One in an occasional series
She was a sweet little girl, the kind a preschool teacher always remembers.
Even after 10 years, Iriana DeJesus lives shiny and smiling in former teacher C.J. Waddy's memory, glowing with a sort of pigtailed promise that announced she would rocket out of Hunting Park and be remarkable somewhere safer and bigger.
But in the summer of 2000, Iriana was abducted, raped, and strangled at age 5 by a stranger who had enticed her to walk off with him. The suspect, identified as Alexis Flores, 24 at the time, is still at large, believed by police to be in Honduras.
Even for the First Congressional District - one of the poorest places in America - the crime was rare and monstrous, and it was profiled on television's America's Most Wanted.
"It crushed me," said Waddy, 35, who taught in Iriana's preschool, the East Frankford Daycare Center, which his grandmother cofounded. "I was enraged. I had her in my care, a teeny little girl who didn't do anything to anybody. There hasn't been a day gone by I haven't thought about her."
Unable to ease the torment over the years, Waddy finally hit upon an idea that would at least blunt the nightmares: He's writing a children's book, illustrated by his 11-year-old son, Chafik, about the dangers of children interacting with strangers.
In the book, a boy hero with super powers rescues a kidnapped little girl before she's harmed.
Nowhere among the pages is there a weeping mother, or a funeral, or a dismal memory that festers forever in a still-mourning teacher's head.
"I've daydreamed about saving Iriana over and over," Waddy said. "In the book, I just change her name to Anna, then change the ending to have what I wanted to have happen.
"I just had to write this book. I just had to take the hurt away."
"Mr. Big's . . . worker, Snails, yells up to the second level of the barn where Anna is being held. 'I want to go home,' Anna cried. If only she had said no to strangers, she would be home playing with . . . her dolly and sharing cookies with her daddy right now."
- From Waddy's "U Nooo [You Know] Tito, Boy Hero Says No to Strangers"
Violence has long been part of Waddy's life.
He grew up in the Whitehall Apartments in Frankford, a housing project that Waddy recalls with little affection.
"Frankford was always tough," said Waddy, who still possesses the muscular build he had as a standout defensive end on the Frankford High School football team.
Throughout his life, he said, there were rough characters, bad days.
"I have seen so many things out here," Waddy said. "The killings and the robberies. It's stuff out of horror movies."
Along with hunger and poverty, violence is a big part of the First Congressional District. The district includes an area of Kensington that has the city's highest concentration of violent crime, with more than 800 violent crimes per square mile, an Inquirer analysis of police figures shows. That section - bounded by Ontario, E, Cambria, and I Streets - also includes the poorest part of the district.
The area of Frankford where Waddy taught and still lives is tied for the second-most-violent sector in the city, with 600 to 800 violent crimes per square mile.
Throughout his life, Waddy said, his mother, a certified nurse's aide, and his father, a janitor at the old Spectrum, among other jobs, stressed the importance of staying as far as possible from street violence. Waddy tried.
Rare among his buddies in the neighborhood, Waddy had the grades to graduate from high school and to go on to college.
When he went to Western Connecticut State University to study elementary education, he was amazed at how his mostly suburban classmates would hang on his every word whenever he recounted tales of gunshots in the night.
