Sister was a prostitute but so much more

The family of one of Vancouver's missing prostitutes is concerned that the women will be perceived as one-dimensional caricatures similar to the characters in movies about prostitution and murder.

Maggie deVries said yesterday that she wants the missing women remembered as people with lives and families.

"It's for real," she said in an interview. "They were real people."

Ms. deVries's sister, Sarah deVries, who was last seen in April of 1998, had been working as a prostitute to pay for her addiction to cocaine and heroin for about 10 years before she vanished at the age of 28. She is now one of the 50 women -- most of them prostitutes or addicts or both, police say -- whose disappearances are the subject of a RCMP-Vancouver police probe.

Before Sarah went missing, she talked about prostitutes who were killed or beaten, Ms. deVries said, adding she did not recall her sister talking about any of the 29 women who disappeared before Sarah did.

After Sarah vanished, Ms. deVries discovered that her sister kept a journal, did ink sketches and wrote poems about her gritty life.

"She was part of a community. However miserable her life was, there was a community there; people cared about each other. There was love, friendship, joys and pain."

In the diary was a poem Sarah wrote in the fall of 1997 about a friend who was also a prostitute, who was found beaten beyond recognition. Ms. deVries said she did not know whether the attacker was ever arrested. A poem from Sarah's diary Woman's body found beaten be- yond recognition You sip your coffee Taking a drag of your smoke Turning the page Taking a bite of your toast Just another day Just another death Just one more thing you so easily forget You and your soft, sheltered life Just go on and on For nobody special from your world is gone Just another day Just another death Just another Hastings Street whore Sentenced to death The judge's gavel already fallen Sentence already passed But you You just sip your coffee Washing down your toast. She was a broken down angel A child lost with no place A human being in disguise She touched my life She was somebody She was no whore She was somebody special Who just lost her way She was somebody fighting for life Trying to survive A lonely lost child who died In the night, all alone, scared Gasping for air. Sarah deVries