Golden – The first time Christine Wolfe and Rhonda Fields met was at the beckoning of their children, who were in love and wanted their families to get together for dinner at a Denver restaurant.
The next time the women would meet was in the Arapahoe County coroner’s office – in a waiting room, demanding to see the bodies of their slain children.
Since then, the women have been inseparable – bracing each other through the pain, planning events to keep the story in the news, sitting beside one another at court hearings and holding interviews with authorities to find answers.
“We were just called to action after the incident happened. We went into this mode that brought us together to seek justice,” Fields said.
Their children, Vivian Wolfe and Javad Marshall-Fields, both 22, were shot to death June 20 while driving down an Aurora street. They had both graduated from Colorado State University, become engaged and were planning to move to Virginia.
Javad was expected to testify in a murder trial. Authorities believe the June 20 double homicide was a gang hit to keep him from telling a jury how he had witnessed a friend being shot last year.
Perhaps nothing is more sad than a mother grieving for her dead child. It’s a sight reflected like a mirror when Rhonda Fields and Christine Wolfe look at one another.
“I see pain,” Fields said recently in an interview in her friend’s backyard. “I see a reflection of my own pain when I look at Christine.”
“I understand her without hearing it,” Wolfe said.
Other similarities exist.
Both Fields, 50, and Wolfe, 53, were raised in military families, became single mothers of two children, emphasized the importance of education in their households and grew into successful professional women.
Fields is a training manager for United Airlines, where she’s worked for 20 years.
Wolfe co-owns a river rafting supply business with her husband, Mike Prosser.
That first night at the restaurant, both families understood why their children had fallen in love. The families were identical in intellect, spunk and volume.
“We were talking so loud that the whole restaurant was staring at us,” Wolfe said.
A few weeks later, Wolfe was asking Fields through tears: “What’s going on here?”
“I felt such a loss for words,” Fields said. “I didn’t know what was going on.”
Not long after the killings, the families held a joint news conference in the Aurora police station, asking for the public’s help in solving the crime. They promised a $10,000 reward, which has since grown to $20,000.
They sat next to one another in a dual funeral at a Denver church, buried their children next to one another and introduced a bench campaign with photos of Javad and Vivian that asks people with information to call CrimeStoppers. They talk every day, crying, going over details on the case. Recently, the women held a birthday party for Vivian outside a courthouse before a hearing for the man whom Marshall-Fields was to testify against.
They aren’t doing this for themselves, they said.
“At this time, we are the voices for Javad and Vivian,” Fields said. “If we don’t do this, I’m afraid this will be another unsolved murder.”
Staff writer Jeremy Meyer may be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
