JACKSON GOULD-9 YEAR OLD WITH CYSTIC FIBROSIS-A VICTIM OF CRUELTY BY A SCHOOL DISTRICT AND BOARD

                                                     Jackson Gould- 9 years old

Jackson Gould is a 9 year old child who like so many children his age enjoys going to school, playing with friends, and interacting socially with the other students. He lives in Douglas County Colorado with his loving family and attends 4th grade at the Heritage Elementary School located in the Douglas County School District.

Oh, but in one way Jackson is a little "different". Jackson unlike many other children his age has had to contend with having a chronic medical condition known as Cystic Fibrosis.

Cystic Fibrosis is a progressive, disease that causes long-lasting lung infections and limits the ability to breathe over time.More than 30,000 children and adults in the United States have CF (70,000 worldwide) and CF affects people of every racial and ethnic group.CF does not affect cognitive or learning abilities.

Jackson works very hard to stay healthy. He does 90 minutes of airway clearance treatments each day and takes over 30 pills multiple times a day. He swims laps for an hour twice a week to strengthen his lungs. He is a gymnast, a gifted and talented student, a pianist, and an animal lover who wants to be a writer and an entrepreneur when he grows up. This has been devastating for him and his family who are now faced with making decisions they should never have been forced to make.

Sadly, Jackson Gould is also a victim of being preyed upon by adults who seem to be subhuman creatures with no soul, no heart, no feelings, and absolutely no clue to how uncaring, evil they are as they attempt to destroy this innocent youngster's life.

I personally interviewed his mother Kate Gould who is a single parent and also vetted her story as being factual.

Jackson began the current 2001-2022 school year in August with masking optional as part of the local Health Departments directive relating to the Covid Pandemic. As numbers rose and the delta variant took hold, the Tri-County Health Department issued a mandatory mask mandate for Schools.

However, the three ultra conservative Douglas County Commissioners proceeded to pull Douglas County out of Tri-County Health and create their own Board of Health appointing themselves to the board. None of them have any medical training or experience. They also appointed a diagnostic radiologist.

The first thing they did was to issue a new Public Health Order making masking optional in Douglas County. The Douglas County School District decided to sue this newly self appointed local Health Board for their making the mandatory mask mandate optional instead of following the directive issued by the Tri-County Health board and approached 9 families, of which Jackson's family was one, to join as plaintiffs. They sued the local Health Board as violating the American Disabilities Act, Individual Disabilities Act, and the Free Appropriation Act.

Judge John Kane of the 10th Circuit granted them a temporary restraining order ruling that universal masking was an appropriate accommodation considering the potential for serious complications and even death from Covid-19 for this Cystic Fibrosis population.

As they were preparing to go forward with a permanent injunction, Douglas County elected 4 new ultra conservative, anti mask candidates (who ironically ran on a "Kids First" platform) to the Board of Education. Being 4 out of 7 members they now had the majority and quickly voted themselves President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary.

Knowing that the new board would take power at the end of November, in order to get the case dismissed,the Board of Health offered to keep the temporary restraining order in place and amend their public health order to allow the school district to make their own rules about masking.

At the Dec. 7th 2021 school board meeting the 4 new members voted 4-3 to make masking optional in schools. Jackson's mother Kate made a public comment at that meeting and had to have a sheriff escort her to her car because other parents were giving her the finger and getting in her face and saying that she was using Jackson as a pawn for her own political gain.

Kate is not a public figure or a politician. She is a stay at home mom and a graduate student at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver where she will be receiving her Master of Divinity on June 3, 2022. The new mask choice rule went into effect immediately and she was faced with the awful decision of whether to send her son to school the next morning (less than 8 hours later).

The board of education said that they should work with individual principals to get accommodations so Kate sent Jackson and went straight to the school office to secure those accommodations. She was told that the principal was "too busy to see her. Kate refused to leave. After several calls to the Superintendent (who did not return her calls) and the press, she saw me after waiting in the office for two hours.

The accommodation Kate asked for was to amend her sons 504 medical plan to state that he needed for the children in his classroom to be masked. His pulmonologist wrote a letter also stating that this was the accommodation needed because individuals with CF are at a much higher risk for serious Covid-19 infection. She sent the request to her supervisor, who sent it to his, who sent it to legal and it was denied. They offered to have any unmasked individual stay 6 feet from him.

Kate did not agree to that accommodation because 1) how in the world would they monitor and enforce that in a public elementary school and 2) She was afraid it would set a precedent for them to be able to segregate him. And that is exactly what happened. In his math class, he was pulled from his usually place and put at the teachers desk, which faces away from the white boards and the rest of the class. Imagine how that made him feel? This bright, social, loving 9 year old boy who is a friend to everyone, sitting alone at the teachers desk facing the wall.

So, that is when Kate realized it was necessary to have to retain a special education attorney. Thanks to a $2000 donation from another special needs family and Kate Gerland (the Special Education Attorney) lowering her retainer fee from $3000 to $2000 she was able to hire her.

According to Kate Gould, on December 14th, 2021 the special education attorney and her met with representatives from the school district where they presented an additional letter from Jackson’s pulmonologist stating that it is a requirement for Jackson’s lung health that the students and staff in his classroom wear masks. Despite this, the school district continues to deny the accommodation. They said the best they can do is to facilitate transferring Jackson to a school district that is masking.
They  also reiterated that the accommodation Jackson needs in his 594 plan is that all children in his class be masked. They were told that isn’t fair to the other children.They told them that they will meet with a deputy superintendent and the director of special education and try to come up with some “creative solutions.”
It also turns out that when Kate contacted the other local public school districts that mandate mask wearing and also private schools, they all told her that they were "filled up" with no room for Jackson.
We all know that anyone with the right connections could easily have a school open up one more space for Jackson Gould due to his extenuating circumstances. 
If anyone CAN HELP KATE GET JACKSON INTO ONE OF THOSE "FILLED UP" safe schools please email her at: Kgould@iliff.edu
In other words instead of acting like responsible, caring human beings, the school district just dumps this 9 year old into another district instead of helping him from becoming more ill, as well as preserving his right to attend their school.
These ignorant, despicable school district Neanderthals were essentially expelling Jackson from his right to attend their school by getting rid of him.
The family is at "wits end" as they now are forced to have their Attorney file a Court Case on Jackson's behalf to attend the local school where he is supposed to be a student but in the meantime that means a long drawn out legal case while Jackson gets his education where?
Kate now realizes this will again end up having to go to court and in the meantime she will have to figure out a way to get him into a safe mask mandated school. 
This not just a fight to obtain justice for a 9 year old child who is an innocent victim but also represents all the other special needs students in our Country that face the same discrimination by others who will get away with their inexcusably cruel, selfish, ignorant behavior if they are not forced legally to obey the law.

After reading this blog post, if you have any conscience and are human this is how you can help Jackson and his family who are fighting for themselves and all disabled children:

 If anyone CAN HELP KATE GET JACKSON INTO ONE OF THOSE "FILLED UP" safe schools please email her at:Kgould@iliff.edu

KATE GOULD " is raising funds  "because she had to retain a special education attorney to help get Jackson accommodations at school to help keep him safe during this time of pandemic. His school district, Douglas County School District in Colorado, removed masking from the schools this week despite the fact our county has high rates of community transmission and our hospitals are at 100% capacity. We requested that his 504 medical plan be amended to have children in his classroom mask to help keep him safe because Jackson has cystic fibrosis. The request has been denied and we have had to hire an attorney to help ensure we get this important accommodation met. We are so grateful for your help! Thank You."

If you want to contact Kate Gould directly by email she can be reached at:Kgould@iliff.edu

Their fundraising goal is $5,000 and they have raised as of this date $2,856 from 47 donors. Any donation amount you can afford is welcome as this is a truly righteous cause and deserves your support. To donate to Jackson's legal fund (I just donated) please click on the link below:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/fund-for-jacksons-legal-fight?utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer

This is our legal fund page: https://gofund.me/9072d9ba

SAY THEIR NAMES! Leng Hongsheng and HIS FAMILY, THE FAMILY OF Ang Gelu Lama , Mingma Yangji Sherpa, Lopsang Lama.,

QUEENS,NYC.......SAY THEIR NAMES! Leng Hongsheng and HIS FAMILY, THE FAMILY OF Ang Gelu Lama , Mingma Yangji Sherpa, Lopsang Lama.

No one cares, no-one knows, but they were innocent human beings and became victims of not only climate change, corrupt laws, greedy evil landlords. These victims lives mattered and they did their best to realize their dreams yet no one knows about what happened to them. There are so many human beings, innocent  victims in our Country and the World but the huge divide between the rich and those with privilege act as a blind bubble of uncaring ignorance and cruelty betweeen the "haves" and the have nots".

Like many who come to America, Leng Hongsheng was looking for freedom. He arrived in the 1990s, having lived through the tumult of a world war, a cultural revolution and the emergence of a nation into modernity.

He was thought to have been an engineer back in China. In New York, he collected rubbish for a living, peddling around Chinatown in Queens looking for plastic bottles and electronics to recycle. Still, he found joy, brought his family to the US and got a green card, endeavouring to make a better life.

That hope ended last month, when Mr Leng, 82, along with his wife and daughter, drowned in the turbid waters that flooded his tiny basement flat - one of 14 victims of Hurricane Ida in New York City. The family was cremated on 3 October, a month after the devastating storm struck.

Most of the casualties in New York, including a two-year-old boy and a 86-year-old woman, were Asian and Hispanic immigrants living in illegal basement dwellings.

The tragedies have laid bare the ways in which extreme weather events ravage decaying infrastructure, devastate low-income communities and deepen social inequality, leading to what experts call a "climate apartheid". Without a more equitable approach to intervention, the problem will only get worse.

Hurricane Ida, a powerful Category 4 storm, made landfall in Louisiana with wind speeds of 150mph (240 km/h). As it moved north, it left a trail of destruction with dozens killed and tens of thousands of homes seriously damaged. When it hit the Northeast on 1 September it would become the deadliest storm the region has faced since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The deluge started around sunset and continued until past midnight. New rainfall records had just been set days earlier by a tropical storm, only for them to be broken again when Ida arrived. Rainfall averages for the entire month of September were reached within a few hours, triggering one of the worst urban flood disasters in US history.

It was around 11pm when Wu Ming was woken up by the sound of water. He opened his eyes, only to realise that flood waters were gushing into his ground-floor flat, on the same block as the Leng family's home.

He looked out the window and saw cars floating in the streets. "I had never seen anything like that in my 10 years of living in New York," Mr Wu told the BBC in Mandarin. (Wu Ming isn't his real name, as he has asked not to be identified.)

In less than two minutes, the water rose from his knees to his chest. He tried to escape through his front door, but to his shock, it wouldn't move an inch - he could not open it against the powerful cascade of water. He fled through the back door and spent a sleepless night on the outside staircase.

"I thought 'just endure tonight, we'd all be okay tomorrow,'" Mr Wu, a builder in his 50s, told the BBC.

There were glimpses of hope. A resident swam through the flash flood and rescued a cat and a dog from a flooded apartment. Residents on higher floors provided shelters to others.

It crossed Mr Wu's mind at some point that he had not spotted the Leng family. "I wanted to help them," Mr Wu said, "but the floods were so overwhelming. I couldn't even see the door to their basement."

Flooding is expected to be the environmental calamity that will affect the largest portion of the global population amid the climate crisis. Today, some 1.5 billion people - about one in five people worldwide - face at least moderate flood risk, according to the World Bank. Nearly 90% of the world's flood-exposed people live in Southern hemisphere low-and middle- income countries, but rich countries are not immune, and nearly 160 million who live in the developed world are also vulnerable to floods.

In the coming decades, Europe, North America and other parts of the Northern hemisphere will see newly exposed areas prone to flooding - and in these places, too, the poorest will fare the worst.

In the US, about 41 million people are exposed to flood risk, concentrated in metropolitan areas where population density is high, and building on land newly prone to flooding is common. Floodplains are often occupied by low-income and racial minority communities, as they are more likely to live in low-quality housing, where rents are cheaper, said Dr Shannon Van Zandt, Professor of Urban Planning at Texas A&M University.

Immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, are "often are even more vulnerable than our racial and ethnic minorities who are American citizens," she added, because they are more afraid to ask for help.

A narrow outdoor stairwell led down to the Lengs' underground home, a nondescript red-bricked house on a quiet street in Flushing, with multiple families sharing the three floors of a few rooms each. Theirs was one of at least three blocks of such abodes in the neighbourhood.

No sunlight reached the room in the back of the basements like the one where the Lengs had lived - even in daytime, when the BBC walked through a flat a few doors down, the place was obscured in darkness. A single skylight let in some sun near the front of the flat, but there is no other exit besides the door to the stairwell.

Days after the storm, dirt, toppled furniture and rubbish laid strewn about the Lengs' flooded flat. Intense musty odours permeated the air and lingered around the neighbourhood.

In major US cities, as in many urban centres, a housing crisis has forced low-income renters into flats like those occupied by the family and other Ida victims.

"New York just doesn't have adequate housing for everyone who lives here, including the immigrants who are often very vulnerable," says Dr Jacqueline Klopp, co-director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University.

There are many who tend to rely on informal networks within their communities to find housing, often illegal conversions constructed without proper permits. There are around 50,000 illegal basement dwellings in New York City, according to the city's estimate.

Despite the hazards, tenants and homeowners often avoid reporting any issues due to fear of eviction or fines.

Two other household, also Chinese immigrants, shared the 93 sq m (1,000 sq ft) basement with the Lengs - but they were out at the time of the flood, one household having gone back to China for a visit and the other, a single man, out for work as a delivery man.

According to neighbours, the Lengs were housebound, surviving on government assistance as Mr Leng had suffered several strokes in recent years while his daughter was autistic and needed in-home care.

Only weeks before the storm, Mr Wu had asked Mr Leng's wife Shen why they kept living in such cramped conditions. The family had applied for federal housing, she told him, but it had not yet been approved.

"They did not realise their American Dream," Mr Wu said, sighing.

Five of the six properties where New Yorkers lost their lives during the floods are unlicensed cellar-level homes, city officials said.

The lack of quality housing is an obvious reason why poorer people are more at risk during an extreme weather event, but there are also less overt factors. Low-income communities, for example, tend to have far fewer trees and green spaces.

During heatwaves, concrete surfaces become traps for hot temperatures and in floods, they prevent water from draining.

Most of the New York Ida flood fatalities were residents living in areas near large impervious surfaces, such as highways and car parks. Several people died in vehicles submerged on highways across the Northeast. "We saw highways that were completely flooded out because it's where the water would run off. If the water can't get absorbed, the highways become rivers," Dr Klopp said.

Seven miles from the Lengs' home, the Lama family from Nepal lived in the basement of a brick house next to two major highways in Maspeth, Queens.

Ang Gelu Lama, 50, had come to the US from Nepal 14 years ago. He and his wife Mingma Yangji Sherpa had a two-year-old son Lopsang, who had red, chubby cheeks and liked playing with monkey toys. A family friend told the Washington Post that the family lived in the cramped basement space for the cheap rent.

The last phone call Mrs Sherpa made was to a neighbour upstairs, telling her that flood waters were seeping into her flat.

A makeshift memorial now stands in front of the Lamas' home, displaying a black-and-white family photo, Lopsang's stuffed monkey and two lollipops.

On a recent day, Nuku Sherpa, Mr Lama's aunt, broke down in tears as she chanted a Buddhist prayer for the Lamas. Ms Sherpa, who lives in New Jersey, had just cleaned up her own flooded flat when she learnt of their deaths. "We are heartbroken," she said.

In all, Hurricane Ida tore through 1,500 miles of the continental US over the course of three days, spawning tornadoes in at least seven states, record rainfalls across the country and bringing about New York City's first-ever flash flood emergency.

Days after the storm, Mr Wu returned to salvage his belongings and to drain floodwaters from his mud-covered car, hoping that the engine could restart when dried. He couldn't bear to lose it, he said, after almost everything else had been taken by the water. "Even the trousers that I am wearing now are borrowed," he said.

It can take low-income and marginalised communities as much as twice as long to recover from a disaster, Dr Van Zandt said, as they are less likely to have the resources to rebuild or relocate.

The extremes in how the rich and the poor can respond to climate disasters is already being seen. A 2019 UN report noted that when Hurricane Sandy left large swathes of New York City in the dark in 2012, the headquarters of the investment bank Goldman Sachs in Lower Manhattan was protected by a massive wall of sandbags. Private firefighters had been hired to save the mansions from wildfires in California. The report estimates that climate change could push more than 120 million people into poverty by 2030, undoing 50 years of progress on poverty reduction. The effects will not only threaten basic human rights, such as life, food, housing and water, but also the rule of law and democracy.

The class divide has also entered the public consciousness in fiction. Parasite, an Oscar-winning South Korean film, depicts a poor family living in Seoul forced to flee their employer's luxurious mansion during a storm, only to discover that their subterranean home is heavily flooded and most of their belongings ruined.

This new "climate apartheid" has brought the world to the point of a "historic ultimatum," Dr Klopp said, and the crisis demands an approach that addresses not only environmental, but also social equality issues, locally and globally.

"We really have to be able to grapple with climate and equity. They are inseparable."

Since its days as a Dutch colonial outpost, openness has been a defining character for Flushing, Queens. Its 17th Century charter enshrined freedom of religious worship, welcoming Quaker refugees fleeing persecution.

A rail that connected the neighbourhood to the rest of New York City in the 19th century fostered its popularity and encouraged the arts. Eventually it became a hotbed for entertainment, a precursor to Hollywood.

In more recent decades, it has become an enclave for immigrants. Within its 800 acres are thriving communities from Taiwan, South Korea, China and India.

Though his life in the city was not easy, Mr Leng embraced New York. "He loved the artistic and political freedom here," his former immigration lawyer Norman Wong told the BBC.

Born in Northeast China in 1939, he had a poetic name: Hongsheng, which means an ascending wild goose.

He immigrated when he was in his 50s to pursue a life as a New Yorker, painting Chinese landscapes and once submitting a design for the World Trade Center memorial competition. He also became politically active in America, penning newspaper commentary critical of the Chinese Communist Party and joining the "China Democratic Party".

Citing fear of persecution in China, Mr Leng applied for political asylum in the US in the 2000s, and his case is still cited by local immigration lawyers.

The Lengs' deaths have been widely remarked upon in China, with many wondering on social media why the patriarch chose such a seemingly impoverished life for his family.

Asked one user: "He loved America, but did America love him back?"

In the starkest way, the country failed him - but perhaps in another way, he was loved. In the month after their deaths, the Chinese-American community pooled the money to cover their funeral costs and to send their ashes back to their homeland - an act, as a Chinese proverb goes, of returning fallen leaves to their roots.

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY

 

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY

My older son Steven Nathaniel Wolkoff would have been 44 years old today.

What can a parent say on the birthday of their dead child?

A living child asks for a birthday party. 

As they become older, you, as the parent, ask them what they want for their birthday. There’s dialogue. 

It’s tradition to remember your child's birthday, to not do so ignores that they lived.

But what exactly is a parent supposed to do on the birthday of their child when he is gone?

Not gone, as in out of town or at the beach, or out of the country. Gone as in, no longer alive.

A dead child doesn’t want. 

A dead son asks for nothing.

What does a mom or dad and siblings do?

Where’s the rule book for recognizing birthdays of a dead child?

Steven was born on the first day of Fall and died on the first day of Summer. 

There is something odd to me about the the significance of the equinox and solstice in his life and its parallel meaning to the Earth. 

If the autumnal equinox represents balance, then the summer solstice was most certainly the day we felt our world come to a deafening halt on the longest day of the year.

Steven lies dead in a grave because of the negligence and indifference of those who killed him, stole his life at the age of 30, and have tried to erase that he ever lived.

I mourn what was, what could of been, and what will never be.

You deserved so much better my son, it just wasn't meant to be. 

Love, Dad 

MOM

I thought of you with love today
but that is nothing new

I thought about you yesterday
and days before that too,
I think of you in silence
I often speak your name

All I have are memories
and your picture in a frame.

Your memory is my keepsake
with which I’ll never part
I have you in my heart.

Hug me strongly, and carry me home

Dear Mom, one more kiss again

I thought of you today, but that is nothing new. I thought about you yesterday and days before that too. I think of you in silence, I often speak your name. All I have are memories and your picture in a frame. Your memory is a keepsake from which I’ll never part. God has you in His arms, I have you in my heart.

See more at: http://www.idlehearts.com/?p=24438I thought of you with love today

Today is the day that my Mother, Dorothy Wolkoff died on June 30th,1997. It was sudden and there was never a chance to say goodbye.
 

My mom was the strongest, toughest, most courageous, gentle, caring person I have ever known. 

Biology aside, mom's can be magical human beings. A mother's love is unlimited, it can heal us, make us feel safe, and inspire us. My mother was all that and more. How lucky I am.

She taught me much, but in particular, emphasized the importance of self pride, work/life ethics, compassion, caring, and being humble. 

In spite of her hard life, she provided for my sister and myself, by doing whatever was necessary for us to live, we never lacked for anything because of her grueling unselfish efforts. 

My mother was the only one who believed in me, particularly during my youth, and stubbornly never gave up, no matter how much I screwed up. 

Without her support during my most difficult years as a youngster, a wild acting out teenager, she ALWAYS stood up to me, for me, guided me, and refused to give in, or give up on me. It was not easy for her to do that, but she would not back down, ever.

My mother literally saved my life many times, she was one of a kind, I will always remember and love her for that. I told my mom in many different ways over the years how much she eventually contributed to my taking the correct productive path with my life all because of her. 

I spent much of my adult life making my mother proud of me, telling her how much I loved her. 

Whatever is good in me, came from my mother. 

I love and miss you mom.

STEVEN NATHANIEL WOLKOFF- SEPTEMBER 23, 1977- JUNE 21, 2008

                                                     

Also - CLICK ON HERE & LISTEN TO AN ORIGINAL INSTRUMENTAL WRITTEN & COMPOSED IN MEMORY OF STEVEN NATHANIEL WOLKOFF, CALLED "STEVEN'S SONG"

This composition is a quiet and moving work and is meant to serve as a tribute to the life of Steven Wolkoff. It makes use of simple but haunting harmonies and a melody that will stay with the listener long after its final notes have finished sounding. 

SEPTEMBER 23, 1977- JUNE 21, 2008

BELOVED SON, BROTHER,GRANDSON,

NEPHEW, COUSIN, CHERISHED LOVE

GOOD FRIEND

GENTLY THEY GO,

THE BEAUTIFUL,

THE TENDER, THE KIND

FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS

Monday, June 21, 2021

Today is the anniversary of the 13th year of an eternity in agony, marking the horrific day, June 21, 2008, that my oldest child, Steven Nathaniel Wolkoff, was cruelly killed at the age of 30, his life brutally stolen from him, family, friends, me. 

I dread the coming of this day every year.

Steven died on the first day of Summer, it was 5 PM on a Saturday afternoon, exactly 13 years ago.

It seems so much longer than 13 years have gone by since we lost him. 

I still feel that it cannot be true, somehow suddenly he will appear, call me on the phone, or send me an email. That feeling never leaves, it is always there, I will wake up from this nightmare, and Steven will be here, alive.

There are mornings that I wake up believing for a few seconds that Steven is alive and it was just a horrible nightmare that he is dead. Then the reality strikes me full force in the face and gut, that he is dead forever, how can that be?

Oh how he loved the summer months and life itself. He was looking forward to it all, never realizing that his life would end that day in 2008.

I posted the other pictures above of Steven because they are some of my favorite ones, and also he is so real, alive in them, and for a second, he seems to actually be here.

Today, on this 13th anniversary of Steven's tragic death, if you can, please take a moment now to remember who Steven was and how deeply he is missed by each of us.

The last time I spoke to Steven, was on the phone,Tuesday evening, June 17 , 2008.

I didn't know that moment was going to be our last.
The last time I would talk to you, and hear your beautiful voice.

The last time I would tell you that I loved you, and hear you say “I love you too dad”. Strong and so real, so vibrant and alive.

A smiling face, with twinkling eyes, your special smile, my fine young man, my oldest child.

The shattered remnant of my heart with holes so black and fathomless no light can ever fill. I am and will be in shock forever.

Time has passed before me, so bleak and dark and long, the wind that whispers through the trees, the brightest star at night, the rain on a dismal day, my endless dreams, nightmares, the constant thoughts, hearing the door bell ringing, seeing the 2 Nassau County Policeman at my door at 4 AM asking me politely if they could come inside, no eye contact from them.

I knew and asked them "which one of my children", their response "do you have a son Steven living in San Francisco, he was killed in a car collision". 

That moment is frozen in my mind, repeating itself endlessly almost every waking and sleeping moment of my life.

The tragic death of Steven was caused by stupid, senseless acts. Every day, each night, my mind is focused on the highway at the collision, looking at the photos of Steven’s face while he is alive on a stretcher placed on the highway and then later, he is dead, covered by a tarp on that same highway.

The collision seems less a random act, and more determined, by a series of factors, not so benign, each one a contributing cause of my son’s death.

Steven was killed not by accident, but by horribly connected actions, and inaction's, of many others, each building on the impact of the other. Steven’s death began when distinct acts of design and error grew to become the chaos of negligence.

Steven was killed by the lack of highway signage, a secret California State cover up of a structurally flawed highway design known as a "death trap", whose design errors were deliberately never corrected,violating the written safety codes of the  same government department responsible for building the highway, and the carelessness of a local community program, having a gathering, unaware that their visitors, were parking, turning, merging, clogging this already too narrow stretch of road that had no separate turning lanes.

Steven was killed by a 21 year old drug impaired driver, who did not even have a driver’s license, an illegal alien. His danger to others not in his thoughts, but mostly I think he just didn't care about the effects of his irresponsible actions on Steven.

Steven was killed by an army of first responders, Paramedics, Emergency Medical Technicians, Police, Firefighters, and Park Rangers, etc., busy littering the highway with equipment, while they tried to look busy and important.

Steven courageously lived for about an hour after the collision while multiple systems of rescue professionals failed to get him to the hospital, and were unable to properly provide a minimum standard of the medical skills that they were trained to perform.

The first responders panicked, although Steven was breathing on his own, they performed an unnecessary medical procedure that they had never before done in their life. It is called a Needle Cricothyroidotomy which they failed to do properly and in doing this they missed his airway, suffocating him, vital oxygen crushing against his heart, lungs and diaphragm, taking his breath away, and horrifically killing him.

The responder’s mission, to keep Steven medically stabilized for triage care at the Hospital, failed, lost in a few hundred square feet of disorder, with no one in charge, no one leading, standing, telling, helping, shouting, or recognizing the obvious signs of their medical errors.

My son Steven was killed by carelessness, thoughtlessness, and negligence on the part of multiple entities and individuals.

A gifted, talented, precious, irreplaceable, meaningful life was stolen from all of us who loved him deeply, because of the actions of so many who, each in their own way, miserably failed to help Steven, all destroying Steven’s life.

I cannot believe that my son Steven lies buried in a grave so young, me dreaming of things that he was and might have been. 

  

I am not religious, nor do I believe in god, so the traditional Mourners Kaddish prayer for Steven are meaningless words to me. 

I have written my own Mourners Kaddish as a way to honor Steven, and I post it every year at this time.

It is my way of expressing that Steven left behind a legacy of goodness, and worthy descendants, those who loved him, who will always remember that he lived.

These sentences speak directly to Steven, because his pain and loss need to be honestly described in real words that accurately reflect my true feelings.               

STEVEN NATHANIEL WOLKOFF'S MOURNERS KADDISH

Steven Nathaniel Wolkoff, Shmuel Nacham Ben Yaakov,  (Samuel Nathan, Son of Jerry).
                      
September 23, 1977- June 21, 2008

I am sorry that you are dead.

I am sorry you suffered so painfully, on that awful day, as you fought to stay alive.

I am sorry for the agony you felt, I see it in your eyes, face, and body from the horrific evidence photos.  I see and feel it in my endless nightmares.

I am sorry for the fear, terror, unimaginable pain you felt in fighting for your life, as they killed you. I know the truth of your courage in being able to fight so bravely to stay alive.

I am sorry for you because you were not killed by accident, but instead by the senseless, stupid, careless, actions of so many others who could have saved your life, but instead, each in their own way, miserably failed you that day, never realizing or even considering taking responsibility, or accountability for the consequences of their actions, inaction's, indifference, and incompetence.

I am sorry you died not due to fate, nor randomly, but were instead killed by the cascading chaos of connected, dysfunctional, defective entities and others, all who caused your preventable death.

I am sorry that you died because the State of California did not care about your life and decided not to fix a dangerously unsafe road, instead they deliberately hid the structural defects in the highway that made it into a death trap.

I am sorry that you died because of the 21 year old drug impaired driver speeding out of control into your car. His danger to you not in his thoughts, but mostly I think he just didn't care about the effects of his irresponsible actions.

I am sorry about the inept, licensed, qualified, medical first responders who had no idea, not a clue, of what they were doing medically to you as they killed you. They have no consciences and lied afterward to hide how they murdered you in cold blood.

I am sorry for you, that so many corrupt, ugly cowards of evil, who have evidence of the truth, but have no conscience to speak up, remain silent, lie, omit, refuse to come forward to admit their responsibility in covering up the true facts that all contributed to killing you.

I am sorry for those whose toxic evil allowed all of the above to be done to you and escaped from being held accountable for participating in your death.

I am sorry that your soul and body were desecrated in death.   

I am sorry for the wicked hideous ones who desecrated your body in death and refuse to take accountability for their violation of your body, your soul.

I am sorry that it has took us five years to finally successfully legally force the spiteful, hateful,evil San Mateo County Coroner to release your final remains for proper burial.

I am sorry that you died in spite of the true medical facts that show you should be alive today.

I am sorry for all the multitude of evil ones who have tried to defame you and disrespect your name, your life.

I am sorry that life is so cheap and yours has no value to those who killed you, trying to erase you ever existed.

I am sorry that the Legal system is weak, corrupt and I was not able to obtain justice for you. I failed to accomplish getting that Justice for you, please forgive me.

I am sorry for my failing as your father to keep you from dying.

I am sorry you did not leave the beach one second earlier or later to return home that day of June, 21, 2008.

I am sorry that I was not there to protect you.

I am sorry that I was not there that day to comfort you, hold you, ease your pain.

I am sorry that I don't know the last thoughts in your mind before you died.

I am sorry that you died alone, with strangers, and no one even had the courage, kindness to hold your hand.

I am sorry that you died lying on a hot highway pavement, in a place unfamiliar, in the middle of nowhere.

I am sorry that no one had the decency to cover your right arm and both feet, as you lay dead under the blue tarp.

I am sorry the Medvac trauma helicopter was delayed in arriving there by 4 minutes, too late to stop the killer first responders from touching you.

I am sorry that I was not even able to protect your dignity in death.

I am sorry you cannot cry.

I am sorry you cannot scream.

I am sorry you cannot laugh.

I am sorry you cannot smile.

I am sorry you cannot feel.

I am sorry you cannot talk.

I am sorry you cannot breathe.

I am sorry you are silent forever. 

I am sorry that the world said nothing, heard nothing, says nothing about the injustices done to you.
  

I am sorry that it was you and not me.

I am sorry that I had to bury you and that you didn't bury me first, as it should be.  

I am sorry for everything that I forgot to say now, or cannot, and did not say here.

I am sorry for YOU because you are not here, you are NO MORE on this earth. 

I am sorry that you cannot rest in peace.

More than anything, I am sorry that you didn't have a chance to say goodbye to those you loved.

Your family will always honor you, remember you, miss you, keep you in our heart, preserve your memory in lovingly telling future generations about you, and love you forever. 

We all miss you so very much.

I mourn what was, what could of been, and what will never be.

You deserved so much better my son, it just wasn’t meant to be.

Your brother, sister, mother, family, and others who love you, will do the same. We will never forget YOU, never stop loving you, our precious beloved Steven. NEVER.

Steven, I can only say, I am SORRY, SORRY, I am so SORRY.

My heart is broken, my Steven is gone, and we will mourn forever.

  -Amen. Love, Dad.