The couple Santana Andrade and Channing Capwell Junior
	Home   Cette page en Français

It is well before that the lights comes on the world of Santa Barbara that the heart of Santana Andrade began beating for the heir of the Capwell family, Channing Junior. However, nothing intended these two beings to get united. Santana is the daughter of the employees of the Capwell villa, while Channing Junior is the future master of the place, the son of powerful Channing Creigthon Capwell. If their love-story seems idyllic, the truth, which will be revealed years later, will demonstrate that the love of Channing Junior was partially only facade and deceit.

In this year of 1978, the young Santana Andrade, of modest background, aspires to a life better than the one lived by her parents. If she works punctually as employee at the Capwell villa, it is mainly to help her mother, because Santana follows studies to later become an interior decorator. Proud of her Mexican roots, Santana, then 17-year-old, possesses an undeniable charm. We can suppose that there are many students who court this brown young woman with a spicy temperament.

Besides, Mason Capwell, Junior Channing's older brother, is maybe one of the first ones to see in her the woman that she could become. If he flirts with her, Santana does not seem to take his advances seriously : they know each other for years, because Santana shared the games of the Capwell children. And moreover, Mason, due to his too complex behavior, does not represent the male ideal that she may expect. What Santana ignores, it is that the two Capwell sons cordially hate each other : they are terribly jealous the one of the other. Channing is jealous of his brother because he is the elder son, and Mason hates this brother because he has all that he does not and what he looks for desperately : their father's affection.

And it is because Channing Junior sees there a way to hurt Mason that he also begins to flirt with the young woman. Very fast, he succeeds in seducing her. It is necessary to recognize that Channing seems to possess all the qualities : he is young, he is handsome, he is rich and especially he shows himself as the softest suitor. Santana, even if the story appears to make cliché, succumbs very fast to the advances of the young man. Who would not dream to meet the big love in the arms of the young heir of one of the most illustrious families of the Californian coast ?

And it is in the greatest secrecy that the couple protects its rising love. At the very beginning, everybody ignores everything of their story. Only maybe Mason was able to notice a change in Santana's behavior. If Santana is really in love (she is even going, for him, to betray the commands of her catholic faith), it is not the case of Channing Junior. For him - we shall discover it later - this relation is only a game, a way to hurt the brother he hates. However very fast, their love story is going to escape any control. Santana is going to get pregnant. C.C. is going to discover their affair and the pregnancy to come.

The love story gets transformed into nightmare. By discovering the relation of his son and Santana, C.C. loses his temper and he explodes of fury and anger, by learning the pregnancy of the young woman : he then sees collapsing the dreams of glory which he imagined for his son. He decides to take in hand the fate of these two beings, obliging them to break, forcing Santana to lie to her parents and to run away to Acapulco in the greatest secrecy to bring into the world the child, and to give him up, without seeing him even one second. The couple is broken. Channing Junior is murdered on July 30th, 1979, a few days before his son is born. Santana is broken : her heart will always carry in itself the indelible sorrow of this child too early torn away.

At her return in Santa Barbara, Santana has to face an immense sorrow, the abandoning of her child and the rough death of her former lover, without having a friendly shoulder on which to quench her sorrow. In absence of any comfort, Santana becomes hardened and, above all, she focuses all her own being on the need, almost vital, to find her lost child, symbol of this impossible love between Channing Junior and her.

Devastated, Santana will never stop trying to discover the identity of her child, to try then to obtain his custody, even if it means getting humanely lost in the course of new love affairs in her distraught quest. She will not, moreover, hesitate to try to seduce C.C. himself to reach her purposes...

Text written for this site by Lilian

Read also : The murder of Channing Capwell Jr.