A meeting, a family and Samaritans

Let’s meet: Last February and the February before that, Lori DeAnda asked to meet with the Health Department secretary to discuss ways she believed the state could improve life for the developmentally disabled. She knew about those struggles because her son, Kevin, had been developmentally disabled – and because of the shoddy way he was cared for in a supported living facility, he died needlessly in 2008 at age 25.

In February 2012, a staffer for then-Secretary Catherine Torres said her people would call DeAnda. But the meeting never happened.

But, oh, what a difference a secretary makes.

Days after DeAnda again made her wish known, in my Feb. 25 column, new Secretary Retta Ward herself called me and asked how best to reach out to DeAnda. Ward and DeAnda connected, and that meeting took place March 5.

Ward comes across as personable and smart, and her willingness to meet with citizens is a refreshing change from the caustic and closed-door policies of the previous secretary.

Maybe, just maybe, Ward can restore some healthy discussion at the Health Department.

another meeting: Jerry Bock, a 77-year-old Albuquerque cyclist, hoped that telling his story in my column Feb. 23 about blacking out on the bosque bike trail would help him identify the fellow cyclist who called for help and stayed until paramedics arrived.

Bock wanted to thank him.

That fellow cyclist was Scott Hale, and as the modest Hale tells it, what happened that perfect Friday in January was far more amazing than just one cyclist helping another – it was more like a dozen cyclists and maybe as many as 20.

Hale, a member of the city’s Greater Albuquerque Bicycling Advisory Committee and one of the most well-known cyclists in town, said he saw Bock crumpled in the middle of the bike path, obviously in distress and apparently conked out.

Two other people stopped to help. Then two more. Then more, including a nurse who rendered aid until paramedics arrived. Others helped direct paramedics to the site where Bock lay, since the area was not reachable by ambulance. Albuquerque police, too, joined in the effort, one hoisting Bock’s twisted bike on the back of his squad car to ferry it to Bock’s home.

For Hale, it was more than helping out someone in need, but an affirmation that cyclists are, by and large, a caring community.

“It was neat to see how everybody came together to play a role in this,” he said. “That’s what cyclists do.”

Bock and Hale now have each other’s phone numbers. And like good people you meet on the path of life, they have each other’s backs.

Persecution or prosecution? Perhaps no columns have drawn as much passionate responses (that didn’t have anything to do with guns or abortion, anyway) than those published Jan. 7 and Jan. 21 on the child abuse case against Joshua and Aimee Kuckartz, the Rio Rancho parents accused of using a belt and a cold shower to discipline their troubled 6-year-old daughter.

The case has languished now for 18 months since they took their daughter – an adopted child diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, an aggressive, antisocial condition – to a hospital with a broken leg she suffered in a struggle with her mother in the shower.

Murder cases take less time to go to trial.

Since then, the family has undergone months of family therapy, parenting classes and the scrutiny of the state Children, Youth and Families Department, which closed the case against them. The child remains in the home and appears to be thriving.

But Sandoval County prosecutors were not satisfied. Although charges were dropped in January days after the first column was published, District Attorney Lemuel Martinez announced he was planning to take the case before a grand jury to seek even tougher indictments against both parents. Martinez called it judicial economy; I called it prosecutorial vindictiveness.

But the grand jury date, scheduled for Feb. 21, came and went, after the Kuckartzes’ attorney, Lisa Torraco, urged a postponement, given that she is a state senator who was busy at the Legislature, which concluded Saturday.

No date has been set for another bite at the judicial apple. Nor should it.

Those who know the Kuckartzes say the parents are not the monsters prosecutors portray them as, but kindhearted, loving parents struggling to help find a way to deal with a child who, thanks to them, has a forever home. That is, unless they lose the home to a mountain of legal bills or a possible prison sentence.

Some of those friends have launched two public campaigns against the District Attorney’s Office, saying that the threat of criminal charges is more abusive to the child than any belt or shower.

You can find more about their efforts at facebook.com/Seekingjusticenow and at http://myjourneysthroughlife.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/justice-needed-for-a-loving-family/.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal