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HARLINGEN — She loved to sing and play the cello.
She was an athlete who played soccer.
But on a tragic day two years ago, Aurelia Star Dosal Ramirez took her own life.
She was 13 years old. and her family says she had been bullied.
And, she was the niece of Judge Adela Kowalski-Garza, who organized a special event for her Thursday in her honor.
“She was going through hell being bullied by some friends or people at school,” Kowalski-Garza said.
Tragically, no one, not even her mother, knew of the pain in the young girl’s heart, until it was too late.
“She was very innocent, and she didn’t understand what cruelty was,” said her mother, Tiffany Dosal. “So when all these things were happening to her it would just add on and add on. And all of a sudden, she was getting quiet.”
October is National Bullying Prevention Month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 1 in 5 high school students report being bullied on school property. More than 1 in 6 high school students reports being bullied online.
At Kowalski-Garza’s 484th District Court in San Benito on Thursday, she gathered people from throughout the community to unveil a book written in her honor.
“TK’s First Lesson” by David Leija tells the story of two tiger cubs who look different from each other although they are twins. The pages of the story in vibrant colors are mounted along the wall of Kowalski-Garza’s court, and in one of those panels the two cubs see in a pond that one is white and the other orange.
They come quickly to their mother to find out why.
“You both are colors in the field of life, made to stand out in the bright sunlight,” she tells them. “The color of your coat is a small part. What really counts is in your heart.”
Leija said he wrote the book to teach children that although people may have varied appearances, they are all basically the same and, “just to treat each other with respect.”
The phrasing of the story reveals his love of Dr. Suess. Stevie Cortez did the illustrations in vibrant and eye-catching colors.
Tiffany Dosal thanked Kowalski-Garza for her support and for holding the event. She thanked everyone for coming and for the book that now stood on the walls of the judge’s chamber. She recalled now before the attendees in the courtroom that about 10 months before Aurelia’s death she described herself as a monster.
“I couldn’t understand why she would describe herself like that,” she said.
She also recalled that she worked hard to enter Vernon Middle School to study French, and then wanted very much to leave. She would only say, “I don’t belong here” but said nothing about the bullying. She transferred to Gutierrez Middle School of Arts and Sciences, but the bullying followed her.
“I think it was because of all the poison they fed into her,” she said. “The change has to start now.”
One of Aurelia’s friends, Jayanna Reyna, 16, also attended the event.
“We went everywhere,” Jayanna said. “We went to the skating rink, we went to Urban Air.”
And how that friendship unfolded tells a lot about Aurelia.
It was in 2020 and the pandemic had just hit. Jayanna and Aurelia sat across from each other in separate cubicles. Jayanna needed a spork to eat her fruit with, and no one would give her one…
Except Aurelia.
“You can have mine,” she said.
