Monterey County Social Services Department because, her mother says, Rodriguez Mendoza was found to have drugs in her system and because she had no place to live. She created such a ruckus when the baby was taken from her that she was placed in the psychiatric ward at Natividad, where she remained for five days.

When she was released, her mother says, she seemed determined to get her act together.

“She was talking about fixing her life,” Mireya Mendoza says. “She told me she wanted to finish her high school diploma and become a CNA (certified nursing assistant) and give her baby a better life. And she was OK.

“I don’t know what happened. She was trying to do everything right.”

Two days before she died on March 1 in that car – a vehicle in which she slept, parked in the driveway of her boyfriend’s mother’s house on East Laurel Drive – Rodriguez Mendoza had run out of her bipolar medication.

To read the full article (including resources) written by Mary Duan, click HERE