Hilda Marcela Cabraales was a 26-year-old architect who moved from Mexico to Los Angeles to start her dream job in interior design. Do you remember when she said she wanted to go to Los Angeles? And how did you feel when she told you that?
I feel very happy for her but very sad for me because we we are very close. No one was surprised that the kumlady graduate of the prestigious university in Monterey, Mexico, was thriving in LA. I was Marcela's best friend.
She was looking for the American dream. I guess Fernanda Kasani and Alan Bettincourt, who called her Marcella or Marseilles, were two of her closest friends in Monteray. She was very determined.
She also knew how to have a good time. She loved to dance. She loved to dress up.
Every single person that met her loved loved Marcela, including her dog, a Wymer runner named Tomas. Hilda left him with Allan when she moved to LA. She planned a call for him after she got her bearings.
That call never came. 4 months after moving to LA, Hilda was in a coma, fighting for her life. Her frantic parents and sister Fernanda raced to her side.
I received the phone call in the middle of the night saying that she was so ill. She was very bad. She was uh intubated.
And I thought when we are there things will change. She will she will wake up. Hilda and her friend Christy Giles had both suffered a drug overdose.
Toxicology reports revealed that she had cocaine, ecstasy, and elevated levels of fentinyl in her system. But her friends and family were sure that this healthconscious young woman would never have willingly taken such a toxic cocktail of drugs. When you heard overdose, you immediately thought drugged.
Yeah, drugged. I was sure someone did this to her. Hilda and her friend Christy were enjoying a night out in LA and had attended a warehouse party after midnight.
The next day, Christy and Hilda were both dumped at different hospitals in LA, clinging to their lives. And then like obviously all our alarm bells are going off in our heads when both girls are dropped off at two different hospitals 2 hours apart. Like something terrible happened that night.
Hospital staff told investigators a black Prius without license plates pulled up to the ER entrance and said they found Hilda passed out on the curb somewhere nearby and left without providing their names or phone numbers. Barry Telus, an LAPD homicide detective and CBS News consultant, said nothing about the story made sense. He just dropped somebody off and said, "Hey, by the way, we're driving down the street.
We found this girl passed out on the sidewalk. " As police investigated, Hilda spent two weeks on life support. Hilda, what were your final moments with your daughter?
They were so hard, you know, and I just was asking God to not let her suffer more. I told her, "Maybe when I pass away, I will see you again and I give you a big hug, a kiss. " The family decided to donate Hilda's organs.
Her mom remembers the hospital staff lining the halls as the family accompanied Hilda to the O. The medical team was clapping to honor her, to say thank you for giving life to others. Hilda Marcela Cabraales was pronounced dead one day before her 27th birthday.
Back in Monterey, Mexico, her friends gathered to remember her, all dressed in white at her favorite park. We brought her favorite thing to drink and her favorite cake. At first we were crying, but at some point we put her favorite music on and we just start dancing and we we were laughing and hugging and it was beautiful.
I felt like she was there.
