Sylvia Guerrero had never even heard the word “transgender” until her 17-year-old daughter Gwen Araujo, born a son named Eddie, was brutally murdered. Today she’s an admired activist for transgender causes, even though the horror of Gwen’s fate has upended her life.

Gwen, often called a woman, was really just a 90-pound girl with no chance against the four drunken young men, including two who had been sexually intimate with her, Guerrero said. They viciously beat and strangled Gwen to death at a Newark house party on Oct. 4, 2002, after they confirmed she was biologically male.

Fourteen years later, the two men convicted of second-degree murder faced a parole board for the first time this week in a world more aware of what it means to be a transgender person and the dangers the trans community faces. Jose Merel, 36, was granted parole on Friday with the support of Guerrero, pending a review from the Board of Parole Hearings and Gov. Jerry Brown. Michael Magidson told a parole board on Wednesday that he wasn’t ready for release.

The men had claimed a “gay/trans panic,” a murder defense later made illegal in California in Gwen’s name with the help of Guerrero’s activism. She made a promise beside her daughter’s casket that she would be her voice until people stop dying for who they are.

“My daughter in 2002 brought the trans community to the forefront, and changes began since then,” said Guerrero, who returns to her activism for the trans community with a speaking engagement in Fullerton next month. For more than a decade after Gwen’s death, she spoke at events about her daughter’s murder and the struggle for trans rights at events, before taking a break of several years. She says she is excited to return to actively working on the cause.

“We still have a long way to go, because people like Gwen are still being murdered for who they are and there’s families who are suffering like we are,” said Guerrero, 52. “We have a long way to go before a trans person can be free to live their lives, to live out their dreams and goals like they deserve.”

Gwen’s murder played no small part in the ongoing movement against trans violence and for equality and understanding, said Isa Noyola of the Transgender Law Center. Still, there have been nearly 25 slayings of transgender people in the United States so far in 2016 alone, according to Noyola, including the killing of Brandi Bledsoe in Cleveland last week.

When trans people are painted in negative, stigmatized portrayals by politicians and so-called legal experts — as has happened with ongoing bathroom policy debates — the trans community gets marked for ridicule and violence, she said.

“Whether it’s riding public transit or waiting in line at the doctor’s office … on a daily basis, the amount of trauma a trans person experiences is really unparalleled, and it adds up,” Noyola said.

Guerrero fought the possible parole of Magidson but supported parole for Merel, while other family members want neither paroled. They were convicted at the second of two trials and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

Merel, who has expressed remorse from the beginning, admitted Friday that back then he felt more sorry for himself. He said that he didn’t understand the depths of what he had done until his own daughter, who was gravely disabled, died in 2011, said Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Jill Klinge.

Magidson was called out for being unrepentant at his sentencing and still has not shown remorse, according to Guerrero. His first parole board hearing had just gotten underway in Chowchilla on Wednesday when he told the parole board he needed “more self-help,” including drug and alcohol treatment.

Guerrero considered Magidson and Jason Cazares the principal actors in the killing. Cazares pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for a six-year sentence after two juries couldn’t agree on a verdict. The youngest man charged, Jaron Nabors, then 19, led police to Gwen’s body, hogtied and weighted down with rocks in a shallow grave in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and then testified against the others. He pleaded to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Cazares and Nabors have long been out of custody.

One of the many factors that parole boards consider is the impact on the victim’s family. Guerrero, who was making good money as a legal assistant at a San Jose law firm when Gwen died, is now homeless, shuttling her neatly packed belongings between relative’s homes in a friend’s borrowed car. Her PTSD and memory problems leave her unable to return to her former career and force her to scrape by with help from several crowdfunding campaigns, including a recent GoFundMe page.

“When Gwen was murdered that night, it was the beginning of a life sentence for me and my family,” Guerrero said. “Brandon, then 13, and Michael, then 10, lost their sister and in many ways, their mother. I can never make up for the time we lost as I’ve struggled to deal with the grief that began that night.”

Gwen’s murder spurred the first Trans March in 2003. Noyola said she remembers it as mostly non-trans people, a handful of folks, angry and grieving over Gwen’s murder. Now it’s a huge trans event that kicks off the San Francisco Pride weekend.

Guerrero sees her daughter’s legacy firsthand each time the Lifetime movie, “A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story” airs. She says she receives emails from all over the world. Some of the trans people say they were thinking of committing suicide before seeing Gwen’s story. Some call her “mom.”

“She didn’t die in vain. In her death, she has literally saved thousands of lives.” Guerrero said. “I can’t tell you how many people have told me, because of your daughter, I am free to be who I am.”