RIALTO >> For more than two decades, Enedina Arechiga has been living her life in a bit of a haze. The Colorado woman is surrounded by her loving family, her sister and her four sons, but she is also surrounded by bittersweet memories of two young lives that never had the chance to shine.

Arechiga’s 17-year-old daughter, Delores Jara, was mysteriously beaten and set ablaze in 1993. But the investigative trail went cold, and authorities made no arrests in the case.

Now roughly 22 years later, Rialto police have reopened the case, and they hope to develop new leads.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 2, 1993, Arechiga received a phone call that changed her life forever.

A Rialto police detective let her know that a fire had ignited in her family’s Rialto apartment, and it had caused some damage. But there was more.

“He asked me if I knew where my daughter was,” Arechiga recalled.

Arechiga, her then boyfriend, and her young son were in Nebraska visiting her ill grandmother while Delores had stayed behind.

“I told them she had stayed with friends,” the 64-year-old grandmother said. “Then they told me that they had found a body inside and if there were any identifying things that my daughter had.”

Her mind now racing, she said she described the butterfly tattoo she had on her shoulder blade and a cross tattoo on her hand.

“That’s how they realized that was my daughter,” Arechiga said. Then, she frantically began to ask about Delores’ infant son, Emilio.

“So now we have a missing baby,” said Sgt. Paul Stella, who heads the Police Department’s cold case team which recently picked up Delores’ case.

At that time, investigators had already determined Delores’ death was a homicide. She had been struck over the head several times with a blunt object and then set on fire.

“The coroner found smoke in her lungs so that shows she was alive when the fire was set,” said Stella. “So now we don’t know if we have two homicide victims, if this was a kidnapping. We just don’t know except that we are missing a baby.”

A week later, investigators found little 9-month-old Emilio with a young woman who had babysat him in the past.

Detectives interrogated her, but no charges were ever brought against her.

Arechiga took some solace in the fact that if she didn’t have her daughter, she could raise Delores’ son and still hold on to a small part of the girl who she said had a loving heart and only saw the good in people.

But only a few months after the teen’s death, tragedy struck again in March 1994, when Emilio was only 15 months old. He fell out of his high chair, crushing his tiny skull and ultimately killing him.

“I just have to believe that he wanted to be with his mother,” she said. “He just really missed her and now I know that they are both together and happy.”

More than two decades later, Stella and Cpl. Detective Rory Scalf, who make up the rest of the cold case team, decided to take a look at Delores’ case in an effort to find justice for the teen girl who loved to sing and dreamed of one day joining the Peace Corps.

“It really is about finding justice for the victim and for the family,” said Scalf. “No one should die this way.”

The investigators hope after 22 years, someone will finally come forward and speak to detectives.

“Most of the time, people don’t come forward because of fear,” Scalf explained. “But as time passes, witnesses move away, suspects move away and people feel confident and safe enough to come forward.”

In the three years the cold case team has been operating, it has solved seven cases. Stella and Scalf hope Delores’ case will be their eighth.

Arechiga, who says she is a religious person, felt as if her prayers had been answered when she received the call from Stella informing her the police were reopening her daughter’s case.

“For me, losing my daughter still feels like it just happened yesterday, and (when I got the call) I realize that maybe after all these years somebody cares and it was a good feeling,” she said.

Arechiga told her youngest son, who was 4 at the time his sister was killed, about the new investigation and she said the news also gave him a sense of hope.

“He told me that it’s great because it’s time that everyone can now be at rest and peace,” Arechiga said. “I have forgiven the people that did this to her, but what I would ask them is ‘why?’ I want to know why they did this.”

Anyone with information should call the Rialto Police Cold Case Homicide Unit at 909-820-2632 or 909-421-4990.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of what will be an occasional series on cold case investigations in the Inland Empire.