MdR Cares Raises $4,000 to Help Marina del Rey Shooting Victim

David Bouffard gestures out at vessels moored in the harbor before the Bay Club apartment complex. Boats rock gently in the water across the street and aging sailors carry sealed ice chests up the dock. 

“It’s a quiet harbor,” says Bouffard, a Marina del Rey business consultant. 

That's why he and fellow Bay Club residents were shocked when a July 21 in the parking garage. She was shot in the back and her purse and identification were stolen.

No new information has been released about the case, nor has a suspect been identified, a watch commander with the Marina del Rey Sheriff's Department told Patch on Friday. 

The incident has rocked a part of the marina where most crimes over the past decade have tended toward the mundance, mostly bicycle thefts, property crime and domestic disturbances.

That night, a Thursday, Bouffard heard the gunshots. He walked out onto his patio to a confused, disordered scene outside of the parking garage. Someone was hurt.

He couldn’t see who the bullets had hit. He started to pray.

Ten minutes later, to his horror, he discovered he knew the victim. It was his neighbor and friend, a woman with a giving spirit who had offered to loan him her convertible when his was in the shop.

Anna DelValla also came downstairs to confront the scene. She saw Bouffard and heard who had been shot.

She knew the victim too. It was her neighbor and close friend, whom DelValla described as an independent contractor who "recently got up off her feet." 

A single thought ran through DelValla’s mind. 

“Oh my God, what is she going to do now?”

The desire to help, and the prayers, have since translated into a start-up online community organization called MdR Cares. The foundation has already raised about $4,000 to help pay for the woman's medication and her moving expenses to another place—and the funds keep coming in. 

At 6 a.m., the morning after the shooting, Bouffard took a walk along the docks. A reporter from a local television station approached him for an interview about the events of the night before.

Still shaken, he turned her down.

The encounter agitated him. As Bouffard continued to walk, he began to think about what could be done.

Then an idea formed.

Bouffard returned to his apartment and immediately got to work. He called a longtime friend, graphic designer Brian Selby.

Within the span of three hours, Bouffard and Selby had launched a blog and Facebook page.

Selby designed the logo—a pair of hands cupping a sunset in the shape of a heart.

The T-shirts were printed by noon. The shirts carried the name of the brand-new organization, "MdR Cares."

In her apartment, DelValla got on the phone and started calling everyone she knew.

A week later, family and neighbors gathered at the Bay Club for the nascent MdR Cares' first fundraising event, a barbecue. It raised about $1,400.

Local ship captains stepped up to manage the grills, Bouffard said. One of them pulled Bouffard off to the side. He stuffed a handful of cash into Bouffard’s hand.

“He didn’t even want to be acknowledged for it,” Bouffard said.

The gifts have poured in: $10, $20, $25.

The money will pay for the medication to suppress infection while a fractured tailbone heals. Her friend also has moved out of her Bay Club apartment to a new location, DelValla said.

The night of the shooting, she was returning from helping prepare a young pregnant woman for childbirth, DelValla said.

“[She is] someone like that, who actually pays back,” DelValla said. “It’s time for us to do the same.”

The victim declined to be interviewed for this story. She was released from the hospital last week and is living under an assumed name, DelValla said. After three surgeries, she is now walking again.

A three-time cancer survivor herself, DelValla remembers undergoing chemotherapy treatments and wondering how she was going to pay her bills if she couldn’t work. And she had to keep working no matter how she felt.

The critical injuries, DelValla said, pose a traumatic setback for a person who works for a living.

That is the point of MdR Cares—and DelValla and Bouffard hope it will be able to expand to help community members in a range of straits, including injuries and lost jobs.

“You fall into hard times, and that happens to all of us,” DelValla said.

The goal: a 501(c) nonprofit organization. Challenges that lie ahead include addressing the Franchise Tax Board and sorting through legal paperwork. And Bouffard and DelValla could use a hand, they said.

But something has changed in the community. Throughout the process, Bouffard has found himself connecting with neighbors he had previously spoken to only once or twice in the elevator.

“I have the perspective that anything can be turned into good,” said Bouffard, who has an online personality named "Mr. Positive." “It’s sad it took something like this to bring us together ... but my philosophy is that it's all good, even the bad."