It was rough. He didn't tell me he was going to record it.". Her tears seem as much for a time gone by as for a lost love. A year later, at age 19, she married a musician who sang and played the guitar. Since then Fox-Coots has married twice more. She lives in Pollock Pines, a small community in the hills near Sacramento, with her third -- and she says last -- husband. She's only consented to a few interviews, she says, and then only because she wanted to promote "La Bamba" for the Valenzuela family, which is receiving a percentage of the film's profits. Ritchie and Donna dated in high school, and their romance was portrayed in the 1987 biopic La Bamba. "No one has seen her since but everyone is looking for her," Mandheim says. "I was 15 years old, for heaven's sakes," she exclaims. I was a kid. Unfortunately, Ritchie never had the chance to propose. ", Fox-Coots remembers meeting Olson at the funeral. ", Sometimes even she has trouble believing it ever happened. He called out of the blue one evening and drawled, "Ya wanna go with Elvis tonight? "If I'd known I was going to get all this attention," she cracks, "I would have lost 20 pounds. "Who knows? She flips over a few pages to another photograph. She has two daughters. Elvis Presley, whom she had never met, had one of his bodyguards arrange a date with her so that he could ask her all about Valens. In the mid-1950s, the family moved to the Los Angeles suburb of Pacoima, where the teen-ager attended high school and began playing in a rock band. You know, things like that. Only this time they're a little different. This guy {from Columbia Pictures} says, 'Trust me.' Whenever he'd be back in town, they'd get together. "Could he read music? On Feb 2, 1959, 17-year-old Ritchie died in a plane crash, along with Buddy Holly and J.P. "The Big Bopper." She received more than 8,000 lettersafter a fan magazine printed her address. Donna told The Post that he would even allude to them getting married someday. ", In "La Bamba," actress Danielle Von Zerneck portrays Donna as a giggly, rather demure schoolgirl. In the movie, Valens is obsessed with Donna and plans to marry her. CITRUS HEIGHTS, CALIF. -- The first hint Donna Ludwig had that she might become a rock 'n' roll legend came on a bright October day in 1958. "It was a 360-degree shift from the first draft," she says. "I was attracted to him because he was a nice man, er ..." She stops herself. Her independent streak gave her the gumption to date Valens against the vehement opposition of her father. Although Movie Donna was more demure, according to The Washington Post, who interviewed the real Donna (who now goes by Donna Fox-Coots), real-life Donna had an "independent streak" that led her to date Ritchie. The teen-ager probably dated while on tour in Hawaii, and he was apparently involved with a mystery woman from New York at the time of his death. "Going back to school after he died was so hard. She was only 16 when Ritchie died. Bob Keane, the a Del-Fi record label exec, discovered him and had Ritchie's change his last name to make it more "radio friendly" (aka, whitewash his identity — but that's a different story). She opens it to a glossy studio photograph of Valens. "It was horrible. Looking back on it now, Donna is frequently asked if Ritchie was the "love of her life." The release of "La Bamba," the summer movie celebrating Valens' short life, assures her a permanent footnote in the history of pop culture. I was devastated. ", "He wanted to know all about Ritchie," recalls Fox-Coots, who accompanied Presley to a penthouse party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I was not sweet and innocent, I was more of a hell-raiser. Watching bits of her youth flash onto the big screen has even brought back the old dreams. Valenzuela died Sunday at Watsonville Community Hospital. "See his hair in this picture?" Yet hardly anyone in the Valenzuela family had met her before he died, and one of Valens' former business associates recently stated that Fox-Coots was little more than a casual acquaintance of Valens. "I think you can safely say that Ritchie Valens did not die a virgin," says Mandheim, who spent 10 years researching his life for her book "Ritchie Valens: The First Latino Rocker," to be released this month by Bilingual Press at Arizona State University. Hoping to capitalize on the brief romance, her father arranged for her to sing two songs, "Lost Without You" and "Now That You're Gone," on the Pop label. I didn't want a big thing made about it. Along with "La Bamba," "Come On, Let's Go," Ritchie also wrote the famous song "Donna," which was a tribute to his high school sweetheart, Donna Ludwig. He didn't swear. It just upsets me too much." She moved out of her father's house on her 18th birthday and never visited him again. I can remember them so clearly.". The marriage only lasted a year. 1958 was the year Ritchie's career really took off. She and six of her friends were cruising the main drag in downtown San Fernando, in the white convertible her daddy had bought her, top down, radio blaring. "I remember the scene where Ritchie and I go to a drive-in," she says wistfully. And whenever she laid her head on his shoulder, he always smelled so clean, like soap and water. When he left high school to pursue his music career, they decided to keep an open relationship, essentially. The absurdity of Fox-Coots' situation doesn't escape her. I was a kid. Trust me! Her son, born Ricardo Valenzuela, grew up in Central California farm camps and worked as a laborer in the orchards of Campbell. "As far as I know, Ritchie died a virgin. I wouldn't even get on a plane until I was 27 years old.". Her response? Our relationship was a very, very short part of his very short life. Not only were the steamy encounters between her and Valens deleted, but he is portrayed by actor Lou Diamond Phillips as a sensitive, caring young man who is constantly teased by his older brother Bob about his sexual innocence. she says, totally absorbed. She doesn't believe she rates a place in pop history. She worked as a waitress, a farm worker, a bartender and a house cleaner. She feels strongly that Valens' recording company took financial advantage of the family after his death. Pale and thin, she clutched a framed 8-by-10 picture of Valens hard against her chest. I didn't want a big thing made about it. It became their song. The world didn't learn that a real-life Donna had inspired the classic teen-age lament, which sold almost a million copies in the late '50s, until five months later when the 17-year-old Valens died in the same plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. Donna remembers being summoned out of class to the principal's office at James Monroe High School, where the press snapped photographs of her. Her employes never realized she was the Donna until she announced she was taking a day off to attend the movie's premiere. Valens, whose overnight climb to success was chronicled in this year’s hit movie ″La Bamba,″ was killed in an Iowa plane crash in 1959 at the age of 17 along with Buddy Holly and J.P. Richardson, also known as the Big Bopper. "I had a girl," Ritchie Valens crooned, "Donna was her name ...". Did he write his own songs? ", Nevertheless, both times she's seen "La Bamba," she's had to run out to the lobby to cry. "I remember Ritchie saying he'd written this song for his girl, Donna," says Bob Keane, his former manager, "but I never heard anything else about her.". It was the same song Valens had sung to her over the telephone a year before, after they had decided to date other people. "Going back to school after he died was so hard. "It's really funny, I'll dream about Ritchie now and instead of him I'll see Lou Diamond Phillips," she says. Who knows? ", Fox-Coots says she and Valens had "an arrangement" after he dropped out of high school to record music and tour the country. "Of course," she says, "no one believed them. "It's really too much. "She's certainly got a story to tell. Once I dreamed Ritchie came and sat on the foot of my bed and said, 'Everything's okay.' I cried all the time and everyone pointed their finger at me. It's Ritchie you knew, not Lou Diamond!' She and Valens had met the summer before their sophomore year at a party for a car club called the Igniters. Valens’ hit records included ″Come On, Let’s Go,″ ″Donna,″ and a rock version of a traditional Mexican folk song, ″La Bamba.″, Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. "For a long time when I was young, I used to have dreams about it. I ran with a pack of girls and I was their leader.". The men in her office describe her as just one of the boys, a down-to-earth career woman with a ready, throaty laugh. "We used to argue about that. "I was 15 years old, for heaven's sakes. He called her regularly from the road, sometimes mentioning marriage, but she never really believed they would wed. "I thought he'd get really really famous and that would be that. ", She never had to file a lawsuit, and she is very happy with the way "La Bamba" turned out. After her date passed out from drinking too much beer, Valens began singing "We Belong Together" directly to her. Deejays began playing a sappy spinoff song about her loss, "Letter to Donna" by a group called the Kittens. ", In the wake of "La Bamba," some people have questioned just how big a role Fox-Coots really played in Valens' life. She had cried hearing it then, not because she suspected he would ever make her famous by recording it, but because she was 15 years old and to have a boy sing a song he'd written about her, even late at night when no one else could hear, seemed enough like a dream come true. "They got the Coke glasses just right. Big deal. ", Instead of making her feel special, being the real Donna just as often embarrassed her. They would date other people, but whenever he was in town they would be together. Was Little Richard Ever Married? According to The Post, Donna "regularly sneaked out of her bedroom window to meet Valens at San Fernando hangouts like the Rainbow Roller Rink or Bob's Big Boy." Fox-Coots consented to sing the songs, she says, but only after a contract was drawn up ensuring that her share of the royalties would go to Valens' mother. His siblings, including one older brother, two younger sisters and a younger brother, were living in California and Ne
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