By AARON BURGIN, THE PORTERVILLE RECORDER

STRATHMORE — For 40 years, the family of Mary Sanchez lived their dream, operating a successful family-owned business as a family.

On Friday night, that dream turned into the cruelest of nightmares. Two masked armed robbers shot and killed Sanchez, 68, Friday night at the La Tienda Market. — the same store she co-owned since the 1960s.

The brutal incident sent the tight-knit family reeling and asking the question: Who killed their mother? “We just wish if somebody knows who they are that they would tell us who they are so they can be caught,” Sanchez’s daughter Stella Salcedo said. “They don’t realize that she was loved by so many people.” La Tienda Market, east of Avenue 196 and Orange Belt Highway, was purchased in 1966 with money that Sanchez and her husband earned from growing tomatoes.

Sanchez lived in a small house in the back of the lot where the store is located. Salcedo and her family grew up working at the bodega. To Salcedo, it was always home. In fact, Salcedo said, she and her mother were working together Friday morning, hours before two masked men armed with guns demanded money from the register.

This was not the first time Sanchez had been threatened by armed robbers, Salcedo said. Sanchez was robbed at knifepoint five years ago. The men were caught, and one is currently serving a life sentence in prison, Salcedo said. “We had people make beer runs, you know?” Salcedo said. “Then, it was a man with a knife, and now, it was a gun.”

According to a news release from the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department, the men got the money out of the register. They wanted more, Salcedo said she was told by Sheriff’s deputies. “She would have given them everything, but they wanted more, and she didn’t have anything,” Salcedo said. “Then, they shot her.” They shot at Sanchez and her nephew who was working at the time, missing her nephew. Then they fled, reportedly on foot.

By Saturday morning, a vigil of potted flowers surrounding a lone candle emerged on the front steps of the business. In the community of 3,000 where virtually everyone knows everyone else, the word had spread about the family’s tragic loss. “She didn’t deserve this,” Salcedo said. “She didn’t deserve to die like this.”

The family that was planning on how to celebrate the market’s 40th anniversary now will determine whether they will open its doors again. “I don’t know, the way I feel right now, no,” Salcedo said when asked if the family would close. “We’d have to talk to everyone to see what they want to do.” Until that conversation occurs, Salcedo reiterated the family’s plea for justice. “If you did this, please come forward,” Salcedo said. “ Please don’t hide.”

Contact Aaron Burgin at 784-5000, Ext. 1046, or aburgin@portervillerecorder.com.