Read Online Shoot, Don't Shoot by J. A. Jance - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: J. A. Jance
Ads: Link
she had every intention of coming right back with a grocery dart loaded with clean laundry. Instead, the twenty-four-year-old single mother was bludgeoned to death in a desert area a few miles north of Sun City.
The mother’s absence did not initially alarm the Grijalva children, nine-year-old Cecelia and six-year-old Pablo. Ever since moving to Phoenix from Bisbee several months earlier, they had been latch-key kids. That morning, when they awoke and discovered their mother wasn’t home, they dressed themselves, fixed breakfast, packed lunches, and went to school. And when they came home that afternoon and their mother still hadn’t returned, the y helped themselves to a simple dinner of microwaved hot dogs and refried beans.
Almost twenty hours after she left home, Serena Grijalva’s supervisor from the Desert View Nursing Home stopped by the house, checking to see why Serena hadn’t reported for work. Only then did the resourceful Grijalva children realize something was wrong.
A call from the nursing home brought the children’s maternal grandmother into the case. A missing person report from her filed with the Peoria Police Department resulted in authorities making the connection between the two abandoned children and an unidentified dead woman found earlier that afternoon in the desert north of Peoria.
Joanna found herself blinking back tears as she read. She was appalled at the idea of those two little kids being left on their own for such a long time. They had coped with an independence and resourcefulness that went far beyond their tender years, but they shouldn’t have had to, Joanna thought, turning back to the article.
The tragedy of the Grijalva children is only one shocking example of an increasingly widespread problem of the nineties—that of latchkey kids. Cute movies notwithstanding, children in this country, are routinely being left alone in shockingly large numbers.
Most children who are left to their own devices don’t go to luxury hotels and order room service. The houses they live in are often squalid and cold. There is little or no food available. They play with matches and die in fires. They play with guns and die of bullet wounds. They become involved in the gang scene because gang membership offers a sense of belonging that they don’t find at home.
Sometimes the parents are simply bad parents. In some cases the neglect is caused or made worse by parental addiction to drugs or alcohol. Increasingly, however, these children live in single-parent, households where the family budget will simply not stretch far enough to include suitable day care arrangements. Divorce is often a contributing factor.’
Although Serena Grijalva’s divorce from her forty-three-year-old husband was not yet final, Cecelia and Pablo Grijalva fall into that last category.
“Serena was determined to make it on her own,” says Madeline Bellerman, the attorney who helped Serena Grijalva obtain a restraining order against her estranged husband. “She had taken two jobs—one full-time and one part-time. She made enough so she didn’t have to take her kids and go home to her parents, but beyond food and rent there wasn’t room for much else. Regular day care was obviously well outside her budget.”
Serena’s two minor children have now been placed in the custody of their maternal grandparents, but what happened to them has forced the community to examine what options are available to parents who find themselves caught in similar circumstances. This is the first in a series of three articles that will address the issue of childcare for underemployed women in the Phoenix area. Where can they turn for help? What options are available to them?
“You want a refill?”
Joanna looked up. A waitress stood beside the booth, a steaming coffeepot poised over Joanna’s cup.
“Please.”
The waitress glanced curiously at the article on the table as she poured. “That was awful, waddn’t it, what happened to
The mother’s absence did not initially alarm the Grijalva children, nine-year-old Cecelia and six-year-old Pablo. Ever since moving to Phoenix from Bisbee several months earlier, they had been latch-key kids. That morning, when they awoke and discovered their mother wasn’t home, they dressed themselves, fixed breakfast, packed lunches, and went to school. And when they came home that afternoon and their mother still hadn’t returned, the y helped themselves to a simple dinner of microwaved hot dogs and refried beans.
Almost twenty hours after she left home, Serena Grijalva’s supervisor from the Desert View Nursing Home stopped by the house, checking to see why Serena hadn’t reported for work. Only then did the resourceful Grijalva children realize something was wrong.
A call from the nursing home brought the children’s maternal grandmother into the case. A missing person report from her filed with the Peoria Police Department resulted in authorities making the connection between the two abandoned children and an unidentified dead woman found earlier that afternoon in the desert north of Peoria.
Joanna found herself blinking back tears as she read. She was appalled at the idea of those two little kids being left on their own for such a long time. They had coped with an independence and resourcefulness that went far beyond their tender years, but they shouldn’t have had to, Joanna thought, turning back to the article.
The tragedy of the Grijalva children is only one shocking example of an increasingly widespread problem of the nineties—that of latchkey kids. Cute movies notwithstanding, children in this country, are routinely being left alone in shockingly large numbers.
Most children who are left to their own devices don’t go to luxury hotels and order room service. The houses they live in are often squalid and cold. There is little or no food available. They play with matches and die in fires. They play with guns and die of bullet wounds. They become involved in the gang scene because gang membership offers a sense of belonging that they don’t find at home.
Sometimes the parents are simply bad parents. In some cases the neglect is caused or made worse by parental addiction to drugs or alcohol. Increasingly, however, these children live in single-parent, households where the family budget will simply not stretch far enough to include suitable day care arrangements. Divorce is often a contributing factor.’
Although Serena Grijalva’s divorce from her forty-three-year-old husband was not yet final, Cecelia and Pablo Grijalva fall into that last category.
“Serena was determined to make it on her own,” says Madeline Bellerman, the attorney who helped Serena Grijalva obtain a restraining order against her estranged husband. “She had taken two jobs—one full-time and one part-time. She made enough so she didn’t have to take her kids and go home to her parents, but beyond food and rent there wasn’t room for much else. Regular day care was obviously well outside her budget.”
Serena’s two minor children have now been placed in the custody of their maternal grandparents, but what happened to them has forced the community to examine what options are available to parents who find themselves caught in similar circumstances. This is the first in a series of three articles that will address the issue of childcare for underemployed women in the Phoenix area. Where can they turn for help? What options are available to them?
“You want a refill?”
Joanna looked up. A waitress stood beside the booth, a steaming coffeepot poised over Joanna’s cup.
“Please.”
The waitress glanced curiously at the article on the table as she poured. “That was awful, waddn’t it, what happened to
Similar Books
