Her name was Mary Colletta when she was murdered one year ago today, but her family remembers her as Mary Daniels.

Her estranged husband, Christopher Colletta, is accused of stabbing her more than a dozen times in a parking garage at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur, where she worked.

She had obtained a restraining order against him a month earlier out of fear, and she had filed for divorce.

"We prefer not to use his last name," said her mother, Sylvia Daniels of Hillsboro. "We refuse to do that."

Since her daughter's death, her family and friends have rallied to preserve her memory in ways that can help other women avoid her fate. They're raising money to build a shelter for battered women and their children that they will name Mary's House of Hope.

There is only one such shelter in Jefferson County, said Stephen Huss, president and CEO of Comtrea, which provides treatment for mental health issues, domestic violence and substance abuse and is helping with the project.

That shelter is A Safe Place, where women and their children stay for about two to three months. It has 24 beds, but the number of women and children seeking refuge from abuse could easily fill two more shelters, Huss said.

"The need is just amazing," said Huss. And that need exceeds the pocketbook of his agency, which had to close an alcohol and drug abuse rehabilitation center in De Soto last year because of budgetary constraints.

The cost to build another shelter is unknown, he said. Mary Daniels' friends and family have raised about $15,000 so far, the bulk of that coming from a trivia night in March.

Two people are considering donating their houses to use as a shelter, which would be a tremendous cost saver, but nothing has been finalized, Huss said. A new shelter would be staffed by Comtrea employees. Huss is hopeful grants could help fund its operation.

"I keep thinking this is what she'd want," said Sylvia Daniels, who said she knew something was wrong in her daughter's relationship and told her she didn't have to stay there.

Mary Daniels, of Hillsboro, always said everything was fine.

But she obtained a restraining order against Colletta on July 6 of last year in Jefferson County Circuit Court. A hearing scheduled for July 14 had been postponed to Oct. 20, and the restraining order remained in effect.

She wrote in her request for the order that Colletta had told her she could never get away from him, and that he grabbed her arm, scratched her face and blocked her from driving away four days earlier.

She wrote that he had head-butted her when she made him angry in June.

"I fear for my safety and my life," she wrote in her application. "I now have the courage to divorce him but I am so afraid he is going to get to me."

Mary Daniels' shift as a CAT scan technologist ended at 4:30 p.m on Aug. 3, 2010. Her body was found next to her car about 30 minutes later. She was 30 years old.

Colletta, 39, is awaiting trial in St. Louis County on charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. He had told others what he had done, according to court documents.

Today, her family and friends plan to visit her gravestone in Barnhart. They will release balloons.

And they vow to keep working toward opening Mary's House of Hope.

"We'd like to see it open tomorrow," said Sylvia Daniels. "But it depends on the funds we can raise."