A Devoted Mother--and Victim of Gangs : Eulogy: Maria Corona worked two jobs to support her children, until she died in a cross-fire. Family and friends turn out at her rosary and recall a woman who was full of life.

SANTA ANA —  Maria Elena Corona held dual jobs to support her two children. She loved the youngsters, ages 2 and 4, so much that she liked to update their portraits every year. She planned to do just that last Sunday, but never had the chance.

Corona, 26, of Westminster, was fatally shot as she waited in traffic in Santa Ana on Saturday, the innocent victim of a gang cross-fire. On Thursday, 150 people gathered here for her rosary.

“What can you do?” a tearful Eduardo Corona, 51, said as he looked down at his eldest child as lying in the casket. “You can’t do anything. I just wish we could live in peace. I just wish with all my heart that the violence would stop. It’s something you can’t erase--losing a child under such conditions.”

He said he last saw his daughter two days before the shooting, but only briefly because he was heading off to work. He said he told her one of the headlights on her car looked low and that she ought to get it fixed.

“And that was that. . . . The next thing I knew she was gone,” he said.

Eduardo Jr., 23, said little is known about what was behind his sister’s death, but that it frightens him to think that someone precious and close to him could be taken away so quickly. “It’s so out of control and there’s going to come a time where it’s going to get worse,” he said. “This time it was my sister, the next time it’s going to be a family.”

On the night of the shooting, Maria Corona had just finished work at Cimco, a manufacturing company in Costa Mesa, where she worked full time. She also held a part-time job at Burger King in Fountain Valley.

Corona was known as Shorty to her colleagues at Cimco, who said she was always in good spirits.

“If you needed some cheering up, you’d go talk to Shorty,” said Henry Solano, 45, her supervisor. “She was always quick to tell you a joke and would always laugh at your jokes even if they weren’t funny. That’s the kind of girl she was.”

Solano said Corona’s job at Cimco was to assemble cardboard boxes for other workers to fill with products. Her other job, aside from working at Burger King, was supporting her two children, Manuel, 2, and Sara, 4. She and her husband were estranged and money was hard to come by, but she was too proud to get help from the government, family members said.

“She was a loving and caring mother, and her family always came first,” said her sister, Alicia Silva, 24.

Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. today at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, 1100 S. Center St., in Santa Ana.

Burial will follow at Santa Ana Cemetery.