COVINA, Calif.— On the morning of Dec. 2, Yvette Velasco got dressed up and flat-ironed her hair. It was an important day: The 27-year-old was going to receive a gold badge officially recognizing her as a San Bernardino County health inspector at a holiday work event.
The world now knows what happened: Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, stormed into the gathering, opening fire on Farook’s colleagues. Velasco and 13 others were killed in what the FBI is investigating as an act of terrorism.
One week and a day after the massacre, Velasco will be remembered Thursday in an outdoor funeral, at a spot on a hill chosen by her three older sisters and parents in remembrance of her love of nature. The ceremony will mark the start of a grim procession expected to take place throughout Southern California over the next week: about a dozen memorials, funerals and burials for those killed in the attack.
“She was more than our sister,” Velasco’s sister Erica Porteous, 37, said, choking up. “She was our soul mate.”
