Teen loved reading and animals, large and small
As a young girl, Amber Dubois would read under her sheets with a flashlight when she should have been sleeping. Later, she would lose herself in books as her teachers taught class around her.
It was the closest she ever came to trouble.
“She was the person who would be caught by the teacher for reading, and the teacher would be like, ‘Put that book away,’ ” said Hailey Kosinski, 15.
Sunday, family, former teachers and close friends shared memories of Amber, the Escondido teenager whose remains were found near Pala in North County more than a year after her disappearance.
She was last seen shortly after 7 a.m. Feb. 13, 2009, on her way to Escondido High School, where she was a 14-year-old freshman. She had planned a happy day, evidenced by the Valentine’s Day gifts she carried for friends and a $200 check to buy a lamb for a National FFA Organization project.
As much as she loved reading, Amber adored animals and the lamb would have been the newest in her beloved menagerie.
She had decided on a French name for the lamb, Annette, after consulting with her paternal grandmother, Eugenie Dubois, who lives in La Mirada. Her father, Moe Dubois, lives in Buena Park.
The walk to campus was less than a mile from where Amber lived with her mother, Carrie McGonigle, her mother’s then-boyfriend, and her little sister, Allison. Along the way, she sent a text message to her other grandmother, Sheila Welch, about the bag of handmade Valentine’s Day gifts she had given 5-year-old Allison.
“She was so excited about going to high school because of the animal husbandry program there,” said Welch, an attorney in Paramount, a Los Angeles suburb.
Amber already owned a horse, Rojo, stabled near Welch’s home. “We were very, very close,” Welch said, “but I think sometimes she came to see Rojo and I was just there anyway.”
Then there was the dog Amber persuaded Welch to adopt. The pup was part of a litter born in the stable, and Amber decided it needed her grandmother’s care because of its deformed tail.
“She named it China,” Welch said.
Dogs, cats, a bird and the occasional guinea pig populated Amber’s life.
Her poetry reflected her love of nature and animals, said Pat Gross, Amber’s eighth-grade English teacher at Rincon Middle School in Escondido. Amber, her mother and sister had moved to Escondido from Los Angeles County before Amber started eighth grade. She had previously attended Nazarene Christian School near Paramount.
“Her poetry was always a nature theme,” Gross said.
“The thing I will remember most about Amber was her sense of wonder,” Gross said. “She was just a charming, bright, inquisitive and somewhat naive young woman with such zest for life.”
A week before she disappeared, Amber had visited Gross and chattered excitedly about the lamb. When Gross reminded her that ultimately, she would be selling it at auction, Amber reacted indignantly, focusing on the nurturing ahead.
When Gross learned Sunday that Amber’s body had been found, she said, “I am deeply, deeply saddened by the news, but also grateful because she can be at peace and maybe her family can find some comfort. But it’s unspeakably tragic.”
Carrie McGibney teaches social studies and had Amber in her class at Rincon. She described the teen as mix of live wire and bookworm. When she wasn’t chattering with friends, Amber would walk the school hallways buried in a book. McGibney would tease her about watching where she was going.
“Even in class, she would be reading a book while I lectured,” McGibney said.
Friends recalled gathering at Amber’s house before their freshman homecoming dance in fall 2008.
They hung out around Amber’s pool before getting ready for the dance.
“She doesn’t get girlie very often,” said Kelly Edward, 15. “But she looked awesome that night.”
Some of the same friends met up for the premiere of the “Twilight” movie and made T-shirts beforehand. While other girls argued over Jacob and Edward, the two main boys from the vampire series, Amber created a T-shirt emblazoned “Team Lestat,” in reference to an older literary vampire.
Amber also loved to draw wolves, dogs and other “cute and cuddly” things in her notebooks, in class notes or on blank printer paper, Hailey said.
She said Amber thought wolves “to be such kind creatures.”
“They’re sort of, I don’t know, you could escape from maybe any sort of mean people.”
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/mar/07/teenager-loved-reading-and-her-menagerie-animals-l/Amber reminds me so much of my own 14 year old daughter.. It is a heartbreaking reality to have A