Paralegal's Promising Career Was Just Starting But, Cut Short

NEW SCOTLAND -- This week, a young woman from Watervliet began work at a law firm, having been picked as the best and brightest of two dozen candidates for a paralegal's job. Two days later, she was dead, killed in a car crash along with a male passenger.

The death on Wednesday of Sonya Schwarz, 25, has left her employer and family in shock.

"She was a very bright young woman, and I had 25 people come in and interview for the job," said attorney Stephen Rehfuss of Rehfuss Liquori & Associates. "She was literally heads and shoulders above everyone else in intelligence and potential."

Schwarz, who was to graduate this spring from Russell Sage College, began work Tuesday at the firm in Latham, he said.

"Her aspiration was to go to law school," said her cousin, Tracy Caldwell.

Also killed in the 9:30 p.m. single-car crash was Edward Jennings, 39, of the Bronx.

State Police said Schwarz was driving north on Route 32 in a 2004 Saturn at an unsafe speed and failed to negotiate a curve, causing the four-door sedan to careen out of control and strike a barn.

The victims had to be extricated. Albany County Coroner John Keegan pronounced Jennings dead at the scene, police said. Schwarz died at Albany Medical Center Hospital.

Information on Jennings was not available. Caldwell declined to discuss him or where the pair had been that night.

Trooper Maureen Tuffey said toxicology tests would determine whether drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash.

Schwarz, a 2000 graduate of the Albany Academy for Girls, attended Boston University for a year before returning to the Capital Region, where she obtained her paralegal certificate at Bryant & Stratton.

"We knew very little about her," Rehfuss said. "She came in twice for interviews, and Tuesday was her first day in the office. When she didn't come in today (Thursday), we tried to reach her at home, no answer. We tried to reach her on her cell, no answer."

Later, someone made contact with her cousin and learned about the accident, the attorney said.

When Schwarz was 4 years old, her mother died in a car accident, Caldwell said. She was raised by a grandmother and an aunt, Janice Willard of Altamont, Caldwell's mother.

In her free time, Schwarz "volunteered to care for an elderly woman," doing her errands and grocery shopping, the cousin said. "She was a sweet and wonderful girl." (Source)