Memoirs

It’s the little things that make life worth living:

A perfectly pealed orange
Curling up on the couch with John
The smell of my dad’s cooking
Mom, telling me she’s proud of me
The sweet fragrance of my covers
Watching Dante chew his bone
Having dinner with my best friend
Making new friends
Reliving childhood memories with my sisters and closest cousin
A hot bath, with bubbles
Crawling into bed, tucking my head in John’s shoulder
A good conversation
A quiet moment with a peaceful view
Swimming through clear water
Al dente pasta
Sharing snacks with Dante
My dad’s jokes
A good hug
A kiss
“I love you,” every day

The list could go on an on, but the truth remains as short and sweet as ever. If any of these “little things” take part of my day, my heart is full.

Today, Freedom High School Assistant Principal Ting-Yi Oei was charged by the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office with failure to report inappropriate cell phone pictures of a female student. Oei, a 59-year-old from Reston, now faces misdemeanor charges for failing to report suspected child abuse.

According to the sheriff's office spokesman, Oei had the inappropriate photo for weeks before a third party reported it to the sheriff's office. He apparently obtained the picture on March 14 from another student at the school, but never informed the student's parents, law enforcement or Child Protective Services, which is required by law.

What he was doing with that inappropriate photo and why he didn't report it remains "part of the ongoing investigation," said the sheriff's office spokesman, but I think all of us can imagine why a 59-year-old man would keep and not report lewd pictures of a teenage girl.

Oei now faces an "unclassified misdemeanor" charge, punishable by a $500 fine.

I mention this incident as part of a greater concern that I have for Loudoun County Public Schools teachers. This is the third instance in a year of LoCo teachers getting busted by law enforcement.

Less than two months ago, 24-year-old Jennifer Rose Allen, a teacher's aide at Potomac Falls High School, was arrested on 13 counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, one count of purchasing alcohol for an underage person and one count of being drunk in public. Apparently, Allen hosted or was invited to an unsupervised house party on March 14, where she brought alcohol and binged with 18 high school students. Loudoun County Sheriff's Office deputies showed up and crashed the party, arresting Allen and taking her to jail to sober up.

Allen was fired as a result of this incident.

But, that's not all ... Before Ms. Allen began providing alcohol to teens, Mrs. Mary Ann Livoti showed up drunk to her classroom at Sterling Middle School, sometime in early November. According to the crime reports, her students noticed their teacher was acting strangely around 11 a.m. on a Thursday morning. One of the students thought she was drunk and told the principal. When the sheriff's office School Resource Officer (SRO) performed a breathalyzer test on Mrs. Livoti, the results were "well above the legal [0.08 BAC] limit for driving."

Livoti was escorted by sheriff's deputies to jail, where she drunkenly smiled for her booking photo and remained in a cell until she sobered up — some 14 hours later, around 1 a.m. the next day.

All things considered, I'm more than a bit concerned about what the hell is going on with these appropriately named "LoCo" teachers. I understand that Loudoun County Public Schools can't be held accountable for the actions of these individuals, and any LCPS staffer will say that there is training for new hires equivalent to "Appropriate Teacher Behavior 101." But, what's going on over there in these schools? Are these three "bad teacher" incidents just a stretch of poor luck, or are they indicative of a more serious problem?

That being said, isn't there anything that Loudoun County Public Schools can do to address parents' concerns about the safety and wellbeing of their children in custodial care of these teachers?

I came home yesterday to find an envelope tucked under my door knocker. When I opened the letter, I received a rather nasty surprise: my apartment complex was jacking up our rent about $200 per month as soon as our current lease expires in June.

Since there's no logical rationalization as to why we would pay $200 more a month — our current rent being $1325 — for our apartment when there are literally hundreds of other places to choose from, we made the quick decision to move. But, it's the searching for a new place to live that is proving difficult.

Here's what I want: A garden-style apartment with at least 820 square feet, washer/dryer in unit (as well as all the other usual features, like garbage disposal), pet friendly and without a weight limit for my 90-pound Golden Retriever, decent parking for both residents and visitors, preferably hardwood floors, and costing somewhere in the $1200-$1300 price range. We'd also like to be located somewhere in between Tyson's Corner and Washington, DC, or somewhere where it's easy to catch Metro to DC.

That last sentence alone opens up a world of opportunities; however, it's not as easy as it seems. Every place that I've looked at is either too expensive or is missing one of the aforementioned "requirements." I've been searching online at Rent.com, ApartmentFinder.com, Craigslist and every other similar or related Web site, and after hours of browsing, I've come up empty-handed.

Why is it so freakin' hard to find a place to live? I don't feel like I'm demanding too much, because the accommodations I prefer are what I'm living with now. I just can't afford to pay more than $1500 a month for rent. And, I don't want to pay what I'm paying now to get an apartment that is considerably smaller and requires that I walk down the hall to do laundry.

ARGH!!!

I sat in the courtroom with my mother beside me. We were waiting our turn before the judge, but were made to wait with more than a dozen other witnesses and defendants. One woman's case came before ours. I don't remember her name, because as often as I've listened in on court cases as a reporter, all the names called might as well have been to me "Offender No. 1," "Offender No. 12," "Offender No. 15," and so on.

The woman's name was called and she walked to the forefront of the courtroom like one about to be condemned to death. She was a little on the plump side and African American; her hair was pulled back into a neat half-ponytail and she had loose curls that hung a little below her shoulders. She wasn't dressed to make an appearance in court, I thought while I examined her.

The judge said to her, "You're charged with concealment," after shoplifting from the Walmart in Leesburg. "Concealment is a misdemeanor crime that carries with it a possible jail sentence, and for those found guilty, I'm likely to give a jail sentence," he said sternly. "Now, how do you plead?"

Although I couldn't see the woman's face, I could tell by the way her head dropped ever so slightly, by the way her shoulders began to move rapidly up and down and by the way her breathing became little gasps for air, that she was crying. She wiped her face with her hands and said, "Guilty."

The judge asked the police officer present who arrested this woman whether or not she wanted to pursue a jail sentence. The officer said, "No sir, if that's alright with you."

The judge peered curiously at the police officer down over the stand and over the glasses sitting so low on his nose, and then reached for the woman's case file. Speaking to the defendant while reading over her file, he said, "Now you were caught shoplifting from Walmart after an off-duty police offer observed you stealing —" His tone changed. "—baby formula ... because you didn't have the money to purchase it at the time of the offense."

He looked at her from the judge's stand and his eyes softened ever so slightly. He asked her how many children she had. Two, she sobbed.

A desperate mother with no money, who couldn't afford to feed her own children. I was suddenly aware of how quiet it had gotten in the courtroom. No one so much as whispered; it felt as if everyone held their breath, waiting to see what the judge would do. Would he sentence her to jail?

No. He took pity on her. He fined her $100 and ordered her to pay the $26.31 she had stolen from Walmart. But, before she left, he said, "This is one of those cases where what you're facing now is much more valuable than what you originally stole."

True, considering she now had to pay $126.31 for a single can of baby formula.

But more than that, "You have now been branded as a thief," the judge continued. "From now on, when someone — a future employer maybe — asks you if you've ever been convicted of a crime, you have to say yes, and you will have to explain this situation to everyone who asks for the rest of your life."

With that, he gave her a period of time to pay back to the court and Walmart what she owed. I don't remember how long he gave her, six months to a year, to pay her fines, because the only noise that I could hear was my mother's hands rustling through her purse.

I looked over at her. "What are you doing?" I asked.

Her hands reached her bright green wallet, from which she pulled every bill inside, a total of $61. "Do you have any cash?" she asked me. No, I said.

She folded up the bills and put them in my hand. "Make sure that woman gets this, and let her know that it can pay half of her court fines."

As the desperate mother slowly made her exit — down the aisle of offenders, lawyers and witnesses, all of whose eyes followed her every step — I got up and walked after her. Outside the courtroom, she had reunited with her family: another woman, a man and two little girls, twins, maybe a little over a year old.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" I said. Yes, she said while wiping her eyes again.

I pulled my mother's money from my back pocket and presented them to her. When she saw the cash, she began to cry anew. "This is from my family," I said. "It's not much, but we thought it would help you pay the court fines."

My eyes wandered to the two small children standing beneath me. They weren't much higher than my knee: one had a pink pacifier in her mouth, and she looked up at me with huge innocent brown eyes.

"Thank you," the mother said. "Thank you so much."

The woman beside her said 'thank you' also and nodded her head at me in a gesture of gratitude, and also what I might have misconstrued to be respect. The man also thanked me, and as I began to turn away to go back into the courtroom, I looked again at the children and the pink pacifier and said, "God bless."

I had tears in my eyes.

Poor Mom, she's had a pretty shitty week. This past Saturday evening, she and my little sister Megen were driving to Sandbridge Beach (a private beach house property in Virginia Beach) where they planned to meet up with my father and other two little sisters. Dad rented a beach house for spring break. Everyone was looking forward to the vacation.

Sometime around 7:30 p.m., Mom and Megen had reached Indian River Road — about 15 minutes away from the beach house — when a barely 17-year-old boy driving a Chevy Tahoe decided he could make a swift left turn in front of my mother's Mini Cooper. He didn't make it; instead he crashed head-on with my mom. The airbags deployed right in my mom's and sister's faces: the impact knocked the wind out of them and released white chalk dust into the air that burned their throat and lungs. My mother also suffered burns on her face and chest from where the airbags struck her. All the while, shattered glass flew around them like droplets of razor rain — the force of the impact had broken the windshield.

Some kind witnesses stopped their car and noticed smoke emitting from Mom's car. They had to pull my mother and Megen from the wreckage. The ambulances showed up minutes later and treated them on the side of the road. My sister said they were on the side of the road for hours. And, although it wasn't discovered until the next day, someone had seen this horrible wreck as an opportunity to rummage through my mother's car to steal her laptop, which contained all her business information for the past five years. Mom's not very tech savvy, you see, and she doesn't know how to back up the information on her computer, which she needs to run her small coffee shop. Someone stole her computer, and now all that information is lost. When my mother found out the day after the accident, all she said was, "Oh no, oh no, oh no..."

Too bad I wasn't there to catch the little shit who did that, or who nearly killed my mother and sister in a car wreck.

I think back on this incident and am shocked by the wide character spectrum of human beings, from the couple who pulled my family from the crash and lent my mother their cell phone to call my father — and who also called a couple days later to find out if Mom and Megen were okay — to the asshole who stole my mom's computer while she was looking after my sister, who was hysterical and strapped to a body board on the side of the road.

All things considered, however, both Mom and Megen are fine. A little worse for wear, but not dead. Thank God.

Mom and Megen both came home from the spring break vacation early. They had to take a five-hour train ride home, because the Mini was totaled in the crash. John and I picked them up at the train station in Alexandria and brought them home, where they thought they'd be safe and comfortable. Wrong. As soon as they got home, there was a power outage — no heat, no plumbing and no hot water for the rest of the night and the next morning.

I met Mom at the courthouse today at 8:30 a.m. We were going to sit in on the trial of an 18-year-old punk skater kid, who with a friend had decided to shit in a cup and throw it into my mother's coffee shop on Jan. 11. The feces flew all over customers — one testified today that the cup hit her on the back of the head and got all over her face and hair — and all over my mother's store. My mom and Megen, who also works at the coffee shop, spent hours cleaning up and didn't get home until after midnight.

The cops picked up one of the culprits a couple of days later. His trial was this morning, where he was forced to face the consequences of his actions. He was found guilty of all five charges — four counts of assault and battery and one count of disorderly conduct — and will now serve a 30-day incarceration period at the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center, one year's probation and 200 hours of community service. I think that's fair — 30 days is a long time for an 18-year-old to be spending locked up with armed robbers, gang members, rapists, thieves, etc. He's not going to JDC; he's going in with the big boys, so he'll get a good taste of what life will be like if he keeps screwing around. I think it will be a good wake-up call.

So, I guess the day was won, but ... Poor Mom, she's had a shitty week.

Loudoun County Public Schools released a statement Monday which confirmed that Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick reversed his decision to pull And Tango Makes Three from general circulation shelves at Loudoun’s public elementary schools.

Hatrick declared null and void the challenge process involving the controversial book after he reviewed the “Procedure for Review of Challenged Materials” policy and discovered “significant procedural errors,” one of which includes the complainant not being a parent of a student enrolled at Sugarland Elementary School.

“Although she has children in other Loudoun County schools, that did not give her standing to file a request at Sugarland,” said LCPS spokesman Wayde Byard.

As a result of this misjudgment, and some “legal implications” brought to Hatrick’s attention by a school board member, the superintendent requested that And Tango Makes Three be returned to general circulation shelves at all LCPS elementary and middle schools.

This decision comes only a few days after the School Board meeting last Tuesday, where Hatrick had left it up to school librarians as to whether or not the controversial children’s book would be returned to general circulation shelves at local public elementary and middle schools. At that meeting, he admitted he previously had overstepped authority in banning the book to the teachers’ reference shelves earlier this month.

The book pull stemmed from a complaint from a “parent” — eventually discovered to be a teaching assistant employed at Sugarland Elementary School — complained that the book promoted a gay agenda. According to Byard, the book was reviewed by the principal, who deemed the book age appropriate. But, the disgruntled mother could not be dissuaded. She appealed the decision and took it to a district-level review committee, comprised of parents, teachers, school librarians and administrators, who agreed with the principal. The mother finally appealed to Hatrick, who overrode the principal’s and district committee’s decision and pulled And Tango Makes Three from general circulation shelves at Sugarland Run Elementary school, as well as from more than a dozen other elementary schools in the county that carried it.
 
The book could only be accessed by parents and teachers who specially requested the book to read with elementary-age students.

But after careful review of the challenged book policy and a considerable public outcry from the community, Hatrick stated at last week’s board meeting that decision to pull the book from general circulation shelves would only apply to the school from which the original complaint arose, namely Sugarland Run Elementary School.

And now that the book has made a return to Sugarland Elementary shelves as well, Hatrick has said he has put measures in place to be sure that any future complaints will be managed more carefully, “to be sure that policy procedures are followed carefully and fully.”

“Since this policy is rarely implemented, staff is not as familiar with it as we are other routines and therefore we must follow the steps of the policy as they are written,” Hatrick said in a memo (::cough cough EXCUSE cough cough::) to the school board and LCPS’ administrative team. “At every point in carrying out this policy at least two administrators will be double-checking the process.”

The book, And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, was released in 2005 and recounts the true story of Roy and Silo, two male Chinstrap Penguins at the Central Park Zoo in New York, who were noted by handlers to be attempting to hatch a rock that resembled an egg. The zookeepers replaced the rock with a real egg from another penguin couple that had laid two eggs at once. Roy and Silo successfully hatched the egg and raised a healthy young female chick named Tango.

Since its release, the book has received numerous honors, as well as nominations for awards; it also was noted as one of the most challenged books of 2006, according to the American Library Association.

I posted yesterday part of a story that I was writing about a bill that was passed by the VA House of Delegates that would allow holders of concealed weapons permits to carry hidden firearms into restaurants, nightclubs and bars — as long as they promise not to drink. (Yea right.)

Today, I received information that Del. Bob Marshall and Del. Todd Gilbert have introduced similar concealed weapons bills, only these would allow teachers, faculty, staff and students to carry guns on college campuses, in light of recent shootings at schools including Virginia Tech.

“Several professors have come to me, asking me to give them tools to protect their students. Potential killers need to know that Virginia’s colleges and universities are not ‘gun free zones’ where no one will be able to stop them from killing as many people as they can,” Marshall said. “The campus police do an excellent job, but there are not enough police to be in every place at every time. If there is a professor or student with a concealed weapon who can stop a killer until the police arrive, that can mean the difference in lives saved or lost on our campuses. In the wake of further shootings around the country and the lockdown at Ferrum College here in Virginia this week, this legislation needs to be at least considered by the full House. I hope that the House leadership will reconsider their decision not to debate this issue this year.”

Read this phrase again: "If there is a professor or student with a concealed weapon who can stop a killer until the police arrive..." Does the word vigilantism come to your mind? It does to mine.

Here's my problem, and Del. David Poisson's, after speaking with him today: Law enforcement officers receive hundreds of hours of training in firearms and when to use them. Citizens who receive permits to carry weapons, concealed or not, receive a fraction of the training that law enforcement officers do. And now, Marshall and Gilbert want these students and teachers to arm themselves with guns to fend off crazed killers until the proper authorities arrive? Does that mean that if another Cho Seung-Hui should turn up on a college campus, that the students should run for the killer instead of away from him?

Even if another school attack were not to happen, think of what the average student's college experience would be like with guns thrown into the equation. I've been in college before, and it wasn't that long ago to date. Accidents happen. The students are young, emotions are high, drinking is in and rational thinking isn't always at the top of everyone's priority list. Their brains literally haven't developed to the extent of an adult. And you expect me to feel comfortable knowing they can wear a gun in their belt? Ha. If that's the case, I'll tell my children to get their GED.

Guns in bars and guns in schools ... what is the world coming to?

Luckily, the members of the VA House of Delegates haven't altogether lost their minds. Marshall's and Gilbert's bills didn't find much favor in the House. Both were left in committee, effectively killing them for the 2008 session. Gilbert, Marshall, dears .... if school safety is such a big issue — and I'm in no way arguing that it's not — why don't you propose something a little more constructive, like providing more funds for campus security so they can expand their forces and put deadly weapons in the hands of those who are authorized to use them.

The Virginia House of Delegates voted 62 to 36 on Feb. 21 to pass legislation to allow holders of concealed weapons permits to carry firearms into bars, clubs and restaurants — as long as they didn’t drink while carrying the gun.

The Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control already has released a statement decrying the legislation.

Gov. Timothy Kaine (D) could decide to veto the legislation — although he has not yet indicated what action he will take — but ultimately the decision will come back to the House of Delegates, which could override Kaine’s decision if it obtains the two-thirds majority required to override a veto.

I know that as a reporter I'm not supposed to have an opinion, but this legislation just cries out for opposition. To me, the words "guns" and "alcohol" are bad terms to use in the same sentence. The legislation says that citizens can carry concealed weapons as long as they DON'T drink, but realistically speaking, how likely is that to be the case?

Allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons into establishments (whose main purpose is to sell and serve alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption) and telling those citizens, "You can carry a gun and you can consume alcohol in this establishment, but you can't do both at the same time," is the same as saying, "You can legally drive your car and drink alcohol, but you can't do both at the same time." We all know how well that's worked out for us. Drunk driving currently is one of the leading causes of death in the country. So when someone says, you can carry a gun so long as you don't drink while carrying it .... I just don't have enough good faith in humanity to believe that a terrible tragedy wouldn't happen as a result of someone disobeying this legislation.

I don't care that people own guns. If you want to own a gun, it is your right to do so, as outlined in the Constitution. But, I just don't see the point in bringing guns into a restaurant, bar, night club or any other establishment whose main source of income is alcohol.

It is a known fact that alcohol impairs your judgment and your motor skills — for this reason, drinking and driving is illegal, because the combination of the two could ultimately destroy a person's life. So, now the House of Delegates wants to throw guns into the mix? Why? Who is going to benefit from being allowed to bring a gun into a nightclub? And, even if all citizens were to follow the law, what's to stop any one of these guns from misfiring or being discharged by accident? I'm a reporter that receives daily incident reports from law enforcement agencies in the county, and believe me, I've seen more than my fair share of misfired weapons reports. It's not as uncommon as anyone might think.

Some restaurant managers and owners that I've talked to have said that they don't believe the legislation will affect their operations, unless someone "causes a problem." Do we really want it to get that far?

I think the House of Delegates is opening a big can of worms. Isn't it better to err on the side of caution when people's lives are at stake?