Luis was not a student of mine, he was the gardener and general handyman at our townhouse complex. He worked there for 18 years. I had known him for about 9 years.
Luis Castillo was about 50 years old, apparently in good health, and as people speculate, suffering from depression. Luis, up until the last 1-2 weeks of his life, was always smiling, laughing, talking with my children, playing street hockey with them or throwing a ball when he wasn't taking care of the property.
Last Friday afternoon, at about 1pm, on a nice hot, southern California summer day, he went into the horse stalls on the other end of our property and ended his life with a handgun.
In this last month of his life I was distracted. Starting a new semester with far too many students, and with my family away in Japan, I anesthetized myself and stayed busy with a lot of tennis, lesson plans, movies, and grading. But thinking back about Luis, I remarked to others and they to me, that none of us had really seen him much in the past few weeks. Something had changed in Luis - his behavior, his routines, his temperment, though few were witness to these changes as he had apparently withdrawn; tormented by inner demons.
About every 3-4 weeks while teaching, I get some form in my mailbox from the special education department or from the school psychologist to evaluate how a student is doing in my class. There's always a part there to note any changes in behavior - though rarely do I see any. However, these changes in demeanor signal other possibly more serious changes in the fragile psyche, and tell the caregivers or doctors that special attention must be given to this person.
My cousin Kathy, in the Spring of 1984, about to graduate high school in Bloomington, MN, also ended her life at the age of 17. She too had changed in the months before, running away from home briefly and suffering from depression. Within a month of her death, a friend from college, Paul Boxer, a graduate student in chemistry took his own life, depressed over a failed marriage and trouble with his job. Back then we communicated the old fashioned way- via letters. His mother replied back to me after reading my last letter to him, probably a few days or weeks too late.
They're out there. People in our periphery-- the gardener, babysitter, dry cleaning guy, check out clerk at the grocery store, the Sunday school teacher. Or they are closer to us, like cousins or friends. And there are clues out there too. I wish I had paid more attention to Luis, tracked him down before his death, but of course I was too busy to pay attention. Too much tennis to be played or too many YouTube videos to watch.
Unlike Elvis Presley in My Way, "regrets, I've had a few, a few too many to mention," but most of all, I regret being too busy to pay attention, to pick up the signs. If I was a man of prayer, like I use to be 10 years ago, before I got too busy raising a family and working on my career, I would like to think that maybe God would have had me notice Luis. Then I could have looked into it, and taken him to lunch before that fateful day and that might have made a difference. Not just that one lunch of course, but maybe I could have gotten him to a doctor who could have helped. Maybe, just maybe... But alas, I and others were too busy to notice or intervene in a meaningful way.
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And on another related, incredibly tragic note, the 48 year old gunman that just shot 8 (killing 3) people in Pennsylvania gave all kinds of clues as to his upcoming behavior, but people were just not paying attention. On his personal website, the date of his death, and the plans for taking others with him were all laid out. If someone had just paid attention. -- here is an excerpt from a news story today about him-- The 4,610-word Web page, on a domain registered in Sodini's name, appeared to be a nine-month chronology of his plans for the shooting, his decision to delay it and the process that led to the eventual carnage at his health club Tuesday.
"The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends, but not being able to achieve and acquire what I desire in those or many other areas," said an entry dated Sunday. "Everthing stays the same regardless of the effert I put in. If I had control over my life then I would be happier. But for about the past 30 years, I have not."
The Web site's author wrote of planning the attack since at least November and had tried to do it when the same Tuesday-night dance aerobics class he targeted met on Jan. 6. "It is 8:45PM: I chickened out!" he wrote. "I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!"
Authorities are now looking to determine if anyone read his post and did something about it.
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