"Why India?"

"Dad, I've got friends going to Costa Rica, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Ireland."

"As a dad, I'd prefer any of those."

Dave Alvarez couldn't hold back a small smile and half-chuckle, then or now. Reflecting recently in his Torrance home, the veteran Los Angeles County paramedic was recalling the moment when his daughter, Sumer, a sophomore at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., told him about her plans to spend most of summer vacation '05 in rural India, teaching uneducated children English.

It was a trip that took his daughter's life. But not before she had changed the lives of others --- for the better.

Bugs, bites and beauty

The program was called The Learning Foundation India, and its mission was to give the poorest of poor kids, who weren't going to school, at least the basic skills to enter the nation's burgeoning global economy as data processing and computer workers.

Sumer Alvarez arrived in the village of Samode last June, along with about a dozen other volunteers. And the 20-year-old, soon-to-be college junior just loved it, despite encountering enough culture shock to make a Marine homesick.

In a long e-mail after only three days on the subcontinent, she described Samode as overrun with cows, boars, goats, lizards and monkeys --- plus some rather big bugs. She counted 32 mosquito bites on her body.

Because the ground was a mix of water, dirt and sewage, she said it was impossible to escape the smell. She reported that she had already sweated though all her clothes, had taken what showers she could by candlelight, but was told she'd probably get lice anyway. There were no sit-down toilets or toilet paper.

She'd had her glasses stolen and stepped in ankle-deep elephant dung. There were three power outages every day. Her host family didn't understand her, except for the father "a little." And six men told her to pull down her skirt over her knees.

But Sumer really wanted to talk about something else.

"India is freaking amazing!!!!!!" she wrote. "I would use my whole bag of expletives to describe this place if this was not a mass e-mail. Oh, my sweet Jesus, it is absolutely beautiful ... the people are beautiful ... the places are beautiful ... everything is fantastic."

Her host family consisted of three brothers and their wives, five children and parents. Half of them slept outside. They had a temple in their house dedicated to Krishna, with cymbals banging four times a day for worship. The home's prized luxury was a shower head.

Sumer was just starting to teach her class of 300 10-to-14-year-olds, skinny kids with no shoes trying to learn "lessons in the dirt."

Still, she confided, "I have felt the most content here and now than I have at any other point in my life," before admitting: "Well, I can't really say that being amongst all this abject poverty ... but everything feels very pure."

Anticipation, and tragedy

Throughout the early summer, by phone Dave Alvarez kept up with his daughter's daily adventures and struggles to teach illiterate children to read and write, many of whom had never seen a pen before. She talked about camel rides, how people drove in the middle of the street, and, again and again, how much she loved being "overloaded" with the spirit of India.

Towards the middle of July, he already had starting anticipating Aug. 20, the day Sumer was coming home. He'd take the whole day off, so he could pick her up at the airport and then listen to her stories in person.

"I wanted to hear them all," says the father of three, before the expression on his rugged face changes and his voice drops to barely a whisper. "But tragedy happened."

On July 30, a Saturday night, Sumer Alvarez was having dinner with 15 friends at the Hotel Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, a dinner-dance club that resembled a train depot, about an hour away from Samode. When she went to sit down, according to local news reports, her metal wrought-iron chair slid off the platform. She tumbled into an air conditioning unit and was electrocuted.

'In her blood'

Twelve weeks after the accident, grief still fills the tidy Torrance house of Dave and Julie Alvarez, Sumer's stepmother, on West 238th Street. Sitting around the dinning room table this Thursday afternoon are Dave's mother, Rachael Alvarez, and sister, Leslie Allen. Photo albums and loose color snapshots that Sumer had taken in India, copies of the Daily Breeze and The [Georgetown] Hoya newspapers with lengthy obits, and hand-written letters of condolences cover the table.

Everybody wants to talk about the outgoing college girl who did more with her Catholic faith than go to Mass on Sunday.

"I knew it was in her blood because she has a history of doing this sort of thing," Dave explains about his daughter's desire to go to India. "She was very involved with her church. A year after her own confirmation class, she was a peer advisor in it. Other kids wanted to travel, but she just had it in her blood to help people."

The rest nod.

"I think she was interested in Hinduism because of how everybody was connected and tied together," says aunt Leslie Allen, who called Sumer a sister, friend, niece and daughter all rolled into one. "I think she felt really free in India. Because helping people is where she was most comfortable. That was her."

Dave remembers receiving a call from Sumer one day while he was on duty at the Lomita fire station. She told him she and some friends were going to a shelter in Los Angeles that night to sleep over and make breakfast and lunch for the homeless.

When he said, great, just stop by after he got home to grab a sleeping bag, his daughter said, "No, Dad, we're all going to sleep on cardboard just to get a feel for it."

Another time, she called him from Georgetown to say she was teaching a GED (General Equivalency Diploma) class to Virginia inmates. The former deputy sheriff tried to stay cool, but warned her not to give any prisoners her last name and not to show any skin.

"But at the end of this last year when she came home, she said of all the things she did, she got the most satisfaction out of doing that," he recalls, shaking his head.

Family members recite other activities and interests. At Bishop Montgomery High School, where Sumer played softball, was a member of the surfing team and participated in the drama department, she also found time to tutor children in Torrance and still get good grades.

At Georgetown, she was heavily into children's theater, making sets and posters, doing some acting and mentoring kids. With a budding passion for photography, she took pictures for different campus publications. The self-taught guitarist also taught guitar to inner-city boys and girls. Plus, she tutored adults at the local Catholic Charities office.

Rachael Alvarez describes her granddaughter as "unique, fun and never tempermental." She could tell when Sumer was very young she was special, a girl with a real sense of who she was and who was her God.

She got a call one night from Sumer who said she was on her way back to campus. When Rachael asked what she was doing out so late alone, she was told, "I give English lessons to some Chinese people, Grandma."

Aunt Leslie believes her niece was way ahead of the curve morally. But the heady student would also challenge teachers on church doctrine she felt were off base. And she really enjoyed encountering the many backgrounds, nationalities and religions Georgetown offered.

"I think she was trying to place her Catholicism within the goodness of the other faiths she was exposed to," Leslie explains. "So I definitely think she was a servant. And she was so humble. She never boasted about any of her volunteering. In my heart of hearts, I think she was probably a saint."

Dave Alvarez believes his daughter inspired many. As proof he offers himself, along with the more than 1,000 people who attended her Aug. 8 funeral Mass at St. James Church in Redondo Beach.

"When you come down to it, you know, material things don't mean anything," he says. "And I think that's hit a lot of people because of Sumer. So she's an inspiration, as tragic as it is. Something like this just can't help but make you start thinking a whole different way. What's really important."

After a moment, he continues. "The one thing that I've learned is that our kids are gifts," he says. "And I had my little girl for 20 years. We all had her for 20 years."

Editor's Note: "The Faith in Our Lives" is a series spotlighting Catholics in various walks of life, and how they connect faith with what they do.