Public safety in University City and San Diego will be addressed on Oct. 19 from 6 to 8 p.m. at University City High School auditorium, 6949 Genesee Ave. Why should you attend and bring your neighbors? U.C., like a lot of communities, has to deal with crime, drugs, fires and Homeland Security issues of late. Stephen Lew, the U.C. representative from the mayor’s office, will give an overview of public safety from the mayor’s office’s perspective. Councilman Peters will send his U.C. representative, Madeleine Baudoin. Charlie Wetzel, our new community policeman, will answer questions of the residents. One question should involve the pipe bombs that went off in two South U.C. mailboxes. Eastgate Mall fire department will discuss public safety. CERT, Community Emergency Response Team, will send its director to talk about their program that came to life after the Cedar fire of 2003.
University City Community Association is planning this critical meeting with the goal of having more residents show up than city staffers. Please do your part to get actively engaged Oct. 19. The format will be simple. Literature will be available at tables outside the auditorium. Inside, each representative will give a short overview and then answer questions the audience members write on a card. Make the effort to enlighten yourself about public safety from the experts.
School safety has once again taken center stage in our lives as we look at the horrendous blow in losing innocent children and one principal in three school shootings at the hands of heinous criminals and a disturbed youth. Could it have gotten worse than students shooting students? Now we grieve over the loss of young, sweet girls, very young and very sweet, singled out by insane killers. A school is a student and educator’s home away from home. At least it was.
A dozen years ago, the death of one member of the University City High School population, “T.J.” (Timothy James) Alcantara, shocked the school population. Initially considered a death from a drive-by shooting in pretty Paradise Hills, a community as lovely as University City, the final story unfolded painfully as an accidental shooting by one of T.J.’s friends.
The day before T.J. was killed, a tutor was working with a student at UCHS on the girl’s English project, a biography of Longfellow, one of those fireside poets we once learned about and memorized. “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” was this student’s choice of poems to focus on. This student had a lovely name, and the teacher asked her about its origin.
“My dad joined my mother’s and aunt’s name and that’s how he named me,” she responded with a smile full of braces.
This teenager must have been wanted and loved, the teacher thought. She must have been special to her parents. She had a rigorous academic schedule with physics and advanced algebra books on the table, along with her fat English book.
The teacher talked to her about Longfellow and the tragedies that had struck his life. When he was 28 and on the way to Europe, his first wife suffered a miscarriage and died in the Netherlands. The teacher could see the student with the lovely name was touched by the pain of Longfellow’s reality. His second wife died during a fire as she used wax to seal a letter. So maybe Longfellow wasn’t an old, dead white poet who was born middle-aged and talented. He wrote from personal pain.
“The tide rises, the tide falls
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls.
Along the sea-sand damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.”
The tutor had been sitting across from this lovely student for five full moments before she really saw her necklace, a chain similar to the chains with dog tags that Marines and other military wore. The chain looked like a thousand BBs. In the center of the chain hung a bullet casing drilled to fit onto the chain.
“Is that a bullet casing?” the teacher asked naively.
“Yes,” she smiled with her braces silver as the bullet, fingered it, and confessed that her boyfriend had given it to her.
“It’s so big,” the teacher said.
She had thought bullets were smaller.
“It’s a .45,” the student said knowledgeably.
So many kids are able to identify more types of bullets than parts of speech. The teacher visualized what it must be like to be on the receiving end of such a large bullet.
The mother in the teacher asked: “Does your mother know you have it? Does she like your boyfriend?”
The girl giggled nervously, shrugged her shoulders, and raised her eyebrows.
“A heart might be nice, ” the teacher whispered. “Guys used to give hearts on a chain.
“Does he go to school here?” she continued.
“No, he goes to another school.”
The student told the teacher she wanted to be a psychologist, a therapist. The teacher apologized to her because she couldn’t help her with physics. The teacher only knew English and authors who had suffered personal pain.
“Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.”
The girl with the lovely name was absent the day after T.J. was killed. The teacher wanted to call her to see if she stayed home because she was sick or was she grieving the loss of a friend. The teacher wanted to tell her that she’d be all right, that there was hope for her future, that adults were straightening out the school system.
If only Longfellow’s words so long ago could pierce the heart of the students with the force of a .45, especially the students who found school irrelevant. T.J.’s death pointed up the madness of access to guns a dozen years ago.
“The morning breaks; the steeds in their stall
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.”
Whose fault is it that T.J. was accidentally killed? Whose fault is it that a bullet becomes a significant pendant given out of love? Perhaps a lesson plan should include symbols in poetry and jewelry and implications of wearing a bullet so close to the heart.
Students from 12 years ago and students of today are so fragile, so forgiving, and so full of life. Some have hope stamped across their faces. Others live on the edge, full of adrenaline, with danger as their daily companion. Youth makes them feel invincible. How could anyone put “paradise” back into Paradise Hills after T.J. was killed?
How do we protect children today? T.J. would be turning 30, and so would the girl with the lovely name.