By Amy Sandberg

We walked around oblivious that there are other places in the world that are unsafe; where it’s de riguer to watch over your shoulder and carry your keys in one hand and pepper spray in the other on your way to your car at night. We took for granted that our streets were safe, our children could play out front, and ride their bike down the block to “Johnnie’s” house. It was a womb we lived in. Warm, protective. In a word, safe.

That’s all changed. One of ours has been murdered right under our noses. That’s right, murdered. It happened to 17-year-old Chelsea King, an angel if there ever was one. It happened to her parents and her brother too. A part of them has died, never to be revived. But as the collective outpouring of compassion, volunteerism, grief and outrage is testimony — it happened to all of us.  An innocent girl was stripped of her innocence, and so were 3,000 students and staff at Poway High School. So was an entire community, and a pretty hardened community at that; a community that has faced down two devastating fires in the past decade. A community that survived two other tragic deaths at Poway High School this year. 

Oh we’re hardened all right. But nothing, not the fires, not the tragic but inevitable occasional death of errant teens, nothing could have prepared us for this.

Today I grieve for Chelsea, her family, for my two teenaged sons, for every loving soul in my community who shares the pain I feel. Today I hug my children closer and I count all my blessings and then some. Today I try not to think about “but for the grace of God.” Today I gently weep.

But tomorrow I will ask questions. Why do we spend $10 million on a bicycle bridge over Lake Hodges, but we don’t post signs warning residents of a predator in our midst after an assault on a woman in the park last December?

Why do we release a man from prison who shows no remorse for his crimes or any sign of rehabilitation?

Why do we allow a registered sex offender to live within yards of an elementary school?

Why do we spend $9 billion dollars a month on a senseless foreign war and not spend the money to protect our own?

The day after tomorrow, I want answers.

Sandberg lives in Rancho Bernardo.