CHESTER, Calif. — Sondra Young sat on the front seat of her father's big Chrysler sedan, straining to see over the dashboard. It was the middle of the afternoon in October 1952, and her two older sisters and a neighborhood boy giggled in the back seat as they rode with her dad to the bank.

As her father sped down the winding mountain road near Chester, Calif., shadows of towering ponderosa pines flickered across Sondra's face. She did not want to miss a minute of this trip with her adoring dad and sisters. The chill of the crisp autumn air was already cutting into the warmth of the afternoon.

For all but one of them, this was their last day to live.

Almost 17 hours later, a California Highway Patrol officer found the sea-green Chrysler shoved into a bush about 400 yards from the road. The car was abandoned, but when the officer popped the trunk, he saw something so awful it would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Sondra's sisters — Jean, 7 and Judy, 6 — were dead, as was 4-year-old Michael Saile, a neighbor boy who had come along for the ride. Sondra's father, Guard Young, had been bludgeoned and stuffed in the trunk on top of them.

And yet, from the back of the compartment, two tiny, blood-streaked hands reached out to the officer. Little 3-year-old Sondra, wearing a sundress her mother had picked out that morning, had been beaten so severely her skull was cracked. She had survived 17 hours through a cold October night, most of it crammed into a trunk with her dying father, sisters, and neighborhood friend. But she was still alive. Barely.

As the now-grown Sondra Jones tells the story from her Provo home, 56 years later, you can almost see the images of that day flash before her eyes.

"I thought I was unconscious," Jones says, surrounded by piles of faded newspaper clippings that tell about the murders, the aftermath and her mother's strength through it all.

As painful as those memories are, Sondra is able to share them because hers is a story not of tragedy, but of triumph, and a testament to the power of forgiveness.

Instead of being consumed by rage and bitterness, her mother picked up, moved to Utah, and started over, determined to rebuild a life that would honor the loved ones she lost. Today, as a result of that decision, her children and grandchildren include successful doctors, a surgeon, two Olympians and a marine biologist. Sondra herself is a published author with 10 children and a master's degree, and she is working on a Ph.D.

On Saturday Sondra returned to Chester, Calif., to see former California Highway Patrol officer Jeff Cooley — the man who saved her that morning — for the first time after all these years.