OC REGISTER

SOUTH MAIN DIVIDE ROAD, RIVERSIDE COUNTY – Erin Runnion splashes the arid soil with bottled water.

Watering the sunflower seeds she planted where the body of her 5-year-old daughter, Samantha, was found, Runnion takes in the sweeping view of the steep, rugged hills on the eastern edge of the Santa Ana Mountains in Riverside County – a popular launching point for paragliders.

“I do like to imagine she just…soared,” Runnion says. “That she just took off from this painful place.”

Ten years after the abduction, sexual assault and murder of the Stanton girl became a national story, Runnion visited the spot off Ortega Highway where authorities found Samantha’s body on a cliff overlooking Lake Elsinore.