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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the following people: Steven Humphrey; Joe B. Jones, pharmacist (retired); John Mackall, Counselor-at-Law, Seed Mackall LLP; Dan Trudell, President, ARS, Accident Reconstruction Specialists; Robert Failing, M. D. , forensic pathologist (retired); Sylvia Stallings and Pam Taylor of Sotheby’s International Realty; Sally Giloth; Barbara Toohey; Greg Boller, Deputy District Attorney, Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office; Randy Reetz, Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce; Sam Eaton, Attorney, Eaton amp; Jones, Attorneys at Law; Ann Cox; Ann Marie Kopeikan, Director of Vocational Nursing, Lorraine Malachak, Nursing Programs Support Specialist, and Eileen Campbell, Administration, Santa Barbara City College; Christine Estrada, Santa Barbara County Court Administrator, Superior Court Information Records amp; Filing; Liz Gastiger; Boris Romanowski, Parole Agent, State of California Department of Corrections; Lynn McLaren, private investigator; Maureen Murphy, Maureen Murphy Fine Arts; Laurie Roberts, photographer; and Dave Zanolini, United Process Servers.

PROLOGUE

I don’t want to think about the predators in this world. I know they exist, but I prefer to focus on the best in human nature: compassion, generosity, a willingness to come to the aid of those in need. The sentiment may seem absurd, given our daily ration of news stories detailing thievery, assault, rape, murder, and other treacheries. To the cynics among us, I must sound like an idiot, but I do hold to the good, working wherever possible to separate the wicked from that which profits them. I know there will always be someone poised to take advantage of the vulnerable: the very young, the very old, and the innocent of any age. I know this from long experience.

Solana Rojas was one…

1 SOLANA

She had a real name, of course-the one she’d been given at birth and had used for much of her life-but now she had a new name. She was Solana Rojas, whose personhood she’d usurped. Gone was her former self, eradicated in the wake of her new identity. This was as easy as breathing for her. She was the youngest of nine children. Her mother, Marie Terese, had borne her first child, a son, when she was seventeen and a second son when she was nineteen. Both were the product of a relationship never sanctified by marriage, and while the two boys had taken their father’s name, they’d never known him. He’d been sent to prison on a drug charge and he’d died there, killed by another inmate in a dispute over a pack of cigarettes.