Maren Sanchez’s Legacy Lives On With Mother’s Mission

MILFORD, CT — Donna Cimarelli-Sanchez’s life changed forever on April 25, 2014. Her 16-year-old daughter, Maren Sanchez, was fatally stabbed in a secluded stairwell at Jonathan Law High School by a classmate. Sanchez, who served as junior class president, was stabbed after rejecting her classmate’s prom request.

But Cimarelli-Sanchez is determined to rise up from personal tragedy and harness that pain to help make a difference in the lives of young women. She created The Maren Sanchez Home Foundation, which is working to educate and empower one young girl at a time. Cimarelli-Sanchez said she wants to ensure what happened to Maren doesn’t happen to other girls.

The foundation is currently small, but for Cimarelli-Sanchez size doesn’t matter. If she can help just one girl, then her mission is accomplished.

“If we can save one life, it’s worth it,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said of the foundation.

The mission of the Maren Sanchez Home Foundation: “To empower girls to defend themselves against emotional, psychological and verbal manipulation and physical violence.”

Cimarelli-Sanchez said there have been many dark times over the past few years. Moving forward was difficult. But the desire to honor her daughter’s legacy of love and compassion and Maren's gift for making everyone feel special has propelled her.

After Maren’s death, her mother received note after note from people describing how her daughter touched their lives with seemingly small gestures that meant the world to them.

She loves to tell a story about Maren where a special-needs girl told her mother she needed to attend the wake despite the big crowd. Cimarelli-Sanchez recalled the girl telling her mother, “Maren was my best friend because she’d sit with me at lunch and I had been all alone. Maren was my best friend.”

Who Was Maren Sanchez?

Cimarelli-Sanchez said she knew her daughter was special but she didn’t realize how significant a mark Maren left in her 16 short years of life.

The school lunch lady and the custodian came up to her after her daughter’s death and told her how Maren took the time to get to know them. It was the little things.

“I received letters about how Maren changed people’s lives,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said, while adding that she received money in an envelope from youths in Wisconsin who sold lemonade after the tragedy.

Cimarelli-Sanchez said she was surprised how often people said they “thought Maren was their best friend. How can you have 100 best friends I thought?”

She said Maren could always find the positive in any situation. She was a big trendsetter, especially with fashion – even if on a few occasions she missed the mark with her choices, her mother said with a laugh. Maren loved music, especially playing the guitar and singing. She loved to learn things such as sewing on her own.

“If she wasn’t your friend, you’re missing out,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said. “She was the kindest soul. She left an impression and mark on people.”

Maren was just at the point in her life where she was beginning to look at colleges. She had picked up photography and her mother thinks she may have pursued a career in that. Maren also expressed a desire to be a veterinarian and work with “big animals” especially “big cats.”

She told her mother her dream job would be a National Geographic photographer but she said those jobs aren't attainable. Cimarelli-Sanchez recalls telling her daughter that she was capable of anything if she wanted it bad enough.

They visited one college in Maine, College of the Atlantic. Her mother wanted her to attend UConn.

She was also an expert babysitter and acted more like an adult watching the children, her mother said. One couple she babysat for hasn’t found anyone else to watch their children three years later, telling Cimarelli-Sanchez that no one could compare to Maren.

Maren, who had a brother and sister who live in Florida, was an easy child, Cimarelli-Sanchez said.

“She wasn’t hard. She never spoke back to me,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said. “I was her main support system. We were like sisters at times. We changed roles.”

April 25, 2014

Cimarelli-Sanchez said she remembers everything about that life-changing call. She was informed that her daughter was stabbed and taken to the hospital. Initially, it wasn’t believed to be a fatal injury.

“I thought she was just hurt,” Cimarelli-Sanchez recalled. “People were bringing balloons to the hospital to give to her. Then we got the news and people fainted. My sister collapsed.

And then “it’s shock. I was in shock, but I knew what was going on.”

“You wake up and realize it happened,” Cimarelli-Sanchez recalls. “You just scream. You can’t believe it. Did this really happen?”

“It will be like that for the rest of my life,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said. “I’ll be watching TV or a movie and it will just hit me and I’ll be like ‘what the (expletive).’”

Cimarelli-Sanchez said the fact that someone wanted to intentionally harm her daughter is something she’ll never comprehend. If she could talk to her daughter’s killer, Christopher Plaskon, who was also 16 at the time, she has but one question for him.

“How did you get Maren in the stairwell?” Cimarelli-Sanchez said. “What did you say to make her go there.”

She said her daughter was very smart and had an “incredible gut instinct” and likely felt uneasy going into the stairwell. Cimarelli-Sanchez doesn’t care to rehash her daughter's relationship with Plaskon but she did say the communication was negative and Maren was made “uncomfortable” by his comments.

While Maren declined to go to the prom with Plaskon, she likely felt bad that she said no as she “cared about how people felt,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said.

The Estate of Maren Sanchez has a lawsuit pending against the Milford Board of Education and City of Milford as well as against, Christopher Plaskon, now 19, and his parents, David and Kathleen Plaskon. (Get Patch's Daily Newsletter and Real Time News Alerts. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)

The lawsuit alleges that Maren reported to the high school guidance department her concern that Christopher Plaskon was emotionally disturbed and was threatening to commit suicide or acts of serious self-harm by cutting himself with a knife, and that she believed it was important for high school personnel to help Plaskon to prevent him from engaging in potentially violent conduct dangerous to himself or to others.

City and school officials have declined to comment on the lawsuit but have praised Maren, describing her as “an intelligent, vibrant, warm, caring and talented young woman whose life was tragically taken.” Plaskon received a 25-year prison sentence last year and is eligible for parole in 13 years.

• Related stories: One Year After Maren Sanchez Tragedy, Milford Turns Grief to Compassion
• Milford ‘Thanks’ Maren Sanchez for Her Legacy of Love and Compassion

And Cimarelli-Sanchez recalls hauntingly that she didn’t want Maren to go to school that day.

“I said don’t go to school on prom day,” she said. “I told her we could get her nails done and do her hair and I’d make her pasta. But she said mom ‘if I don’t go to school I don’t get to go to prom.’”

The Home Foundation

Cimarelli-Sanchez said she feels her daughter’s energy each day, which is what inspired her to start the foundation.

“Maren was taken, I wasn’t and until I am, something needs to be done,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said.

The Maren Sanchez Home Foundation is focused on empowering young women.

“Young girls are held to a different standard,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said. “It’s very difficult for them to express how they feel. They deal with manipulation. Sometimes girls will do something to not hurt someone’s feelings.”

They also are often afraid of not conforming or doing what their peers expect them to, Cimarelli-Sanchez said.

The aim of the foundation is to “teach girls a healthy balance — be compassionate and stand your ground when something is wrong.”

The foundation was launched more than a year ago but is just now starting to really ramp up. The foundation includes health-care professionals and counselors.

One self-defense program has been held by Jonathan Law High School graduate Nick Newell, who is involved with MMA. He operates the Fighting Arts Academy in West Haven. A second self-defense workshop is scheduled there for June 24 from 2-4 p.m. You can register for the event by emailing info@marensanchezhomefoundation.org.

Future workshops include a team of educators, including some of Maren’s teachers and a professor with expertise on stalking. There also will be a focus group involving young women to hear firsthand their concerns.

One of the goals of the foundation is to help youths who have survivors guilt.

“Lots of kids knew how Maren felt and have to live with that and we want to help them deal with that,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said.

Cimarelli-Sanchez said she hopes the foundation’s goals and objectives will one day be incorporated into school's health curriculum. She said she wants the foundation to evolve into being a week-long camp for girls to learn about self-defense, mindfulness and empowering the youth.

Since the tragedy, Cimarelli-Sanchez has become close with Jonathan Law Principal Fran Thompson, who received praise for helping the Law community heal after the tragedy.

“I am so proud of Donna and the work she is doing with her Home Foundation,” Thompson said. “Her mission to empower young women will provide much-needed support for those the Foundation will serve is admirable.

“It is hard to believe that it's been three years since that tragic day. Maren's spirit is very much with us everyday at Jonathan Law and our Peace, Love and Music from Maren event, which is significantly supported by the community, continues to honor Maren and all she embodied.

“I am glad that we have been able to remember Maren through PLM and I am glad that Donna has also created a way to honor Maren and make a difference in young people's lives. I know that's what Maren would want just as she a she made a difference in the lives of all of us who knew her,” Thompson added.

Milford Prevention Council Director Wendy Gibbons, who is also the president of the Home Foundation, said “Donna is a remarkably strong female who through this tragedy has served as a role model to many young women and girls.”

She said Cimarelli-Sanchez has used the tragedy to help others and to “carry on her daughter’s legacy that saves other girls lives.”

Life 3 Years Later

Cimarelli-Sanchez, who is a professional masseuse, said she’s beginning to find herself again. She said instead of feeling like a victim and crying all the time she feels she’s back to “when she was Maren’s mother. I’m back to being me.”

“You lose everything in the tragedy,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said. “You have to regain your life again. I’m more stable, more solid but always grieving.”

She said she was buoyed by a strong support system.

“Everyone has a part in lifting me up so I’m not alone,” Cimarelli-Sanchez said.

To read more about the Maren Sanchez Home Foundation click here.