WINDOW ROCK, Ariz.
That they had made it off the reservation at all was no small feat in a place where adversity runs as deep as tradition. But they were success stories: Two Navajo girls gone to the big-city university, planning to come home one day and give back.
Mia Henderson, the one they called “Princess Mia,” was captain of the softball team and a star student who had a flair for science and yearned to work in genetics or sports medicine.
Galareka Harrison, “Reka” to friends and family, was the track standout and rodeo girl who excelled in roping and dreamed of becoming a pharmacist.
On this remote stretch of land where kids sometimes have neither the means nor the desire to reach for something more, Henderson and Harrison stood out. They studied hard, played sports and won scholarships — then set out to make their mark at the University of Arizona in Tucson, hundreds of miles and a world away from the rolling hills and hogans of home.
They were just 18, the kind of young people Navajo elders hope and pray will carry on for them. Now, one is dead; The other is charged with her murder; And a community struggles to understand.
