Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (31)
March 4, 1951 - November 5, 1982
Theresa was born March 4, 1951 in Busan, South Korea, at the height of the Korean war. She was the middle of five children. When she was 12, her family immigrated to the US and settled in Hawaii and then San Francisco. She was fluent in Korean, English, and French. During the masters program, she found a deep interest in film. In 1976, she flew to Paris to study film professionally. Theresa later relocated to New York City and embarked her career as a writer-editor. She wrote multiple books about language, mother tongue, and diaspora and also made films with her brother. Theresa published her novel Dictee in October,1982.In May 1982, she married Richard, one of the classmates that she met at UC Berkeley. On November 5, a week after the publication of Dictee, Theresa was raped and murdered by a security guard named Joey Sanza in the Puck building, where her husband worked. Sanza, 21-years old, of Italian descent, was a serial rapist who was already wanted in Florida for nine counts of sexual assault.