Now that individual funerals for the victims of the Jan. 30 postal shootings have taken place, a memorial service for the entire community is scheduled for Sunday at UCSB.

Responding to the community at large, city and county officials decided to conduct a memorial in the UCSB Events Center (Thunderdome) at 2 p.m. Sunday. Goleta Mayor Jonny Wallis and 3rd District County Supervisor Brooks Firestone will co-chair the service.

It will honor the victims of the rampage that took place on the night of Jan. 30: Ze Vang Fairchild, 37; Maleka Higgins, 28; Nicola Grants, 42; Dexter Shannon, 58; Guadalupe Swartz, 52; and Charlotte Colton, 44, as well as Beverly Ann Graham, 54, who was shot separately shortly before the mass killings at the Goleta Postal Service plant. The killer, Jennifer Sanmarco, 44, took her own life after the postal shootings.

In addition to Wallis and Fairchild, speakers on Sunday will include County Sheriff Jim Anderson, Congresswoman Lois Capps, UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang, Postmaster General John Potter, the Rev. Mark Gardner, Father Luis Quihuis, and a representative of the victims' families.

Music will be provided by the combined choirs of Santa Barbara City College and other area choral groups, under the direction of Nathan Kreitzer.

Sunday's event is open to the public, and the University is offering free parking to those who attend. However, parking space is expected to be limited.

As families, friends and co-workers struggled with their grief, more facts about the shooter emerged, both in Goleta and in New Mexico, where Sanmarco lived after she left this area two years ago. She had been an employee at the postal plant on Storke Road.

In Goleta, Sanmarco lived in a condominium complex where she was a neighbor of Beverly Ann Graham. Edward Blomfield, her boyfriend, discovered Graham's body on the evening following the postal shootings.

Blomfield told investigators that Graham had quarreled with Sanmarco over the latter's shouting and loud singing when the two were neighbors, and that he believes Sanmarco "was planning this all along. Jennifer Sanmarco was insane; that's why she did this. She was just crazy."

Sanmarco had a history of psychological difficulties on the job, as well. When she worked at the Goleta postal plant, she was forcibly removed and held on a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric commitment at the instigation of her co-workers. She was then placed on medical disability leave from the job. Subsequently, Sanmarco moved to Grants, N.M., where she lived alone on a remote five-acre property.

Investigators say that Sanmarco went to a pawn shop in Grants about six months ago and bought a 9 mm Smith & Wesson handgun This is the weapon she used to kill her seven victims on Monday night, and herself.

The killings brought responses from others out of the Goleta area. A woman who called the Valley Voice editor last Wednesday night would not give her name, but said she is a psychiatric social worker in New Mexico and that the shooting rampage is "just a symptom." The woman, who said she is a government employee and could lose her job if she is identified, said the lack of funding and hospitals for severely mentally ill people is the root cause of crimes like this shooting. "It's just terrible," she said. "I have patients who desperately need to get into a hospital and there is no place to put them."

A former employee of the Goleta postal facility e-mailed the Voice from his present home in Las Vegas, writing, "I am not surprised about what happened at that facility. Because there are many problems there that [do] not reach the surface."
In a subsequent e-mail to the editor, he added, "Believe me this will happen again at the same facility. Management at that facility is really terrible."

PHOTO BY MARTHA LANNAN

CAPTION: Mourners gather at St. Rafael's Catholic Church last week following the first of many services for the victims of the Goleta postal shooting rampage.