Carmina Salcido remembers her sister Sofia, 4, trying to protect her. She remembers her father's eyes when he came for baby Teresa. She remembers the silence that followed as he walked away.
"He was in a hurry to do what he was going to do," Carmina Salcido said.
On April 14, 1989, Ramon Salcido, 28, embarked on a killing spree that shattered the solace of the Sonoma wine country, horrified the rest of the country and ripped apart Carmina's life before it had really begun.
He had been drinking and doing drugs the night before. He loaded his kids in his car and looked for his wife, Angela, whom he suspected was having an affair with a co-worker at Gran Cru winery. He slashed his children with a butcher knife and left them at the county dump. When he was done, he had killed Carmina's sisters, her mother and four others.
He slashed Carmina's throat, and she lay there for 36 hours, bleeding, clinging to life. She was 3.
Carmina is 23 now and trying to restart her life. She is speaking publicly about her story because she wants to give others hope.
"I think there is a reason I survived and that's to tell my story, to show that people can live through the horrible things that can happen," she said.
Read the full story at SacBee.com