Parents of slain students walk the stage in their honor at Eastern High School's graduation

LANSING — Monica Ruiz knew walking the stage during Eastern High School's graduation at the Lansing Center Sunday would bring equal parts joy and pain. She knew she would feel anger, too.

Joy because after all of the school's graduating seniors accepted their diplomas, Ruiz walked for her daughter Arianna DeLaCruz, who would have graduated Sunday with her classmates.

She felt pain because graduation day is just another reminder, among many, that Arianna, 17, is gone. She died in December 2021 after being shot near the intersection of South Cedar Street and East Miller Road during her junior year at Eastern.

Anger, Ruiz said, is unavoidable.

"She should be doing this herself," Ruiz said. "She didn't deserve this."

The last year and a half without her youngest daughter has been rough on the entire family, Ruiz said. Nothing has been the same since Arianna's death. Ruiz, her three daughters, Arianna's father Frank DeLaCruz, their loved ones and friends feel the loss of Arianna every day, but Sunday was an opportunity to keep her memory alive — something Ruiz is determined to do.

"Everybody says it gets easier," Ruiz said. "It does not get easier at all. To me, it seems like it gets worse, so when I do get to be able to show her off or remember her I love that. I want everybody to know how she was. She loved life and she lived it all the way up until 17."

Keeping their memory alive

A week before Sunday's graduation ceremony Ruiz walked across the 1,200-foot long, 118-foot high suspension SkyBridge Michigan at Boyne Mountain Resort.

To say it was out of character for her is an understatement, Ruiz said. Her family and friends were shocked when she told them she planned to cross it on Memorial Day weekend.

"I'm really scared of heights," Ruiz said, but Arianna, "Anna" to those who loved her, would have jumped at the chance to walk it. Ruiz's daughter never missed a chance to have adventures or experience something new. Now Ruiz does it for her.

"You have a choice when you cross it if you want to walk back around, walk all the way around and not cross it again and I said, 'No, I'm gonna do this,' and I walked back, scared again," she said. "I was thinking of her through the whole thing."

Ruiz takes every chance she gets to remember Anna. She's poured through notebooks her daughter filled with words and drawings, thought about her smile while she recovered from cancer, and she hasn't touched a heart-shaped collage of photographs Anna hung on her bedroom wall two months before she died.

"I miss my daughter so much, but I want to continue to have her memories keep going. So when I got this call about walking for her at graduation, I cried," Ruiz said.

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'We will forever be there to support them'

Ruiz is one of two parents who walked the stage at Eastern's graduation in honor of their child Sunday, Assistant Principal Catherine Bates said.

Eastern student Allayah Walker-Travis, 17, was killed in February 2022 in the 3500 block of Wainwright Avenue.

"They have been my students since seventh grade," Bates said of both young women. "So it's personal."

Honoring the teens at graduation is a chance to help both their families heal, she said.

"As a school community, we hurt for both families who lost their child tragically and senselessly," Bates said. "As a school and as an administrative team, we hope we bring both families one step closer to healing and that they know that they're not alone in their grief and their loss. We will forever be there to support them. Once a Quaker, always a Quaker."

Anna was outgoing, happy and endlessly supportive of her family and friends, Ruiz said, and she would be thrilled knowing her mom walked the stage at her graduation to receive her diploma.

"Anna would be, I know, up there right now jumping around once she heard that I get to do this," she said. "I know she's going to be just joyful and I know she's going to try to show her presence somehow and let me feel her with me."

Contact Reporter Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ .