Yvonne Pinter holds a photo of her daughter Gloria, who was murdered in 1984. Courtesy of Yvonne Pointer

Yvonne Pointer is the mistress of upbeat. Even in a phone call, her enthusiasm is contagious as she declares, "God will use a situation … get that message out! God can take a terrible situation, and use it for His glory."

Her message evolved from what some say is the greatest pain on earth: the loss of a child. On December 6, 1984, Pointer's then 14-year-old daughter Gloria, the oldest of her three children, was raped and murdered while on her way to school in Cleveland, Ohio. Gloria's killer has never been found. Her death came nine years after Yvonne had traded life on the streets for life as a Christian believer.

One of ten children born to "a wonderful mother and father," Pointer admits, "I was the worst one of the kids. I was the girl who was always suspended, I wanted to try drugs, I dropped out of school, I was pregnant at 16. I did everything my parents did not want me to do."

For three years, a friend of her father's continually tried to reach her: "He was part of the church and he would come to where I was getting high and say, 'You need to change your ways.' He was a thorn in my flesh."

But there came a time, Pointer says, when "the high turned on me, people turned on me." When it did, she remembered the words of her father's friend, went to church, and cried out to God.

"That was May 4, 1975 … you never forget the day or hour you have an encounter with Jesus Christ," Pointer explains.

From that encounter, Pointer started to turn her life around … and then came her daughter's senseless, horrific murder.

"After she died, I would spend hours in the church [building] when no one was there, because it didn't make sense to me," she admits. "I had come through drugs, through street life—and now this? I could not fathom this would happen to a Christian. But because I had that personal experience with God, I went to God."

Like Job before her, Pointer found that some Christians were no help: "They told me to stop talking about it. It was like fire shut up in my bones."

But there were others who did help. For the first nine months after Gloria's death, one friend came to Pointer's house and washed clothes, cooked, and cleaned when Pointer simply didn't have the strength. Slowly, a new sense of direction emerged.

"In the beginning it was all about the injustice done to my child. Period," she says. "But soon I became aware of other families in similar situations."

She wrote letters, talked to police, to reporters, to anyone who would listen. She hoped to find "a celebrity or somebody important" to help.

	"Would I want the person who murdered Gloria over for Sunday dinner? No. But if I didn't forgive him, unforgiveness would kill me too."

"I spent five years looking for a famous person to come to Cleveland and help us. In the meantime, I did the work I wanted that person to do because they never got here."

She co-founded Parents Against Child Killing, a support group in Cleveland for those who have lost children through violence. That group has morphed into Positive Plus, a women-helping-women organization.

"We started out with mothers who had lost children, but I found out pain is pain is pain," she says. "If your husband walked out and left you with five babies, that's pain. We felt we could find solutions by helping each other."

A willing heart
When Gloria was murdered, Pointer had returned to school and had a job as a newspaper carrier. Later she found other office work before Lee Fisher, Ohio Attorney General from 1991-95, asked her to work for him. Fisher met Pointer shortly after Gloria's death. At that time, he was a state senator working with the now-famous John Walsh of TV's America's Most Wanted to get Ohio's missing child law enacted. Pointer agreed to help Fisher gain passage of Ohio's law. After he was elected Attorney General, Fisher selected her as a victim's advocate.

"She was able to connect with victims of crime, to reach out in a way that was special and unique because of the unspeakable pain and grief she experienced," says Fisher, now president of the Center for Families and Children, a Cleveland nonprofit providing services to youth and children.

He adds, "We formed a friendship of mutual support and respect. She has taught me the power of love, the power of faith, and what courage is all about."

Today Pointer's "day job" is in Cleveland's community relations office, but she's also a writer, speaker, and tireless advocate for child safety, receiving numerous honors for her work. Her self-published book, Behind the Death of a Child, helps fund the Gloria Pointer Scholarship Award, established in 1990 to help students attend college.

She even speaks in prisons, sharing the love of God with inmates. And Gloria's story has been used by God to reach all the way to Ghana, West Africa.

"I got a letter from a young boy named Anthony Tay. One day he was walking down the road asking, 'God, where are You?' He saw a piece of paper on the ground that was about me. He wrote, 'I am sorry to hear about the murder of your girl-child.' I asked him to send me what he found," Pointer explains.

Tay had found a 1996 article about Gloria's murder—in 2002 in West Africa. Today Tay, a 20-year-old college student, heads the Gloria Pointer Teen Movement Initiative, a group dedicated to assisting African youth in obtaining an education and healthy lifestyle in memory of Gloria.

Pointer believes with today's technological advances, Gloria's killer will someday be found. She admits Gloria's death remains "an open wound that never goes away," but says she's forgiven her child's murderer.

"I found hatred too heavy a load to carry. Would I want the person who murdered Gloria over for Sunday dinner? No. But if I didn't forgive him, unforgiveness would kill me too," she says quietly. "Forgiveness releases you to live."

She adds, "I knew about God's mercy and grace because He saved me. I had done a lot of wrong, but His love was still there for me. This is the message we need to take to the world, that God loves us. I am not a perfect person. God doesn't need a perfect person—He needs a willing person."

Audrey T. Hingley is a writer in Mechanicsville, Virginia. For more information about Yvonne Pointer's ministry, visit www.yvonnepointer.com.

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