Last September the golf world was stunned when a young, talented golfer was savagely murdered on the golf course. Celia Barquín Arozamena an Iowa State student and former Big 12 Player of the Year was attacked while playing a solo round on one of the colleges home courses, Coldwater Golf Links in Ames, Iowa.
To an eastcoaster Ames, Iowa sounds like small town America with farms, familes and brings to mind cornfields, friendly neighbors and the “Field of Dreams” question: Is this heaven?….No, It’s Iowa.
Up until that fateful day it was heaven for Celia and her Cyclone teammates.
You see, Ames isn’t heaven at all. It’s a place with problems like so many of our cities and towns. With issues like drugs, homelessness, violence and poverty Ames is a microcosm of our country and its seemingly endless issues.
*** For all of Celia Barquín Arozamena’s spectacular accomplishments — a 3.38 GPA as a civil engineering major at Iowa State, the Big 12 Player of the Year award in 2018 — the most special thing about her was the way she made people feel. Nearly every day Celia set aside time from her crammed schedule to handwrite notes to those in need, whether it was a teammate who had missed a big putt or a friend who had whiffed a big test. She would stash the letters in their textbooks or backpacks, and these pick-me-ups were so treasured there are dorm rooms across Iowa State papered with her tidy script.
*** “I have never known anyone who gave so much of themself to so many people,” says the team’s coach, Christie Martens, sitting among them. “It wasn’t just the kind gestures she always did but also the energy she put out into the world.”
*** A search dog tracked Celia’s scent to a tent in the woods in Squaw Creek Park. Police were examining the area when pudgy, baby-faced Collin Richards suddenly appeared, saying he had come to retrieve his tent. Like Celia, he was 22, but if her life had been defined by love and achievement, his was the diametric opposite: a toxic mix of family instability, reform school, substance abuse, violence and trouble with the law. Richards had fresh scratches on his face and a deep laceration on his left hand that was still oozing blood. He was detained by police, and interviews with a man he had been camping with and two associates Richards had enlisted for a ride out of town led detectives to a nearby house. The owner, an acquaintance, said Richards had just come by to change out of clothes that were covered in dirt and blood. The drifter who had been camping in the Squaw Creek woods alongside him told police Richards usually carried a long, serrated knife to cut wood. He also conveyed a chilling detail: The day before, Richards said he had an urge to rape and kill. Only a matter of hours after Celia’s body had been discovered, Collin Richards was arrested for murder in the first degree.
Her tragic death is a grim reminder that evil can be so very close to all of us. Here was a girl, a kind, caring girl who was nurtured by loving parents and ready to start her life. It’s an unspeakable, unbearable tragedy. And it happens too often in our country.
Celia’s family and friends remember her as the loving, kind person she was. But her story and so many others are a reminder that evil is really never far away.
Related Articles
