For the past six years then I have devoted myself to preserving the legacy of Vanessa Marquez. It is why I have written so often about her movies and television shows on this blog. It is also why I have made corrections to various sites around the web regarding her life and career. Among these were corrections to Vanessa's IMDB profile. At the time she died, IMDB included a feature film and a short in which entirely different people named Vanessa Marquez appeared. I saw to it that was corrected. I have also made corrections to The Movie Database and elsewhere where this error has cropped up. A while back Google had a picture of some singer who shares Vanessa's name as Vanessa's default picture on the search engine rather than a picture of Vanessa herself. I got this corrected as well.
Of course, I have also written extensively about Vanessa's career here on the blog and posted extensively about her career on social media. The plain truth is that Vanessa was a very talented actress. To this day she is cited for her performance as Ana Delgado in Stand and Deliver (1988), although by Vanessa's own admission, she pretty much was Ana. While Vanessa was no math whiz, she was a very intelligent girl who had taken Advanced Placement courses in high school and was exceptionally shy.
While Vanessa had a lot in common with Ana in Stand and Deliver, she would get to play roles quite unlike herself, and she played them well. In the TV movie Locked Up: a Mother's Rage, she played Yo-Yo, a young woman in prison for having killed her boyfriend. While Locked Up: A Mother's Rage is not particularly good even by the standards of 1990s TV movies, Vanessa gave a bravura performance in the role. In the movie Twenty Bucks (1993) she played Melanie, who actually flirts with two older guys to get them to buy wine for herself and her boyfriend. Aside from Ana in Stand and Deliver, Wendy on ER is probably her best-known role, and she did well in the part, particularly in the many humorous subplots in which Wendy was involved. Vanessa definitely had a gift for comedy, as demonstrated by the many sketches in which she appeared on the TV show Culture Clash and her guest appearances on sitcoms. Vanessa also did quite a bit of work on stage, appearing in such plays as Demon Wine, The Street of the Sun, and August 29. Vanessa Marquez was an extremely talented actress, and I really want everyone to remember that.
In addition to being an actress, Vanessa was also an activist. She did work with the United Farm Workers and knew both Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. In addition to doing publicity for the UFW, on December 7 1989, she took part in a rally and then a march protesting the exposure of farmers to pesticides used on grapes. In 1991 Vanessa took part in an event at the 48 Market Street Gallery in Venice, California, hosted by Casey Kasem, in which writers, poets, actors, and musicians expressed their dissenting views of the Gulf War. There she recited her poem "Dear Father." Vanessa was also one of the famous Latinas who appeared in the award-winning 1994 Latina Vote public service announcement, directed by Julie Carmen, encouraging Latinas to vote. She also did work on behalf of Amnesty International. As Vanessa got older, her health did not permit her to be as active as she once was, but she was relentless in raising money for cancer treatment for Jamie Escalante, the teacher who had inspired the movie Stand and Deliver and still later she volunteered at an animal shelter. Vanessa was a passionate woman who cared about her fellow human beings, as well as animals. Sadly, this is a fact that I doubt many people are aware of.
I have fought what seems to be a never-ending battle as to the details of her death. I have written emails to every place from the Daily Mail to KABC in Los Angeles. When the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office issued their report on Vanessa's death, I wrote then Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey about it (among its inaccuracies was the false claimed that I was a"woman from Alabama"...). I also wrote an entire blog post attacking the DA's report. The plain truth is that neither the South Pasadena Police Department's reports following Vanessa's death nor the Los Angeles County District Attorney's report are accurate, and I have been fighting this misinformation ever since.
Vanessa Marquez was active on social media and, sadly, much of this I could not preserve. She was very active on Twitter and was one of the original members of TCMParty, the loose group of Turner Classic Movies fans who live tweet about movies on TCM using that hashtag. Vanessa was so beloved by her fellow TCMParty participants that TCMParty co-founder Paula Guthat called her, "the Sweetheart of #TCMParty." Unfortunately, Twitter suspended Vanessa's account after she accused George Clooney on Twitter of helping blacklist her after she complained about sexual harassment on the set of ER. She would later open up a new Twitter account, but her early tweets are lost unless Twitter restores her old account (when her account was suspended I campaigned to have it restored, and I still think they should restore it, particularly given some obvious trolls' accounts have been restored).
While many of Vanessa's early tweets are inaccessible, she did post to many other social media services. In the early Teens, she kept a Tumblr blog in which she demonstrated she was a talented writer as well as a talented actress. She posted videos to YouTube, many of which were clips from her career, including sketches from Culture Clash, some of which can't be found anywhere else. Vanessa also had an Instagram account to which she would post photos from both her life and her career. From time to time I have shared her YouTube videos to social media and even here. I have also posted links from her Tumblr blog on social media. Vanessa was very engaging on social media, and she posted a good deal of interest to classic movie fans, pop culture buffs, and, of course, her fans.
Of course, I am not the only one preserving Vanessa's legacy. There is the documentary Ninety Minutes Later, which chronicles Vanessa Marquez's career and tragic death. Many of Vanessa's other friends have also posted about her career and her as an actress. I have to give credit to Vanessa's many fans, who have made many posts about her in the years since her death. In the days following her death, I worried that Vanessa Marquez might be remembered as the ER actress who was shot by police. I have to admit that perhaps I should not have been. Vanessa's friends and fans are ensuring she is remembered for her career and who she was.
I cannot adequately express what Vanessa Marquez means to me. Words simply seem inadequate. When she was murdered by South Pasadena Police, I felt as if a part of my soul had been torn away from me. I still feel as if a part of me is missing. Given what Vanessa means to me, it is then important that she is remembered for who she was and her many accomplishments. That she was a wonderful woman and talented actress who was much loved by many makes preserving her legacy all the more important.