Friend pays tribute to Santa Fe exchange student Sabika Sheikh through dance

Sabika Sheikh was an exchange student set to return home to Pakistan, but never made it. A friend dedicated her dance season to Sabika and invited us to witness her touching tribute.

“One thing I miss the most about Sabika is most definitely her laugh cause it just made everybody feel more open and more comfortable because she was so comfortable with everything. And how she kind of just made me open up,” says Vanessa Marcuccio of Chara Christian Dance Academy in Friendswood. “One thing that she was really about was peace, world peace. Whenever you think of Sabika, because of everything that was shared about her, you think about peace and she just wanted to be a world changer.”

Marcuccio says she dedicated her dance season to Sabika because Sabika always supported her.

“The dance, I decided to do it because Sabika was my biggest supporter,” she says. “She always told me whenever I thought I couldn't, that I could be something in dance, that I could make it somewhere, and so I decided to dedicate this year with my whole dance season to her. And I guess the dance was more like a goodbye because I never got one.”

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