By Amy Paige Condon
On June 26, first-year illustration student Aaron Apsley posted on his Facebook wall, “Starting to pack for my week in D.C. with Vanessa Pham! I can’t wait to see you!”
Apsley was heading east in two days from his home in Ohio to visit the first-year fashion design major in Falls Church, Va. Apsley met Pham through mutual friends at Turner House. Their growing friendship had turned to dating near the end of the school year and they planned to visit each other over the summer.
Within 24 hours, though, Apsley’s postings faded into sadness and bewilderment.
“I just don’t understand anymore,” he wrote, “how cruel the world can be.”
According to The Washington Post and other news outlets, Vanessa Pham, 19, was found dead just after 3:30 p.m., June 27, behind the wheel of her white two-door 2008 Toyota Scion. Witnesses reported her car traveling the wrong way down a one-way access road before hopping a curb and crashing into a ditch on Rt. 50 in Fairfax County, Va. When rescue workers arrived, they discovered Pham had been stabbed multiple times in the chest. Fairfax County police are investigating her death as a homicide.
Investigators are honing in on the last 30 minutes of her life, when Pham was seen on surveillance cameras leaving an area salon. The Fairfax County Police Department has found no motive or suspect in the killing.
Apsley kept his travel plans. Only instead of sightseeing with the vivacious young woman who had captured his imagination, he arrived in Virginia last week in time to attend the candlelight vigil held at Pham’s alma mater, James Madison High School, in the town of Vienna, Va.
Pham’s friends—some she had known since grade school—organized the event in her honor and established a Vanessa Pham Memorial page on Facebook to help raise funds to cover the costs of her funeral. To date, the site has attracted more than 2,700 members.
Pham was her mother’s only child and, according to Apsley, had assumed loans to send her daughter to SCAD. Now her mother is struggling to pay for funeral expenses.
Apsley said by phone interview that response has been steady and strong since the page was set up. Any funds raised beyond the costs of the funeral will go toward creating a Vanessa Pham Memorial Scholarship at SCAD to assist other students just like her with the talent and drive, but not necessarily the financial means, to attend the school.
“She really loved SCAD,” said Apsley.
SCAD would have been the launching pad for the creative student, who committed early on to her dreams in the fashion industry. Pham attended a specialized fashion design program at Fairfax High School every morning then returned to James Madison High for her other classes. Also a talented painter and drawer, Pham received a Distinguished Senior Award for “outstanding achievement in fine arts” upon graduation last year.
Christopher Forster, a first-year film and television major from the same area of Virginia as Pham, struck up an easy friendship with the budding designer at the beginning of the fall quarter.
In an e-mail message, Forster wrote, “I could always find her working hard on her fashion sketches in her room. She was really dedicated to her schoolwork and always talked about her dreams as a fashion designer. She was truly one of the most genuine people I have ever met in my life.”
Pham was the last person Forster said goodbye to before he left school for the summer break.
“She had a glowing personality,” said Apsley. “She had such capacity to bring joy to people around her. Vanessa just had a gift of being able to talk to anyone.”
Pham was buried July 7 at National Memorial Park in Falls Church, Va.
Contributions to the Vanessa Pham Memorial Fund may be sent to:
Navy Federal Credit Union
Vanessa Pham Memorial Fund
P.O. Box 3100
Merrifield, VA 22119-3100
