Going Home to Hug My Sheep on a Rainy Monday

Much emotion and tenderness in school today, holding each other up over the tragic loss of one of our students in a weekend drunken driving accident. We are a small group on our campus, in a rural community and something like this hits hard. I had not been working directly with this student in some time as she left our school, then came back, and then started working on a GED in Gretchen's program, but we saw each other every day and got along very well. Ashley was larger than life, a big, beautiful blonde, with an outgoing vivacious personality and zest for life in spite of her challenging personal circumstances. Another one-time student was driving a group of young people home, at 6 am, while intoxicated, and swerved off the road. The mini-van hit a guard rail then rolled several times. None of the teens had seat belts on and all were thrown from the vehicle. Some had devastating injuries and Ashley was killed. The 17 year old driver was checked and released from the hospital, and was taken straight to jail. He won't go home unless someone can come up with $200,000 bail. Not high enough.