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Photo courtesy of Diana Lopez
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February 14, 2008 — Diana Lopez, a retired educator, tearfully told a packed courtroom in Eagle County Monday that three months before her own son’s death she attended services for the wife and two young children of a colleague, Frank Bingham, who were run down and killed by a drunk driver in downtown Denver in 2006. She said that at the time she could not comprehend what Bingham was going through.
She obviously knew every bit of Bingham’s pain on Monday, as she spoke on behalf of her own dead son, Matthew Lopez, at the sentencing of an Eagle County woman who pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide resulting in his death and was sentenced to eight years in the Department of Corrections.
Candace Calvin, 23, had a blood alcohol level of .185, twice the legal limit, when she attempted to elude a state trooper the night of Feb. 22, 2007, in a Honda borrowed from a friend. The car reached speeds of nearly 100 mph before Calvin flipped it in the roundabout near Wal-Mart on U.S. Highway 6 in Avon.
Lopez, who was getting a ride home from Calvin after a night on the town and was wearing a seatbelt, was killed in the crash. Calvin, who was not wearing a seatbelt, sustained a broken pelvis, shoulder and numerous lacerations and abrasions.
Monday’s sentence was handed down by Eagle County District Judge Fred Gannett following an emotional four and half hour hearing during which dozens of Lopez’s friends and family called for the stiffest possible sentence for Calvin.
Gannett reluctantly gave Calvin the maximum eight years allowed under a plea-bargain arrangement, saying, “I fundamentally do not believe that prison is a place where people get better,” and opening the door to a 35B request for reconsideration to be filed by Calvin’s defense.
Lopez, 23 at the time of his death, grew up in Wheat Ridge and was taking a semester off after completing two years at the Community College of Denver - where he was studying child psychology - to snowboard in the Vail Valley. He had been living in Avon for seven weeks and was working with Calvin at a Vail Resorts warehouse.
Diana Lopez said her family only agreed to the plea deal when viewing their son’s death through his eyes and believing he would not want to see Calvin languish in prison.
“Spending the rest of your life in prison would simply be a waste of your life and the life you took,” Lopez said, although at the same time expressing frustration at a perceived lack of remorse from Calvin and her family, who had not reached out with an apology to the Lopez family, on the advice of their lawyer.
Facing them for the first time, Calvin tearfully asked forgiveness, saying she could not explain why she chose to drive with drunk or attempted to elude police. She said she simply did not remember the pursuit and subsequent rollover crash.
“If I could I would trade places, to give your son back and give my own life,” Calvin sobbed. “They say, ‘Let the Lord into your life and he’ll forgive you,’ but I can’t even forgive myself.”
Aunts, grandparents, cousins and friends all took to the podium following a gut-wrenching photo DVD of Lopez’s life, calling for the maximum sentence and praising the generous spirit of a young man who was always smiling and rarely unkind. His sister, Lindsey, wracked by sobs, read from a poem she wrote.
“Now that you’re gone I have to look out for myself, which something I don’t think I can do,” she said of her older and only brother. “(Calvin) robbed us all and took away my one true best friend.”
Calvin, who was driving without a valid license at the time of the crash and admitted to using cocaine since the incident to try to forget her pain, said she hopes she can recover and talk to high school students about her mistakes, and maybe someday start a youth outreach program so kids living in the mountains have alternatives to drinking and partying.
“This community definitely has a lot of problems because there’s nothing else for us kids to do but drink, and there needs to be something else for us to do,” Calvin tearfully told the court.
Calvin’s mother asked the judge for leniency: “I can’t bear the thought of losing my daughter.
She’s given up on everything and believe she hates herself and I want her to love herself again,” said Lee Caretto. “She is a savior of life and she would never, ever on purpose take Matt’s life.”
Calvin’s grandmother, Lucy Barker, described the tragedy as “one child losing his life quickly and one child losing hers in slow motion.”
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