Focker
07-30-2006, 10:47 AM
Struggling to survive
A mother finds her grief to be unyielding
By Michelle L. Klampe, mklampe@VenturaCountyStar.com
July 30, 2006
Sheila Patchett walked slowly to the podium in the tiny San Bernardino County Courthouse in Needles, clutching a small stuffed raccoon and a two-page letter in her trembling hands, its contents a grim summary of the nightmare she and her family have lived the last two years.
The raccoon belonged to her 10-year-old son. The letter, just seven paragraphs long, couldn't begin to explain the suffering the Moorpark woman has endured since a boating crash on Lake Havasu took his life and his father's.
A bailiff handed her a box of tissues as she began to read, the words tumbling out as she choked back sobs.
"On June 16, 2004, my life was destroyed and taken from me."
It was a Wednesday. School had let out for the summer, so Sheila and her ex-husband, Steven Patchett of Simi Valley, took their children, Tyler, 10, Kalen, 12, and Stephan, 18, on a vacation to Lake Havasu.
Steven, 48, took his sons for one last ride before dinner in
the family's catamaran. Sheila snapped their photograph as she pushed them off from the dock.
Forty minutes later, as they were headed back to their resort, the Patchetts' boat collided nearly head-on with a power boat in a violent high-speed crash. Guests at the resort ran to tell Sheila there had been a crash, and they thought it was her family's boat. She began to scream.
"Are my boys OK? Are my boys OK?"
It was several hours before she learned they weren't. Tyler and his father were killed. Stephan was struck by the oncoming boat, the right half of his face smashed. He was rushed to a local hospital and then to a trauma center in Las Vegas, where he would undergo extensive surgery.
For Sheila, the death of Tyler, her baby, the playful energetic and affectionate child who loved to hug and kiss and hold his mother's hand, was catastrophic.
But she also lost Steven, who, despite their divorce several years ago, had remained her partner in parenting and the provider for their family. She bristles at the "ex" people use to describe her relationship with him, worried it diminishes the connection between them.
Her surviving son, now 20, suffered physical and emotional wounds that left him angry and distant. Daughter Kalen, now 14, grew up almost overnight.
Grief was a heavy blanket Sheila couldn't shrug off. She struggled to get out of bed. She took medication for anxiety and depression. She saw a counselor. She prayed. The heartache seemed insurmountable, and more than once, she wished she were dead, too.
Then she found out she had cancer.
* * *
The diagnosis came on Halloween last year.
Sheila, now 43, noticed changes in her right breast, felt a lump. A biopsy revealed the abnormal cells, and a PET scan showed them multiplying rapidly. It was an advanced case of the disease doctors suspect it may have been fueled by the stress associated with the crash and its aftermath and would require aggressive treatment.
She underwent a mastectomy in November. During the surgery, doctors confirmed the cancer had spread to all three regions of her lymph nodes. On the cancer rating scale, she was at stage 3C. Only stage 4, where the cancer has spread to other organs such as the brain or bones, could be worse.
Her friends and family couldn't believe it. Hadn't Sheila been through enough already?
"I was stunned," said Laurie Sherman, a friend since she and Sheila worked together at the Moorpark Boys & Girls Club. "My next statement was, ¿What can I do to help?'"
Sheila relies on her faith for strength and guidance in difficult times. After the crash, she questioned God but ultimately found her way back to her faith through extensive reading and research on prayer, sudden death and grieving.
"God hasn't strayed from me, even though I can't always feel him," she said.
Still, the cancer diagnosis confused her. Why must she go through this, too, on top of everything else?
"What more does he want from me?" she wondered. "Why do I get chosen for this crappy life?"
The diagnosis may have been difficult to comprehend, but a benefit appeared almost instantly.
"I wasn't so much fighting for life until I was faced with death," she said. "Cancer opened up my eyes to what I still had left, what I'd be leaving behind."
Stephan and Kalen.
Sheila told her doctors she needs five years, enough time to see Kalen through high school and settled into college. In that time, she might also be able to help Stephan with the anger and guilt he's struggled with since the crash.
She's their only surviving parent. They need her. The cancer helped remind her of that.
Liz Chevalier, a friend for 18 years, noticed the shift in Sheila's demeanor.
"In a way, the secondary pain got her mind off of her first pain," Chevalier said. "It gave her a will to live again."
* * *
Sheila knows how to fight.
As a parent, she was an advocate for her children, making sure they got help for their learning disabilities and weren't bullied by classmates. Even in her grief after the crash, she spoke out in favor of tougher boating laws in an effort to prevent accidents like the one that ruined her family.
Cancer wasn't the worst thing that could happen to her. It was nothing compared to the crash, nothing compared to the suffering Steven and their sons endured.
So she threw herself into the cause, donning cotton candy pink rubber bracelets in support of breast cancer awareness and reminding friends how to do self-examinations for signs of the disease.
On a cool, damp April morning, she showed up at the Moorpark High School track for the Relay for Life, an annual fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Two weeks out of chemotherapy, and two weeks before she was scheduled to begin radiation, she pulled a purple survivor's T-shirt over her bald head so she could walk the first lap of the 24-hour relay with other cancer survivors.
The song "Celebration" blared from the loudspeaker as she found her stride and moved quickly to the front of the pack. She made lap after lap around the track, stopping only to shed her vest and grab a bottle of water.
"The reason I keep walking," she said, "is because I've been in a prison for so long."
Depression and anxiety confined Sheila after the crash, and side effects of chemotherapy kept her mostly housebound after the cancer diagnosis.
A self-described people person, she welcomed the interaction the relay brought. She cheered on other survivors, leaning down to offer words of support to Breanna Pflaumer, a Moorpark teenager who received a diagnosis of a brain tumor. When she heard about Breanna's tumor, Sheila prayed for God to spare the girl "so you don't screw up another family."
Despite the festive nature of the relay, Sheila was struggling with her emotions. When friends and neighbors, even former teachers of Tyler's, asked how she was doing, she shrugged her shoulders and offered a wan smile.
"I'm OK," she told them.
Her doctors told her recent tests indicated the chemotherapy wasn't doing much good. She had been arguing with her children again. In the heat of one fight, her daughter suggested maybe the wrong parent died in the crash. Sheila had been fighting the cancer so she could be there for her surviving children.
The pull of death, and the chance to reunite with her son, was strong that day. If the treatment wasn't working, and if her children didn't care if she lived or died, why should she?
"I really need to know my purpose now," she said to friend Chevalier, who drove from Saugus to support Sheila. "I think it's gone."
"I still think you have amazing purpose, beyond your kids," Chevalier said. "I hope you keep fighting."
Sheila got through that day. She and Kalen started getting along better, and the doctors told her their initial review of the tests was wrong; her cancer had actually shrunk dramatically because of the chemotherapy. The treatment was working.
But she needed Chevalier's support to get past the rough spot. It's a friendship that serves both of them; Chevalier is inspired by Sheila's faith and courage.
"Loudness was huge in her home, and now it's so quiet," Chevalier said. "So much has changed in the two years since her life was about long hair, loud children, a crazy schedule, able to wear a bikini. Sometimes the fact that she can smile at all amazes me."
The pace at home has slowed considerably now. Stephan, who lives in Ontario, stops by occasionally for dinner or a place to sleep when visiting friends. Mostly, it's just mother and daughter.
They work on Kalen's scrapbook together. Sheila belongs to the booster club for her daughter's cheerleading squad. They squabble over phone time and spending money, but they also make midnight runs to the video store for movies.
"Just before I got cancer, we were getting our bond back," Sheila said of her daughter. "The closer she got to me, the more I wanted to live for her."
* * *
The cancer reduced Sheila's isolation and forced her to ask others for help, a rarity before the crash. Too sick to drive during much of her treatment, she built a network of chauffeurs mostly people from her church and friends in the community to shuttle her to appointments or the grocery store, or drive Kalen to her youth group.
Her friends rallied after the crash, raising a few thousand dollars to help her with expenses. Sheila, who hasn't worked during the past two years, lives on a fixed income and worries about money. She had some savings stashed away, but the medical bills are draining that account. Her church, The Bridge Community Church of Simi Valley, has purchased groceries for her and helped with other household expenses.
"I never really relied on people the way I do now," she said.
If he'd been here, Steven would've taken care of her, helped her through treatment, provided money if she needed it. That is a void Sheila's network of friends just can't fill, friend Sherman said.
"Everybody who is a part of her support system has their own families to go home to," she said. "She's dealing with the grief of losing her whole life."
Sheila grew frustrated when the offers of help dissipated. The rides dropped off after chemotherapy ended, even though she was still hurting and would have liked the help. The same thing happened after the crash, she said.
"When the tragedy's over, they go on with their life. They go back to the way things used to be," she said. "But you can't."
Tove LaRussa, a friend and Tyler's former baby sitter, was one who continued to help, driving Sheila twice a week to her radiation appointments, picking her up something to eat, even taking her to the Westlake Village cemetery where Tyler and Steven are buried. She also helped Sheila prepare a tape for the show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," in hopes of securing some stability for her friend.
"It's not that hard," LaRussa said of helping Sheila. "You just set your alarm an hour earlier in the morning."
* * *
Radiation oncologist Paul Miller and his team of therapists also became part of Sheila's circle of support. For nearly two months she visited Miller's Thousand Oaks office five days a week for treatment. She forged a bond with the staff during her first session.
Temperatures hovered near 80 degrees in the small room where Sheila lay strapped to a medical table, the massive arm of a radiation machine looming over her like a sewing machine needle poised over fabric. She wore a hospital gown over her jeans, exposing the pale, scarred skin stretched over a saline-filled expander substituting as a breast.
Sheila began to sweat as the radiation team marked her skin with a red Sharpie, drawing lines to direct the treatment.
"Would somebody mind taking off my boots?" she asked softly.
One of the men on the team pulled off her fur-lined boots.
"Ah, thank you," she replied. "Now I hope it doesn't reek too much."
The therapist complimented her feet, a teasing that continued for weeks. Members of the radiation team kept her mood up during the daily appointments, encouraging her to go out, making her a compact disc of the dance music they listen to. They also comforted her when she struggled with her grief.
On the second anniversary of the crash, she was late to her appointment. One of the staff members called and left a worried message.
"I'm sorry," Sheila called as she strode in the door. "We were at the cemetery."
That's all she had to say. After the session was over, she grabbed one of the therapists in a tight hug and began to weep.
"Don't let go," Sheila whispered, "or I'll just fall apart."
"Don't cry," the therapist murmured. "If you cry, I'll cry."
Sheila held on a little longer, and cried a little more.
"Think about me tonight," she said as she left. "They pushed off at 5:20. Impact was at 6 p.m."
"I can only fake it so much, you know?" she said a few minutes later, after she'd left the clinic and her tears behind.
"The people there, they make a big difference. They make it OK."
The next week, she completed her final radiation treatment. Two of her therapists, Steve Herrera and Burke Poole, presented her with a certificate of completion. As she thanked them, she started to cry.
"I'll miss you guys," she said as she hugged them. "I don't know if any of you believe (in God), but I know he put you in my life."
* * *
Brenda Madha is perhaps the friend who understands Sheila's grief best. They met at Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park, the Westlake Village cemetery where Tyler and Steven are buried. Madha's daughter, Chanelle Villalobos, who committed suicide at age 15, is buried there, too, just down the hill from the Patchetts.
One day, the two women were at the cemetery at the same time. Madha's younger daughter, Shayla, brought a rose up to Sheila "for Tyler."
The mothers have been friends ever since, often visiting the cemetery together. It's one way Sheila can still take care of Tyler.
"The one thing you have to remember: My children are my life," she said one day while visiting the cemetery. "I come here and take care of this for them the way Steven took care of me, financially and emotionally, for all those years, and the way Tyler took care of me. He was the best son a mom could ever have."
On the anniversary of the crash, Madha joined Sheila at the cemetery, spreading out a blanket on the grass and propping up a purple and teal beach umbrella to protect Sheila's radiation-sensitive skin. Then she got to work cleaning up the grave, trimming the grass around the headstone and scrubbing dust out of the engraving.
"Isn't that the perfect boy rose? It's brown," Madha said to Sheila, as she added the flower to the vase below the headstone.
"I got the roses here for Ty-Man. They're pink," Sheila responded, pointing to her own bouquet.
"Steven might not like these pink roses," Madha joked.
"He wouldn't care. I got him to wear a pink shirt," Sheila said.
For more than an hour, the pair sat on the blanket and chatted as most girlfriends would. Their conversation wandered from a skin procedure to help them look younger to the tile Madha and her husband picked out for the pool at their house, then to the insensitive things people have said to them about their losses.
"They just don't understand it unless they've been through it," Madha said.
One of the worst is being told they need to focus on themselves, take care of themselves.
"If I was thinking about myself, I'd be dead by now," Sheila said, as Madha nodded in agreement. "I have to think about my kids."
Sometimes when Sheila visits the cemetery, she'll lay a towel down on the plot next to Tyler and Steven's and stretch out, as if trying the space on for size. She purchased the spot after their deaths, before she knew she had cancer. It's one place she goes to talk to them.
"Hey guys," she says, "I don't know when, but I'll be here real soon."
* * *
Sheila's grief is unyielding, and she needs Robert Padilla to know it.
The Corona man was driving the power boat that struck the Patchetts on Lake Havasu. He was later charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of boating under the influence causing injury.
Sheila fought for the charges, writing letters to the San Bernardino District Attorney's Office and attending the preliminary hearing. It's a way to seek justice for Tyler and Steven.
"It is all about respecting them and taking care of them," she said.
Padilla's trial was scheduled for December, but the District Attorney's Office asked for a delay when Sheila found out she had cancer. The trial was moved to April, after chemotherapy ended but before radiation was set to begin.
Five days before the scheduled start, Sheila got a phone call from David Varman, the deputy district attorney assigned to the case. He was talking to Padilla's attorney about a plea bargain. Sheila was devastated.
Varman explained his reasoning: The case isn't an easy one. Some of the evidence shows Steven may have been drinking, too, a charge Sheila vehemently denies.
Both boats were probably traveling at unsafe speeds. A guilty plea is a guarantee, while a trial means Sheila could walk away with nothing. A guilty plea on a misdemeanor, with probation and little or no jail time might be the best they could get, he told her.
"Where's the justice?" she asked Varman. "I would prefer a felony, because that's what he deserves. I don't care about the 180 days (in jail). The days isn't what matters to me."
The important thing, she said, is that Padilla admits what he did, that he knows he didn't get away with it. She insisted Padilla must at least be convicted of a felony.
Varman agreed and negotiated the plea with Padilla's attorney. Varman also included a provision that would permit Sheila, Stephan and Kalen to speak at the sentencing.
"We should be there," Sheila said, "so he can see what he did to us."
When the deal was done, Sheila hung up the phone and wept.
"Should I fight harder for you guys?" she wondered aloud. "I want to do the right thing for them, and I don't know what the right thing is."
* * *
On July 18, at Padilla's formal sentencing, Sheila got to read the letter, the seven paragraphs that attempted to sum up the loss of Steven and Tyler, the damage to Stephan and Kalen. She talked about what happened to her, too, the depression, the anxiety, the post-traumatic stress disorder, the aggressive cancer.
"The doctors seem to think there is a great chance I won't survive five years," she read, "¿ but I will not leave my two living children orphans. At least not yet."
Then the judge pronounced Padilla's sentence. One day in jail. Three years' probation. Counseling and alcohol education classes. Loss of his driver's license for one year. Sheila leaned against Stephan's shoulder and blotted tears with a tissue as she listened to the judge's words.
The sentence made her sick to her stomach. It just wasn't enough.
She could barely stand as her pastor, David Wilkinson, and her victim's advocate, Marta Woodfield, helped her from the courtroom to a chair in the hallway.
Her body shook as she collapsed into keening, wracking sobs. In a room full of people, she was alone with her grief.
Sheila sat there for half an hour, unable to muster the strength to move. Eventually, Padilla, his wife, and other family members filed out of the courtroom. He paused in front of Sheila, offering a tentative hand.
She sat with her arms crossed, and waited.
"We're very sorry," he said softly.
"Can I ask you a question?" Sheila said to him. Law enforcement officers had told her Padilla never asked about the Patchetts after the crash, not even at the preliminary hearing. Sheila wanted to know why he showed no remorse.
"We do think about both of them every day," Padilla's wife, Kimberly, said to Sheila. "You're in our thoughts every day."
"I'm glad to hear that," Sheila said. "I would never wish upon your family the pain I've had to endure, but thank you."
Kimberly Padilla told Sheila it was her towel that covered Tyler after the crash, that she saw his wounded body and would never wish what happened to him on anyone.
The words were of no comfort. All Sheila could think of was the pain Tyler must have suffered.
"When she said that, it was like my worst nightmares were confirmed," she said. "It means they saw it. They saw the boat coming."
Still, she was glad Robert Padilla apologized.
"It'll be easier now to be across the table from Mr. Padilla," she said.
They'll face each other again, possibly before the year is out. Sheila filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him.
* * *
She spotted their names first, hand-lettered in black paint on a pair of rocks sitting near one another. She ran to the rocks and sank to her knees.
"Tyler," she screamed. "I didn't know it was going to be like this."
The day after Padilla's sentencing, for the first time since the crash, Sheila returned to Lake Havasu. She left a red rose on the dock where Tyler's body was brought to shore after the crash. She waded into chest-deep water to throw two more roses toward the spot where the boats collided.
But her first stop was Black Meadow Landing, the resort where her family stayed that week in June two years ago. She'd heard about a possible memorial for Tyler, Steven and other residents or visitors who died there.
A worker led her to the rocky cliff overlooking Lake Havasu, a blue and white street-style sign marking the gravel strip as Memorial Lane.
Their names were there, in the Memorial of Memories, where row after row of stone crosses had been built along the cliff's edge, rocks painted to identify the names of the dead. In the last row, nestled together, were two crosses, a large one for Steven and a smaller one for Tyler.
"I love you guys," she told them. "I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to come before now. I'm so sorry."
Sheila draped several red roses across the stones as she spoke to her son and his father, telling them how much she missed them.
Then she covered her face with her hands and cried.
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A mother finds her grief to be unyielding
By Michelle L. Klampe, mklampe@VenturaCountyStar.com
July 30, 2006
Sheila Patchett walked slowly to the podium in the tiny San Bernardino County Courthouse in Needles, clutching a small stuffed raccoon and a two-page letter in her trembling hands, its contents a grim summary of the nightmare she and her family have lived the last two years.
The raccoon belonged to her 10-year-old son. The letter, just seven paragraphs long, couldn't begin to explain the suffering the Moorpark woman has endured since a boating crash on Lake Havasu took his life and his father's.
A bailiff handed her a box of tissues as she began to read, the words tumbling out as she choked back sobs.
"On June 16, 2004, my life was destroyed and taken from me."
It was a Wednesday. School had let out for the summer, so Sheila and her ex-husband, Steven Patchett of Simi Valley, took their children, Tyler, 10, Kalen, 12, and Stephan, 18, on a vacation to Lake Havasu.
Steven, 48, took his sons for one last ride before dinner in
the family's catamaran. Sheila snapped their photograph as she pushed them off from the dock.
Forty minutes later, as they were headed back to their resort, the Patchetts' boat collided nearly head-on with a power boat in a violent high-speed crash. Guests at the resort ran to tell Sheila there had been a crash, and they thought it was her family's boat. She began to scream.
"Are my boys OK? Are my boys OK?"
It was several hours before she learned they weren't. Tyler and his father were killed. Stephan was struck by the oncoming boat, the right half of his face smashed. He was rushed to a local hospital and then to a trauma center in Las Vegas, where he would undergo extensive surgery.
For Sheila, the death of Tyler, her baby, the playful energetic and affectionate child who loved to hug and kiss and hold his mother's hand, was catastrophic.
But she also lost Steven, who, despite their divorce several years ago, had remained her partner in parenting and the provider for their family. She bristles at the "ex" people use to describe her relationship with him, worried it diminishes the connection between them.
Her surviving son, now 20, suffered physical and emotional wounds that left him angry and distant. Daughter Kalen, now 14, grew up almost overnight.
Grief was a heavy blanket Sheila couldn't shrug off. She struggled to get out of bed. She took medication for anxiety and depression. She saw a counselor. She prayed. The heartache seemed insurmountable, and more than once, she wished she were dead, too.
Then she found out she had cancer.
* * *
The diagnosis came on Halloween last year.
Sheila, now 43, noticed changes in her right breast, felt a lump. A biopsy revealed the abnormal cells, and a PET scan showed them multiplying rapidly. It was an advanced case of the disease doctors suspect it may have been fueled by the stress associated with the crash and its aftermath and would require aggressive treatment.
She underwent a mastectomy in November. During the surgery, doctors confirmed the cancer had spread to all three regions of her lymph nodes. On the cancer rating scale, she was at stage 3C. Only stage 4, where the cancer has spread to other organs such as the brain or bones, could be worse.
Her friends and family couldn't believe it. Hadn't Sheila been through enough already?
"I was stunned," said Laurie Sherman, a friend since she and Sheila worked together at the Moorpark Boys & Girls Club. "My next statement was, ¿What can I do to help?'"
Sheila relies on her faith for strength and guidance in difficult times. After the crash, she questioned God but ultimately found her way back to her faith through extensive reading and research on prayer, sudden death and grieving.
"God hasn't strayed from me, even though I can't always feel him," she said.
Still, the cancer diagnosis confused her. Why must she go through this, too, on top of everything else?
"What more does he want from me?" she wondered. "Why do I get chosen for this crappy life?"
The diagnosis may have been difficult to comprehend, but a benefit appeared almost instantly.
"I wasn't so much fighting for life until I was faced with death," she said. "Cancer opened up my eyes to what I still had left, what I'd be leaving behind."
Stephan and Kalen.
Sheila told her doctors she needs five years, enough time to see Kalen through high school and settled into college. In that time, she might also be able to help Stephan with the anger and guilt he's struggled with since the crash.
She's their only surviving parent. They need her. The cancer helped remind her of that.
Liz Chevalier, a friend for 18 years, noticed the shift in Sheila's demeanor.
"In a way, the secondary pain got her mind off of her first pain," Chevalier said. "It gave her a will to live again."
* * *
Sheila knows how to fight.
As a parent, she was an advocate for her children, making sure they got help for their learning disabilities and weren't bullied by classmates. Even in her grief after the crash, she spoke out in favor of tougher boating laws in an effort to prevent accidents like the one that ruined her family.
Cancer wasn't the worst thing that could happen to her. It was nothing compared to the crash, nothing compared to the suffering Steven and their sons endured.
So she threw herself into the cause, donning cotton candy pink rubber bracelets in support of breast cancer awareness and reminding friends how to do self-examinations for signs of the disease.
On a cool, damp April morning, she showed up at the Moorpark High School track for the Relay for Life, an annual fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Two weeks out of chemotherapy, and two weeks before she was scheduled to begin radiation, she pulled a purple survivor's T-shirt over her bald head so she could walk the first lap of the 24-hour relay with other cancer survivors.
The song "Celebration" blared from the loudspeaker as she found her stride and moved quickly to the front of the pack. She made lap after lap around the track, stopping only to shed her vest and grab a bottle of water.
"The reason I keep walking," she said, "is because I've been in a prison for so long."
Depression and anxiety confined Sheila after the crash, and side effects of chemotherapy kept her mostly housebound after the cancer diagnosis.
A self-described people person, she welcomed the interaction the relay brought. She cheered on other survivors, leaning down to offer words of support to Breanna Pflaumer, a Moorpark teenager who received a diagnosis of a brain tumor. When she heard about Breanna's tumor, Sheila prayed for God to spare the girl "so you don't screw up another family."
Despite the festive nature of the relay, Sheila was struggling with her emotions. When friends and neighbors, even former teachers of Tyler's, asked how she was doing, she shrugged her shoulders and offered a wan smile.
"I'm OK," she told them.
Her doctors told her recent tests indicated the chemotherapy wasn't doing much good. She had been arguing with her children again. In the heat of one fight, her daughter suggested maybe the wrong parent died in the crash. Sheila had been fighting the cancer so she could be there for her surviving children.
The pull of death, and the chance to reunite with her son, was strong that day. If the treatment wasn't working, and if her children didn't care if she lived or died, why should she?
"I really need to know my purpose now," she said to friend Chevalier, who drove from Saugus to support Sheila. "I think it's gone."
"I still think you have amazing purpose, beyond your kids," Chevalier said. "I hope you keep fighting."
Sheila got through that day. She and Kalen started getting along better, and the doctors told her their initial review of the tests was wrong; her cancer had actually shrunk dramatically because of the chemotherapy. The treatment was working.
But she needed Chevalier's support to get past the rough spot. It's a friendship that serves both of them; Chevalier is inspired by Sheila's faith and courage.
"Loudness was huge in her home, and now it's so quiet," Chevalier said. "So much has changed in the two years since her life was about long hair, loud children, a crazy schedule, able to wear a bikini. Sometimes the fact that she can smile at all amazes me."
The pace at home has slowed considerably now. Stephan, who lives in Ontario, stops by occasionally for dinner or a place to sleep when visiting friends. Mostly, it's just mother and daughter.
They work on Kalen's scrapbook together. Sheila belongs to the booster club for her daughter's cheerleading squad. They squabble over phone time and spending money, but they also make midnight runs to the video store for movies.
"Just before I got cancer, we were getting our bond back," Sheila said of her daughter. "The closer she got to me, the more I wanted to live for her."
* * *
The cancer reduced Sheila's isolation and forced her to ask others for help, a rarity before the crash. Too sick to drive during much of her treatment, she built a network of chauffeurs mostly people from her church and friends in the community to shuttle her to appointments or the grocery store, or drive Kalen to her youth group.
Her friends rallied after the crash, raising a few thousand dollars to help her with expenses. Sheila, who hasn't worked during the past two years, lives on a fixed income and worries about money. She had some savings stashed away, but the medical bills are draining that account. Her church, The Bridge Community Church of Simi Valley, has purchased groceries for her and helped with other household expenses.
"I never really relied on people the way I do now," she said.
If he'd been here, Steven would've taken care of her, helped her through treatment, provided money if she needed it. That is a void Sheila's network of friends just can't fill, friend Sherman said.
"Everybody who is a part of her support system has their own families to go home to," she said. "She's dealing with the grief of losing her whole life."
Sheila grew frustrated when the offers of help dissipated. The rides dropped off after chemotherapy ended, even though she was still hurting and would have liked the help. The same thing happened after the crash, she said.
"When the tragedy's over, they go on with their life. They go back to the way things used to be," she said. "But you can't."
Tove LaRussa, a friend and Tyler's former baby sitter, was one who continued to help, driving Sheila twice a week to her radiation appointments, picking her up something to eat, even taking her to the Westlake Village cemetery where Tyler and Steven are buried. She also helped Sheila prepare a tape for the show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," in hopes of securing some stability for her friend.
"It's not that hard," LaRussa said of helping Sheila. "You just set your alarm an hour earlier in the morning."
* * *
Radiation oncologist Paul Miller and his team of therapists also became part of Sheila's circle of support. For nearly two months she visited Miller's Thousand Oaks office five days a week for treatment. She forged a bond with the staff during her first session.
Temperatures hovered near 80 degrees in the small room where Sheila lay strapped to a medical table, the massive arm of a radiation machine looming over her like a sewing machine needle poised over fabric. She wore a hospital gown over her jeans, exposing the pale, scarred skin stretched over a saline-filled expander substituting as a breast.
Sheila began to sweat as the radiation team marked her skin with a red Sharpie, drawing lines to direct the treatment.
"Would somebody mind taking off my boots?" she asked softly.
One of the men on the team pulled off her fur-lined boots.
"Ah, thank you," she replied. "Now I hope it doesn't reek too much."
The therapist complimented her feet, a teasing that continued for weeks. Members of the radiation team kept her mood up during the daily appointments, encouraging her to go out, making her a compact disc of the dance music they listen to. They also comforted her when she struggled with her grief.
On the second anniversary of the crash, she was late to her appointment. One of the staff members called and left a worried message.
"I'm sorry," Sheila called as she strode in the door. "We were at the cemetery."
That's all she had to say. After the session was over, she grabbed one of the therapists in a tight hug and began to weep.
"Don't let go," Sheila whispered, "or I'll just fall apart."
"Don't cry," the therapist murmured. "If you cry, I'll cry."
Sheila held on a little longer, and cried a little more.
"Think about me tonight," she said as she left. "They pushed off at 5:20. Impact was at 6 p.m."
"I can only fake it so much, you know?" she said a few minutes later, after she'd left the clinic and her tears behind.
"The people there, they make a big difference. They make it OK."
The next week, she completed her final radiation treatment. Two of her therapists, Steve Herrera and Burke Poole, presented her with a certificate of completion. As she thanked them, she started to cry.
"I'll miss you guys," she said as she hugged them. "I don't know if any of you believe (in God), but I know he put you in my life."
* * *
Brenda Madha is perhaps the friend who understands Sheila's grief best. They met at Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park, the Westlake Village cemetery where Tyler and Steven are buried. Madha's daughter, Chanelle Villalobos, who committed suicide at age 15, is buried there, too, just down the hill from the Patchetts.
One day, the two women were at the cemetery at the same time. Madha's younger daughter, Shayla, brought a rose up to Sheila "for Tyler."
The mothers have been friends ever since, often visiting the cemetery together. It's one way Sheila can still take care of Tyler.
"The one thing you have to remember: My children are my life," she said one day while visiting the cemetery. "I come here and take care of this for them the way Steven took care of me, financially and emotionally, for all those years, and the way Tyler took care of me. He was the best son a mom could ever have."
On the anniversary of the crash, Madha joined Sheila at the cemetery, spreading out a blanket on the grass and propping up a purple and teal beach umbrella to protect Sheila's radiation-sensitive skin. Then she got to work cleaning up the grave, trimming the grass around the headstone and scrubbing dust out of the engraving.
"Isn't that the perfect boy rose? It's brown," Madha said to Sheila, as she added the flower to the vase below the headstone.
"I got the roses here for Ty-Man. They're pink," Sheila responded, pointing to her own bouquet.
"Steven might not like these pink roses," Madha joked.
"He wouldn't care. I got him to wear a pink shirt," Sheila said.
For more than an hour, the pair sat on the blanket and chatted as most girlfriends would. Their conversation wandered from a skin procedure to help them look younger to the tile Madha and her husband picked out for the pool at their house, then to the insensitive things people have said to them about their losses.
"They just don't understand it unless they've been through it," Madha said.
One of the worst is being told they need to focus on themselves, take care of themselves.
"If I was thinking about myself, I'd be dead by now," Sheila said, as Madha nodded in agreement. "I have to think about my kids."
Sometimes when Sheila visits the cemetery, she'll lay a towel down on the plot next to Tyler and Steven's and stretch out, as if trying the space on for size. She purchased the spot after their deaths, before she knew she had cancer. It's one place she goes to talk to them.
"Hey guys," she says, "I don't know when, but I'll be here real soon."
* * *
Sheila's grief is unyielding, and she needs Robert Padilla to know it.
The Corona man was driving the power boat that struck the Patchetts on Lake Havasu. He was later charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of boating under the influence causing injury.
Sheila fought for the charges, writing letters to the San Bernardino District Attorney's Office and attending the preliminary hearing. It's a way to seek justice for Tyler and Steven.
"It is all about respecting them and taking care of them," she said.
Padilla's trial was scheduled for December, but the District Attorney's Office asked for a delay when Sheila found out she had cancer. The trial was moved to April, after chemotherapy ended but before radiation was set to begin.
Five days before the scheduled start, Sheila got a phone call from David Varman, the deputy district attorney assigned to the case. He was talking to Padilla's attorney about a plea bargain. Sheila was devastated.
Varman explained his reasoning: The case isn't an easy one. Some of the evidence shows Steven may have been drinking, too, a charge Sheila vehemently denies.
Both boats were probably traveling at unsafe speeds. A guilty plea is a guarantee, while a trial means Sheila could walk away with nothing. A guilty plea on a misdemeanor, with probation and little or no jail time might be the best they could get, he told her.
"Where's the justice?" she asked Varman. "I would prefer a felony, because that's what he deserves. I don't care about the 180 days (in jail). The days isn't what matters to me."
The important thing, she said, is that Padilla admits what he did, that he knows he didn't get away with it. She insisted Padilla must at least be convicted of a felony.
Varman agreed and negotiated the plea with Padilla's attorney. Varman also included a provision that would permit Sheila, Stephan and Kalen to speak at the sentencing.
"We should be there," Sheila said, "so he can see what he did to us."
When the deal was done, Sheila hung up the phone and wept.
"Should I fight harder for you guys?" she wondered aloud. "I want to do the right thing for them, and I don't know what the right thing is."
* * *
On July 18, at Padilla's formal sentencing, Sheila got to read the letter, the seven paragraphs that attempted to sum up the loss of Steven and Tyler, the damage to Stephan and Kalen. She talked about what happened to her, too, the depression, the anxiety, the post-traumatic stress disorder, the aggressive cancer.
"The doctors seem to think there is a great chance I won't survive five years," she read, "¿ but I will not leave my two living children orphans. At least not yet."
Then the judge pronounced Padilla's sentence. One day in jail. Three years' probation. Counseling and alcohol education classes. Loss of his driver's license for one year. Sheila leaned against Stephan's shoulder and blotted tears with a tissue as she listened to the judge's words.
The sentence made her sick to her stomach. It just wasn't enough.
She could barely stand as her pastor, David Wilkinson, and her victim's advocate, Marta Woodfield, helped her from the courtroom to a chair in the hallway.
Her body shook as she collapsed into keening, wracking sobs. In a room full of people, she was alone with her grief.
Sheila sat there for half an hour, unable to muster the strength to move. Eventually, Padilla, his wife, and other family members filed out of the courtroom. He paused in front of Sheila, offering a tentative hand.
She sat with her arms crossed, and waited.
"We're very sorry," he said softly.
"Can I ask you a question?" Sheila said to him. Law enforcement officers had told her Padilla never asked about the Patchetts after the crash, not even at the preliminary hearing. Sheila wanted to know why he showed no remorse.
"We do think about both of them every day," Padilla's wife, Kimberly, said to Sheila. "You're in our thoughts every day."
"I'm glad to hear that," Sheila said. "I would never wish upon your family the pain I've had to endure, but thank you."
Kimberly Padilla told Sheila it was her towel that covered Tyler after the crash, that she saw his wounded body and would never wish what happened to him on anyone.
The words were of no comfort. All Sheila could think of was the pain Tyler must have suffered.
"When she said that, it was like my worst nightmares were confirmed," she said. "It means they saw it. They saw the boat coming."
Still, she was glad Robert Padilla apologized.
"It'll be easier now to be across the table from Mr. Padilla," she said.
They'll face each other again, possibly before the year is out. Sheila filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him.
* * *
She spotted their names first, hand-lettered in black paint on a pair of rocks sitting near one another. She ran to the rocks and sank to her knees.
"Tyler," she screamed. "I didn't know it was going to be like this."
The day after Padilla's sentencing, for the first time since the crash, Sheila returned to Lake Havasu. She left a red rose on the dock where Tyler's body was brought to shore after the crash. She waded into chest-deep water to throw two more roses toward the spot where the boats collided.
But her first stop was Black Meadow Landing, the resort where her family stayed that week in June two years ago. She'd heard about a possible memorial for Tyler, Steven and other residents or visitors who died there.
A worker led her to the rocky cliff overlooking Lake Havasu, a blue and white street-style sign marking the gravel strip as Memorial Lane.
Their names were there, in the Memorial of Memories, where row after row of stone crosses had been built along the cliff's edge, rocks painted to identify the names of the dead. In the last row, nestled together, were two crosses, a large one for Steven and a smaller one for Tyler.
"I love you guys," she told them. "I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to come before now. I'm so sorry."
Sheila draped several red roses across the stones as she spoke to her son and his father, telling them how much she missed them.
Then she covered her face with her hands and cried.
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