Arcelie “Celli” Laoagan was the embodiment of the hardworking Overseas Filipino Worker’s dream. At 41 years old, the mother of five was juggling two jobs and studying to become an accountant in Calgary, Canada. Every long hour she worked, every dollar she saved, was for one singular purpose: to bring her husband and five sons from Ilocos Sur to join her for a new and better life.

But on the cold winter night of January 17, 2008, that dream was brutally extinguished when she was stalked and assaulted by a predator on her lonely walk home from the train station.

The case began with a series of frantic, confusing calls to 911. A friend of Arcelie’s, Daniel Garcia, reported receiving a call from her around 11:00 PM in which he could hear a struggle. With no clear location, police began a desperate search.

It ended hours later with a grim discovery: Arcelie’s body was found behind the Grace Baptist Church. She had been severely beaten and sexually assaulted, and the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head.

The initial investigation hit a wall. The crime scene had no witnesses and was not covered by CCTV cameras. With few leads, detectives turned to the only place they could: Arcelie’s daily commute. They knew she relied on Calgary’s C-Train transit system.

What followed was a masterful and painstaking piece of police work, as detectives began the monumental task of reviewing hundreds of hours of security footage from every station along her route.

Deep within the grainy footage, they found their first break. They spotted Arcelie, tired after a long day’s work, walking calmly through the train station. On the platform, a mysterious figure lingered near her. The quality was poor, but the detectives had a lead.

They followed the train’s journey stop by stop, eventually seeing Arcelie get off at her station at 10:29 PM. But she was not alone. The footage showed the same figure following her out onto the street.

The detectives then traced the suspect’s movements backwards. They saw him on the platform at the 7th Street station, where he appeared to intentionally put his hood up just moments before Arcelie walked past. He then began to follow her.

The final, crucial clue was an object he was carrying: a hard hat, the same kind that had been found near the crime scene. Armed with a clear image of the suspect, police took the photo to the local ironworker’s union. He was immediately identified as 21-year-old Christopher James Watcheston.

A search of Watcheston’s home uncovered Arcelie’s missing purse and a work jacket with her blood on it. Faced with irrefutable DNA and CCTV evidence, he was arrested. At his trial, Watcheston concocted a bizarre and offensive defense.

He claimed he was high on a cocktail of 24 beers and the hallucinogen salvia, and that he had hallucinated that the 41-year-old Filipina was his own deceased mother. He alleged he followed her, and when he realized his “mistake,” he got angry and attacked her, claiming he only kicked her in the head to give her amnesia.

The jury saw through the ridiculous lie. The prosecution presented the clear-headed, calculated stalking seen on the CCTV footage and the damning DNA evidence. In 2010, Christopher Watcheston was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years.

While the killer was brought to justice, Arcelie’s story has a final, heartbreaking postscript. Her community and former employer rallied, raising over C$100,000 to create a trust fund for her five sons’ education. Her sister then took on Arcelie’s dream, filing a petition to sponsor her five orphaned nephews to immigrate to Canada.

In a devastating blow, Canadian immigration authorities denied the request, ruling the boys would be better off in the Philippines. The dream that Arcelie Laoagan had worked so tirelessly and sacrificed her life for was, in the end, denied.