When Stephanie Dzikowski was pregnant, she learned that the baby girl growing inside her had a rare congenital disorder called gastrochisis. Her intestines and other internal organs were outside of her body, making for a potentially difficult birth.
Stephanie wanted to learn all she could about this condition, so she made it the topic of her senior project.
“She got honors for it,” her father Stephen Dzikowski said.
It was that love for her daughter that prompted Stephanie to tell her father that she wasn’t comfortable with some aspects of her boyfriend’s life and was thinking about ending things with him. In a tragic foreshadowing, she said she felt the well-being of she and her then-2-year-old daughter Clarissa was at stake.
The following week, on July 30, 2015 — three years ago today — Stephanie was shot and killed inside the home she shared with her father, daughter and boyfriend on Aramingo Avenue in Port Richmond. Clarissa was home but was not harmed. Stephanie was 22.
Her murder went unsolved for about a year and a half. In February 2017, police made an arrest in connection with the case and the suspect, James Jones, was later convicted of third-degree manslaughter. Jones, who was homeless at the time, was believed to have been motivated by robbery. He will be eligible for parole in 26 years.
“That’s not enough for a lifetime of memories,” Stephen said.
Stephanie was born July 2, 1993 in Philadelphia and grew up in the Port Richmond and Kensington area. Her mother was in and out of her life, then gave Stephen full custody when Stephanie was young. He raised her as a single parent with help from his mother and father.
“She was a bright child, very outgoing,” he said. “I raised her to speak her opinion, whether she agreed or disagreed with something. I raised her to be the best person she could be. I always told her not to follow and to use her own best judgment.”
In 1998, Stephanie’s brother was born. Both kids started out going to public school, but Stephen switched them to Catholic school once he had more money coming in.
As she got older, Stephanie “started hanging with the wrong crowd,” Stephen said, and started skipping school. She wanted to drop out, but that wasn’t an option to her father. She ended up enrolling in Agora Cyber Charter School and earning her diploma.
Clarissa was born a short time later, in July 2013, via emergency C-section. She was hospitalized for several months due to her gastrochisis.
Between visits to the hospital, Stephanie began studying to become a dental assistant, a career she had until her death.
In the months prior, though, Stephanie told Stephen, whom she called “Padre,” that she wanted to go back to school to become an X-ray technician in order to make more money.
“She never got a chance to do that,” Stephen said.
Stephen and Stephanie had a nearly nightly ritual of talking one-on-one when the day was over, and that’s one of the things he misses most.
“We used to sit outside at night and have our conversations,” he said. “That was our thing — we’d sit on the step for about an hour pretty much every night. Not all of them were good or happy conversations. There were disagreements at times. But I still miss them.”
Clarissa, who is now 5 and fully recovered, most likely won’t have many memories of her mother. So, Stephen, who has partial custody of his granddaughter, tries to keep Stephanie’s memory alive the best he can.
He and his wife take Clarissa to rallies and events for the families of crime victims, and they take her to St. Peter’s Cemetery to visit Stephanie.
“She’s buried with my mom and dad,” he said. “They were close to her and helped raise her. So we go to see all three of them.”
