03.18.11 - 3:17 pm

oh god, the internet.

the story begins with a sunday evening. sarah was having a hard time making the 40 mile drive monday mornings from salem to ashtons elementary school. she had stated several times that she wanted me to take him sundays so that i could ensure his arrival. and most importantly on time. i agreed. one less evening for her with ashton, one more for me.

she couldnt meet me at some halfway point however. she needed me to come pick him up after i got off work at 5.

sarah: i can pay your extra gas if u want i just dont have a way
me: where is your car?
sarah: its here i just cant drive right now and my grandparents are in washington i didnt know they were going
me: thats fine, ill come get him, but why cant you drive right now?
sarah: because i got like 4 tickets last year so its suspended. and 1 this year.

fair enough. except i knew she had been suspended since last year. but she drove regardless. i have pictures. i called the police every time she was headed to or from my home. what made this time so different that she finally stopped driving? the mystery puzzled me for a while until i was able to look at her driving records.

felony arrest for possession. marion county.

suddenly i was overwhelmed with excitement. i fired up the google search engine and quickly began my clandestine investigation.

if there was an arrest, she would have been taken down to the station. i found the marion county courthouse website, and delved into the public records of past and currently incarcerated individuals. i went down a list of a billion names but then, amidst them all was her name.

november 19th, 2010.

how did something this big slip by without any notification of any kind? so then i tried to locate mugshots. there had to be one. i tried multiple sites but always came up empty handed until pdxmugshots.com popped up. a quick name search in salem...and there she was.

she looks annoyed. a bit disappointed. id like to say that the longer you look into her eyes, the more terrified they seem. but i mostly just see apathy. here was the mother of my child in a long list of mugshots on some voyueristic peepsite. it saddened me and thrilled me at the same time. the next day i went to the phones. i found her parole officers last name and called the P&P officers building. More information flooded in.

traffic stop. percoset and methadone. arrested shortly after midnight. september 15th. probation. diversion program minimum of 12 months.

wait, what?

this was a person who had almost lost custody of her two children just seven months prior because of prescription pills, and she just gets diversion?! you would think there would be some stiffer consequences, dont you think?

"one would think..." said the disinterested voice on the other side.

well why wasnt i notified?

"why would you be?"

um, shes the mother of my child who has shared parenting time and shes a drug addict who was arrested on a felony possession charge, shouldnt there be some notification to the other parent?

"no." she retorted incredulously, like i had just asked something completely idiotic.

she would go on to tell me that sarah had spent a week in jail. AN ENTIRE WEEK. i told her that was interesting, because around that time sarah told me she was going to hawaii, and maybe that was her cover story. well, no, said the parole officer, she did go to hawaii. thats why she spent a week in jail. she wasnt supposed to go and went anyways. so i dug back through some old saved text messages that at the time seemed rather peculiar. but now seem to make much more sense.

"did u tell anyone i was in hawaii? just curious. dusty gets mad if i go anywhere. im just curious." 11.17.2010

she didnt want her parole officer to know she was planning on breaking parole....someone must have ratted her out. i imagine it was dusty.

so then i called child services. both in washington county and marion county. were they notified or aware. no. neither of them had open cases. neither of them were concerned. as they saw it, the event of sarahs arrest occured while ashton was with me, and thus had no impact on him and so they couldnt be bothered to start up an investigation. nevermind that when he goes over there, hes been staying with a drug addict. but until something happens, they wont admit any impact has occurred on ashtons well being.shouldnt that be enough of an impact? his mom is a drug addict! i almost feel like, regardless of how overburdened the child welfare office is with substantially more destructive cases, by not initiating an investigation it normalizes that one parent is addicted to narcotics. its just not that big of a deal.

yesterday i drove to the marion county courthouse. paid the $15 for the police report and sat in the parking lot reading it. the arresting officer wrote a brilliant narrative of the evening and provided all the additional information i needed.

sarah was charged with:

- failure to carry/present operators license (because of her suspended license, she didnt have one)
- give false information/liability insurance to police officer (she insisted she had valid insurance, even though the insurance company had cancelled four months prior)
- no ODL/violation of license restrictions (see above)
- unlawful controlled substance, PCS II

so she lied to the officer about leaving her wallet at home, even though when searching her car they found it under her drivers seat. she lied about having insurance, even when the officer asked her repeatedly and told her that lying to an officer was a crime. however she did admit to using the pills to "fill in the gaps" between taking her actually prescribed suboxen, which is to help her with symptoms of withdrawal from...prescription medications. she said she would crush them up and snort them, and officers found her tube in her wallet filled with white residue.

so the painfully frustrating part about all of this is that it happened in november. its march. ashton has been going over there every weekend. i had no idea. if a 28 day stint in an in-patient treatment program and an investigation by child welfare was unable to stop her from getting high on pills seven months later, an out-patient diversion program while she is unemployed, without a car and on parole isnt really going to provide her with the tools to improve her self either. shes a liar. shes a drug addict. she either has a super naive family or one that is complacent and complicit with her activities.

monday morning at 8 am i file modification of custody papers. at 830 i present those papers to a judge during ex parte. i hope this finally finishes what i set out to do three years ago. one would think i have plenty of evidence to show a continued lack of judgement, character and behavior not stable enough to be making the custodial decision for a seven year old child.