Desirae Jenkins’ beauty, humor, intelligence and understanding garnered the respect of the children she worked with as a therapeutic behavioral specialist in California, her brother said.

Jenkins, a 2005 graduate of Warren G. Harding High School, worked at Hathaway-Sycamores Child and Family Services for only a year before she died, the victim of a gunshot wound Aug. 3 in her Los Angeles home.

Desirae’s funeral is scheduled for noon today at the New Jerusalem Fellowship Church. She will be laid to rest in Pineview Memorial Park Cemetery.

“If you would have asked me 12 years ago if a person could die from heartache, I would have told you ‘no,'” her brother, David Maurice Jenkins said. “But now, after everything, I would have to tell you, ‘yes.'”

Desirae’s mother – the stepmother David considered a mother – also was the victim of a violent death in 2004. Their father, David James Jenkins, was convicted in 2006 of her murder. He is serving 15 years to live in the Toledo Correctional Institution.

Desirae, 28, was a junior in Warren when the body of Deana Michelle Cox Jenkins, 39, was discovered in a closet in her own home, killed by strangulation.

“I have always looked up to my sister,” said David, 34. “That happened when she was in high school, but she was always able to persevere.”

Their father had been active in the community. He was a minister, coached basketball and worked in juvenile justice, his son said.

The circumstances surrounding the loss of her mother – and father to prison – forced Desirae to push herself hard, and she was a success, David said. She graduated from West Virginia University in 2010 with a degree in criminology and investigations.

“(Desirae) did not want to be felt sorry for, she wanted to make something of herself,” Jenkins said. “She was determined to keep it from beating her down.

“Everyone loved Desi. She had an intangible quality that made people gravitate toward her,” Daivd said.

“A coward took her life,” he said.

According to Los Angeles police Sgt. Paul Funicello, Desirae was shot by Ronald Broussard, 68, in the early hours of Aug. 3 in an apparent murder-suicide. Funicello said Broussard called police and told them he shot her and responding officers discovered the bodies of Desirae and Broussard. No note was left, he said.

The sergeant said the two had been living together. David said his sister never mentioned Broussard and he had never met him.

The case has not been closed.

“I feel like every human emotion is balled up in the pit of my stomach, churning,” David said. “It churns. Mixing the good memories with the terrible and sickening knowledge of what happened.”

Desirae was an athlete at Harding. David, a Warren native who currently lives in Marina Del Ray, Calif., said he and his sister just met up on July 25 for her birthday. She asked him if he remembered the most points she ever scored in a Harding basketball game – 38.

David said he and Desirae discussed the news that he is expecting his first child. She was excited to be an aunt again – their brother, Durrell Jenkins, is father to a daughter named Deana, after their mother.

“She was so very proud. You could see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice. She loved life and was so happy to welcome a child into the family,” David said.

The family finds comfort in the idea that Deana and Desirae are together with God, looking over the family and knowing how they would want them all to live their lives.

“No person is built to suffer through heartache like this alone,” David said. “We do what we can to get through it. You have to be proactive and present and keep moving constantly.”

rfox@tribtoday.com