Pam Huckaby said she fully expects a phone call before the weekend’s over, from someone who will say, “this is the Zodiac speaking.”

She’s gotten such a call every year for 35 years.

Huckaby, now of Redding, is the sister of Darlene Ferrin who, at 22, became one of the infamous Zodiac killer’s first victims just after midnight on July 5 — 50 years ago this weekend, in the parking lot of Vallejo’s Blue Rock Springs Park.

“When everybody’s out celebrating the birth of our country, I am here mourning the death of my sister,” she said. “It brings it all up, every year. But, this is a big one. Its the 50th, so it’s bigger, it’s really big. Every day when I wake up, the first thing I see is her graduation picture and I give it a kiss every single day of my life.”

Ferrin, who was shot and killed that night, was with her friend Mike Mageau, who survived his wounds. As many know, the pair were inside Ferrin’s Corvair, when another vehicle entered the parking lot and abruptly left, then returned a few minutes later and parked behind them. A man holding a light emerged from the car and walked toward the friends, and without warning, aimed a 9mm pistol at the passenger window and opened fire. Ferrin was pronounced dead on arrival at the local hospital.

Huckaby said she has always believed she missed witnessing the attack by seconds.

“I was there, in the parking lot, just leaving when the car drove up behind her,” she said. “I relive it every July 4 weekend. I wonder what I might have done differently. The ‘police’ car passed me — going in as we were going out. We heard the pop pop, but thought it was fireworks.”

Huckaby said she recalls “all the helicopters going over the top of our house that night and we didn’t know why. We lived on Jordan Street, just up the block from my parents. My mom called me to tell me that my sister had been shot. That’s how we got the word. When I got to mom’s there was a creepy man with what looked like a guitar case on his lap — sitting on our doorstep. He was a police officer there to guard my family.”

Huckaby, who is nearly 70 now, said she’s sure her entire family’s trajectory changed with the events of July 4-5, 1969. All that are left from the time before then, are the “what could have beens.”

“If that hadn’t happened, Darlene would be with me. With us. With the family,” she said. “Darlene loved her family and was very family oriented. A lot of (bad) things that happened to us wouldn’t have happened. We’ve been through a lot with this case.”

Ferrin was married and a new mother when she was killed, and her daughter, Deena, is now a dental assistant living in the Bay Area, Huckaby said.

“She’s well educated, and the mother of a daughter of her own,” she said. “Darlene would have been a great mom to her. She was a great sister. There were 10 of us — eight girls, two boys. She was the oldest and my idol. She’s been gone most of my life, and of course I miss her. Our parents died not knowing who killed their oldest daughter.”

Huckaby’s house and phone become targets for reporters every year, as well, she said. And obsessives hound her and other family members, for information she said she doesn’t have.

“I have a huge amount of Zodiac related material under lock and key. People think I know something I’m not telling, but, I don’t. I remember when mom was on her death bed, in 1981, and I promised her I’d find the man who killed my sister. Of course I haven’t.”

But, she said she “obsessed about it for years, and it took a toll on my health. It was eating me up alive.”

Despite this, Huckaby married and raised two sons.

“They know the story, and what I’ve lived through,” she said. “I’ve been through hell with this. We were haunted, cryptograms left at the door.”

And any time a new suspect’s name emerged, Huckaby and a few of her siblings paid that person a visit, she said.

“I’d go to their door and ask ‘are you the Zodiac?” she said. “Eighteen suspects over the years. “

Huckaby says there were two people she hasn’t been able to rule out — one of them a man who lived on Guerrero Street in San Francisco about 20 years ago.

“I went there with my brother and sister and we asked,” remembers Huckaby. He said, ‘I’m one weird sonofabitch, but I’m not the Zodiac.’ But, he looked familiar and I don’t know why, and that’s when I got afraid. He came down the steps and shook my hand. Said he’d always wanted to meet me. We got out of there.”

Ferrin’s family members aren’t the only ones obsessing over the Zodiac case. A slew of amateur sleuths from across the country have devoted years of their lives to it, and some go so far as to try to observe the anniversaries of the various murders by gathering at the sites.

Mark Hewitt – author of the Zodiac Killer trilogy, and who posits that Unibomber Ted Kaczynski is the Zodiac, said he and others will mark the 50th anniversary at Blue Rock Springs Park at around midnight July 4, after first gathering at a local restaurant.

“We hope that this, and the other Zodiac cases, gets solved, as well as other cold cases everywhere,” he said. “This may be my last year. With my trilogy complete and the anniversary, I’m looking at life beyond the Zodiac. Friends and family are becoming more important to me.”

Sandy Betts, another obsessive who believes she survived an encounter with the killer, said she plans to skip the midnight gathering, but plans one of her own from noon to 3 p.m. July 5.

Huckaby said no one wants these murders solved more than she does.

“Fifty years, I’ve been living with this. Fifty years, that this person hasn’t been caught,” she said. “He terrorized Vallejo. Those people who were killed, all those families who have had to live with it all these years. I would love this guy to be brought to justice in my lifetime. Anyone out there who thinks they know who the Zodiac is, or who has even a tiny speck of information, please take it to the authorities.”