Both my husband and I have always agreed that there is good and bad in all people, but we disagree on which side generally outweighs the other. I’ve always thought it was a matter of circumstance, because he was raised around Los Angeles, California while I was raised in Cayuga. When I was a kid, I always knew I could go to the neighbours if I needed help, and my bus driver always told me she would pick me up on her way back home if I ever got locked out.
When I woke up on February 15, I found myself questioning that balance. A child had been taken by her father, one of two people naturally meant to protect her in this world, and murdered. These headlines always make me question the idea of “evil”, but I find that term is too easy an excuse. It suggests that there was something inherently rotten in the man, and therefore that there was little to be done. But humans are more than slabs of meat, and we do not rot until we die. Until we die, there is always a chance to do better, to make better choices.
Humans are, generally speaking, pack creatures. We rely on others, to teach us, to comfort us, to help us in our times of need. This father failed his daughter. There is no question of that. But he was not the last person to fail her. Because when the police put out the call for us all to come together, to just keep an eye out for this little girl so she might return home safely, some people actually said no.
If you were one of those people, I beg of you, next time, please do better, be better. That little girl deserved better. I do not care if the alarm woke you or your kids up with its loudness; I do not care if it scared you with its suddenness.
I have one biological niece and about half a dozen others who call me “aunt”. If they ever went missing, I would scream from every rooftop in Haldimand if it meant someone might know something to bring them home.
The fact that the Amber Alert service exists, to inform everyone in the vicinity that a child is missing and in need of help, is an astounding technological feat. It is beautiful. And in this case, it worked; the father was found because of a tip from the alert, unfortunately too late.
Before anyone says, “but I was nowhere near their last-known location”, it had been hours and they were on the 401; they could have been anywhere by then. Wake me up every night if it means some kid might be helped.
Now, I get it; it sucks to lose sleep and it’s ok to grumble a little about it. However, if your response to a call for help is ever disinterest or anger, you need to re-evaluate your priorities.
Calling 911 to complain about a loud text message, as if you were speaking to the manager about your undercooked burger, is the height of entitlement. A child died. A mother is facing her greatest horror. These things matter. How comfy you may have been in bed when the alarm went off is inconsequential.
And the thing is, this wasn’t just confined to the city. One Cayuga woman went viral for her response to the alarm, calling out the police for the “dick move” of waking her “babes”. It’s not that this mother didn’t believe in the Amber Alert system at all, but that they should “save it for the real emergencies”. I have to assume that she didn’t know the girl was dead yet when she made these callous remarks, but it doesn’t change much. This woman turned her back on another mother because she felt that her own kids getting their full night’s rest was more important than someone else’s child making it home at all.
I imagine this woman regrets her comments now. She has since been forced to delete her post and various social media profiles, as thousands of people shared the screenshots of her words, many sending callous words back to her.
Haldimand County had to release a statement after they received numerous calls for the woman to be fired because she had listed the County as her employer, which turned out not to be the case. It makes me wonder though, does she regret the comments because she genuinely recognizes the mistake she made, or because she became the target of other people’s anger and may now be facing unemployment? Likely we’ll never know, but I hope that it’s the former.
That little girl will never return home, and her family will never be the same because of it. But, perhaps, at least one person was made a little better, a little more empathic, through all this. I hope so.
