BOSTON - Isaura Mendes said she once gave up hope that the man accused of killing her son in 1995 would ever be caught.

Today, nearly 13 years after Bobby Mendes was fatally stabbed coming to the aid of a friend, she’ll see that man in court.

“I know this person disappeared for almost 13 years,” Mendes said yesterday while visiting the Garden of Peace memorial to homicide victims. “It’s just like yesterday to me.”

Arnaldo “Nardo” Lopes, 30, will face a Suffolk Superior Court jury today, charged with plunging a knife into the chest of 23-year-old Bobby Mendes during a brawl on Wendover Street in Roxbury on Oct. 10, 1995.

The killing set off a decade of violence in the city’s Cape Verdean community and put Isaura Mendes on the path of peacemaker. Even the unthinkable shooting death in 2006 of her son, Matthew, also a voice for peace in the community, did not deter her mission.

Through tears she launches an annual walk for peace and is a symbol for anti-violence campaigns throughout the city. And when she sees Lopes - apprehended in Baltimore last year after spending years on the run in Jamaica - she will do her best to grasp the situation.

“I lost my son to murder, but someone is losing this person to jail,” Mendes said after laying a candle and picture on both Bobby and Matthew’s memorials at the Garden. “In this case, none of us win.”

Still, Mendes did admit to some hope that closure may be coming soon. If anything, she said, the Lopes trial is another that can serve to deter others from committing such atrocities.

“I’ve worked for peace for years, but just because I work for peace, it doesn’t mean I think you should get away with murder,” she said.

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