A Neighbor Goes Missing…….A Neighborhood Changes.

I left in the middle of a developing story.

A young mother went missing from my neighborhood.  It was and still is, pretty scary.  Her car was found, blood in the interior, “Foul play” seemed to be the sentiment.

I called the police, spoke to detectives the first day the young lady went missing.  A few things seemed to have been a bit odd this week.  Perhaps it had nothing to do with anything, but I figured the police should know.  They are the experts, I would leave it to them what, if anything, was relevant.  I was told if something I saw repeats itself to let them know.

Search parties went out.  We searched the woods by my house.  We do not know this young mother but doing our part just seemed like the thing to do.   Her family looked too.  And kept looking in the woods all over by where her car was found, around 5 blocks from us.

It is a little unnerving to see maps of the area from google search and see your house on the news.  I thought the events that I had noticed repeated themselves last week before I left to go to the ADA Sessions in San Francisco, via Seattle on some other business first.  On the way to the airport, I stopped and spoke to three detectives.  They took notes.  It all means nothing.  It all “could’ mean something.

A day after I left, the family searching, found the young mom’s body in the woods up the block from where we live.  The missing woman, investigation, was now a homicide.

As I stated, we did not know the family; but still—it hurts.  I have never been involved in anything like this before.  The police are very tight-lipped about everything for now.  No suspects are being revealed to anyone.   For now, they are saying nothing.  We live in a nice neighborhood.  Things like this do not happen here.

We watch out for each other.  For now……..we watch each other with a little doubt in the back of our minds.  Kids are not playing in the streets right now.  The joggers are not running either.  Come dark, it is pretty quiet as no one is very trusting right now.  We all know nothing except the obvious.

It’s all very sad.  Many people were doing their part when the search started.  Now we read the papers or watch the news, and wait.  A daughter, a sister, a friend, and a mom to a four-year-old is gone.  For the time being, so is a neighborhood.

I fly home in a few hours.  The neighborhood I left is not the neighborhood to which I will return.

All of our hearts are broken a little, but none so much as the family who lost this young life.  Our neighborhood cries for our neighbors——for some reason whether we knew them or not; doesn’t matter so much anymore.  They are our neighbors.  May God bless them and comfort them.

I am a diabetes dad.

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