Some Thoughts on Asha Veil

I haven't blogged in awhile, dear readers. Teaching has started for me, and
is difficult this year because I had to go back so soon after my mother's death.
I am, however, so happy to be back with my students and am learning to be grateful
for what I have now in life. There's a tool in recovery which is always extremely helpful to me, to make a list of things I am grateful for every day. I rarely go
to bed at night without having made a list of at least three things.

I wanted to make a sharp turn from my preface now. I have been very patiently watching
the news and message boards, trying to follow the Asha Veil murder case and see if there have been any updates. For those of you who are new to this blog, Asha Veil was a young woman in her final trimester of pregnancy. She was murdered in September of 2007; her unborn daughter died along with her. Asha's body was dumped in the woods surrounding Love Creek Road in Ben Lomond.

It has been nearly a year and a half since Asha and her daughter Anina died, and I fear that this case will never have any sort of resolution. I know that one suspect, her coworker Michael McClish, is in prison now for rape. Perhaps this is why those in charge of the case are biding their time--they have a suspect in jail, so why hurry?

Still, this unsolved case has left our community heartbroken and angry. There's some horrible, lingering sense at this point that maybe Asha and her baby's lives don't much matter to the District Attorney here, that because she was "just" a cashier and an immigrant, her case has been shuffled to the back burner. I personally can't read the minds of the investigators and those responsible for naming and prosecuting a suspect. I am just reporting on things I've heard in the community, and I am extremely sad to hear this.

Asha Veil mattered. It is immaterial whether she was a market cashier or a Silicon Valley executive. She was a human being with the absolute right to live, to have her baby and be a mother, to enjoy and pursue her life. Asha was also a very sweet person who always said hello to me at the market and others (who knew her better than me) always say that she was an extremely nice, caring person. She died without ever holding her baby in her arms; she was dumped in the woods, still in her market uniform, like someone's trash that they couldn't wait to get rid of.

If this case turns cold, Asha and her baby will essentially be left in the woods forever. I don't want this to happen. There has not been an update in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, our main paper, in months. What can we, as a community, do when there is so much silence now, a silence that can be interpreted as indifference?
I don't have the answer for that. If there is a suspect now, why not begin to pursue this case aggressively? If there have been changes in the case and the investigation, these should be made public so that our community can be kept updated.

I have no answers today, only sadness over how long it's taken to make an arrest in this case.