“He Won’t Shoot Me.”

I don’t know whether or not this is true or if it’s Valley legend, but I’m going to share it anyway. From the moment the texts began chiming into my daughters’ phones, and postings on Facebook informed us there was a shooting in the neighborhood on New Year’s Eve, we paid attention as the details of the incident unfolded.

We warned our girls to be cautious about accepting and spreading information and suggested they patiently wait for the facts. These “facts” are continuing to trickle into the mainstream as life goes marching on.

What we do know ten days later is that there was an incident of a drug deal gone bad. Very bad. A 17 year-old boy was shot and killed while attempting to sell a pound of pot for $3,500. The prospective buyer—or according to news reports, a 19 year-old boy accompanying the prospective buyer—reportedly had no intention of handing over the cash. Instead, he pulled a gun. And, we were told—and this is the part I cannot shake—that the last words of the seller, the now deceased 17 year-old, were, “He won’t shoot me.”

If true, I can’t help but wonder how long it took for that statement to provoke the shooter, and if there was any time at all for the boy who uttered those words to process that he’d been shot.


Aside from being a drug dealer, the dead boy was known as a “good kid,” a loved boy from a good family. He went to one of Tucson’s most exclusive high schools and we had heard he was planning to attend Harvard University. Or was it Stanford? Both had been reported. They don’t let just anyone into those schools, do they? You’ve gotta be smart, right?

Many questions arise as to why he resorted to dealing drugs and how he got involved with someone with a criminal record, who didn’t hesitate to shoot him when he wouldn’t handover the weed. But when I heard he faced the serious, deadly metal of .40 Caliber Glock pistol and he didn’t handover the weed, my first thought (with apologies to those who loved him) was, “was he STUPID?”

I think the appropriate word here is not stupid, but rather, “naïve.” And yet, I’m still shaking my head. After all, we choose to raise our kids in these upscale, supposedly safe neighborhoods. We send them to good schools; give them the best educations we can, and teach them to stay away from drugs and alcohol. We THINK we know what they’re up to even as we hand them keys to their own cars at the age of 16.

But as this case proves, sometimes not even THEY know or understand what they’re up to. As they move toward independence and we move away from managing their every move, we’re left with little more than hope. We hope they’re going to be okay on the good side of town—away from the crime we see on TV and read about in the papers.

So, now I ask, did this boy’s mother have any idea her son was dealing quantities of weed? Or did the mother of the boy at whose house this crime occurred have a clue what was going on while she was “out of town?” Should these parents also be accused of naiveté? I don’t even want to wrap my mind around trying to imagine how the mothers (and the kids who witnessed the murder) feel right now, and I pray they have strength to get through this.

I want to believe that I’m a smart mother, raising smart girls who will make wise choices. Of course, I want to protect them from the sometimes harsh realities of the world around them, but at the same time, I don’t want them to be naïve. I want them to understand that sometimes shit happens simply as a matter of bad luck. Anyone can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And when I seem to them to be overprotective or asking too many questions about where they’re going and with whom? I hope they learn I’m doing my best not be naïve.


Rest in peace, young man, Carlos Sandoval. I didn’t know you, but it appears we have several mutual Facebook friends, and I do know a couple of the boys who were with you when you died. In fact, I’ve known them since they were very young—and innocent. And in conclusion, I say to my girls and to all the high school kids out there who might be reading this, please, for God’s sake, don’t let this happen again. Don’t be naïve. MAKE WISE CHOICES.

ACL Diary: The Immediate Aftermath

A Hundred Phone Calls

Willow and I sat for about an hour in the Urgent Care waiting room on the Saturday afternoon she went down, and our dear friend, Mike Smith—my sometimes second (soccer) husband—brought Willow a burger and a chocolate shake. It turns out that it was the most food she’d eat for the next several weeks. The minute she started taking painkillers, she booted her food and lost her appetite.

Urgent Care can only do so much, especially on a Saturday when doctors aren’t on staff. A kind nurse named “Jim-bo” saw to her x-rays and put it in writing that there were no broken bones, and that he suspected an ACL tear. He didn’t know that an explanation of the injury wasn’t necessary, but—bless his heart—he told us a lot of things we didn’t really care to hear.

The minute we got home, the phone calls began. This means I both made them and answered them. I didn’t cry until I spoke with my pal Stephanie Hunley, who it might be fair to call my soccer wife. Actually, she’s that soccer mom—that best friend—we soccer moms make when our kids are so involved with a team that it practically takes over our lives. We have vested interests in each other’s kids, and love them like our own. We understand our kids’ health and the way they perform on the field has a direct impact on the success of the team.

“Can I lose it now?” I asked her.

“Go right ahead,” she said, and allowed me to talk through my fear and my tears.

It was a momentary, necessary lapse, and once I got it out of my system, I went into research mode. I needed to figure out HOW we were going to handle this injury.

One of the first calls I made was to my friend, Gillian Borden, because we go to the same church and I wanted her to get Willow on the Sunday morning prayer list. (I knew we needed all the strength-to-get-through-this power we could get, and for me, this is what prayer is all about.) I had forgotten that Gillian is married to a physical therapist and had a lot of information about local, reputable orthopaedic surgeons. Additionally, she lives across the street from my former soccer wife/soccer mom and co-manager of a club team, whose daughter also suffered an ACL tear back in October. I scribbled furiously as Gillian provided names of surgeons and other necessary information. She was my angel and Gillian, please know how grateful I am to you.

The next day, Sunday, Willow and I drove to Casa Grande to watch her teammates win their second State Cup Game. Although they were now in the loser’s bracket, it’s a double-elimination tournament and all was not lost with the first game the day before. Meantime, soccer mom, Maureen Shields, gave us a handicap parking tag for our car so we could park right next to the field and she allowed me to cry on her shoulder before the game.

Willow didn’t cry until after the game—until she realized how hard it would be to sit on the sideline and watch rather than be out there contributing.

In spite of the victory, it was a long ride home.

Chemtrail Monday

On this Easter Monday morning, the Chemtrails have risen. They have risen indeed.

I don’t know what they’re spraying out of the back of those little, white planes but they’ve turned our perfectly blue, spring desert sky into a plaid pattern of cottony-white clouds. The effect these clouds have on the weather can’t be attributed to God, nor can Mother Nature take credit for flying those planes.

Who is?

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Chemtrails, but it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve seen them THIS close to my house and they practically screamed out to be documented. Regardless of whether or not you think there’s some kind of government conspiracy to spray the population with harmful chemicals, or that these planes are flown by aliens writing messages with their plaid patterns, or there’s a villain (ala Batman comics) trying to change the weather, you can’t help but notice them. And I, for one, can’t help but question why they’re there.

NOTE: These are NOT typical “contrails”—or condensation trails—the rapidly disappearing “jet streams” that we see shooting out of passenger planes at high altitudes with extremely cold temperatures. There’s a distinct difference. These trails, known as CHEMtrails, (“chem” suggesting they consist of chemicals such as barium), and they do not disappear. On the contrary, they linger for hours and eventually turn into low-level cirrus clouds. If you read anything about barium toxicity in the atmosphere and its harmful consequences on mammalian systems, it’s enough to give you a headache.

I took the top photo while standing in my backyard at 8:20 this morning. The photo below, taken an hour later from the same spot, shows how the trails linger, spread, and to the unsuspecting viewer, ultimately resemble simple cirrus clouds.

There are many people across the world questioning Chemtrails and studying their toxicity—and just as many debunking these questioners as alarmists and freaks.  But I believe there are far many more people who not only don’t notice that these trails are regularly in the skies above us, but also don’t think they’re important enough to question.

I think it’s time to take notice, ask questions and GET SOME ANSWERS.

Chemtrail Followup. Are We Being Poisoned?

Willow had an eight am soccer game yesterday at the fields nearest to our home in Tucson. There was a perfectly blue sky and it was a glorious backdrop to the opening game of their tournament. Our younger daughter, however, who has chosen volleyball over soccer, also had a tournament and it was not near to home. It was in Phoenix.

The sports schedules of our daughters often cause a split-duty scenario between mom and dad. Dad took last week's long haul commute, so this week it was mom's turn. (Good thing we have two cars.) So, with the assistant volleyball coach as our third passenger, Camille and I took off for Phoenix at noon, to a venue two hours north up Hwy. 10.

The tournament took place at the lovely Salvation Army gym (a venue that looks exactly how you might think it would look) and I was a dutiful parent cheering in the stands through the first two matches. During her team's required referee period, I stepped outside to get away from the clamor of a hundred screaming twelve year-olds, the mixed stench of sweaty knee pads and a second shift public bathroom. I walked to my car to get a sandwich and a Perrier from our cooler.


There's a LOT of sky in this part of South Phoenix, and much of it is the background for commercial airliners taking off and landing at Sky Harbor International Airport. One can consistently see and hear multi-colored passenger jets up close and personally, and they were definitely filling the sky with color and sound. But in addition, there was a whole different set of jets filling the sky—not with color and sound—but with . . . CHEMTRAILS.

The initially clear-blue sky had become a grid-pattern of chemtrails clouds.

As I snapped photos and recorded 360° video records of what was going on around me, my throat started to ache and my eyes watered. I wondered if it was my imagination.

I also wondered if I would be more comfortable, not to mention SAFER, inside the Salvation Army gym—a place that smelled like butt and assaulted my ears with referee whistles and the screams of children.