A little while ago I had one of the saddest phone calls I have ever recieved.

[Kali]

I was in the feed store and there was kind of a rush for some reason so a lot of people were standing around visiting. My phone rang with a number I didn't recognize and for some strange reason I went ahead and answered. Not a normal thing for me to do inside a business like that.

It was a young man calling from our front gate (where I have my number posted) he said he was calling about someone who might have been left behind. A strange turn of phrase. He was obviously feeling awkward and finally asked almost as if he were inquiring about a lost dog, had anybody on the ranch seen a dead body.

It seems his cousin hasn't been heard from in over 2 months. He has been driving around the county trying to find the trail that the cousin was walking. The mother is panicking and wants to come across to search but where is she going to start, what can she do? He said he had called the Willcox Border Patrol but they said there hasn't been a body in this sector in over 8 months. I am so sad for this family. Can you imagine?

There are so many idiots running around on dune buggies and 4 wheelers, plus the local ranchers and other horseback travelers, constant low flying aircraft (more BP) - not to mention the other migrants passing through I would think somebody would have found any bodies by now from 2 months ago, but then some of the country is brushy and rough and the cycle of nature returns organic matter pretty quickly to the earth.

On the other hand a cell phone and a few minutes of Mexico calling is so cheap these days, if he was Ok they surely would have heard from him.

Can you imagine being the mother of this young man who tried to walk 100 miles to find work? I need to go hug my sons.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. How sad is that, my dear Kali...

And how fortunate that you answered.

I hope they find the cousin. I'm not hopeful that they will, though...

[Kali]

21. thanks, Peggy

[Gormy Cuss]

2. I'll repeat this story the next time I hear a moron complaining about 'illegals."

I hope for the sake of his family that they find out what happened to him soon.

[freshwest]

3. One can only hope he's gone on to somewhere farther north and is busy. But you never know.

I called a friend a year or so to ask about returning some photographs of someone I cared a lot about, but had lost touch with. I thought the person would be doing well.

It was a shocking and tragic story, completely out of the realm of the future I had imagined. I was depressed for months, realizd that light had gone out of the world. I hope this story goes better for the family.

to another soul.

[Kali]

22. they put up some fliers

see below

[HopeHoops]

4. You're in AZ. I hope he didn't get a 1070. That's just way too sad. I'd look too.

[Kali]

19. I think at this point that would actually be the best news this family could have.

[a la izquierda]

5. Living in Arizona, I'm sure you've read Devil's Highway...

by Urrea. Heartbreaking, and too common. If you haven't, I highly recommend it, with a strong stomach.
I teach a freshman seminar on immigration every once in awhile. I taught it last academic year. My students were truly floored by what migrants experience while crossing the border. It's just tragic and sad.

I hope that this young man finds his relative, or at least finds some comfort and peace. My sister disappeared from our lives for several years, and I know that my mother did not sleep well at night (she's reunited with the family now).

[Kali]

20. this sector is a LITTLE easier - at least in terms of water and temperatures

still very rugged but easier than west of Tucson/Nogales

[panader0]

6. I live near you Kali

I bought 40 acres here, shit, it's been over 30 years ago now, many illegals have walked through my property. One morning years ago I went out early and saw about a dozen people walking through, totally quiet. Two were young women with babies, held close. I helped many illegals back then, way before the Border Patrol. Water, a bit of food..............

[Kali]

23. they never used to have to walk THIS far

I'm almost 60 miles.

[siligut]

7. I hope that this kid finds his cousin

[Bluerthanblue]

8. so incredibly sad-

two months is a long time.

[hedgehog]

9. The problem of illegal immigration really comes down to one individual story after another.

[Ken Burch]

10. This is a parent's worst nightmare.

How horrible for her.

And how sadly frequent an occurrence in general.

This system is trying to force ALL of us into something like migrant status...searching from town-to-town, state-to-state, region-to-region, for some sort of work...ANY work at all...any place in life at all.

It's getting closer and closer to the time when we'll ALL be "Okies"...unless we can find the strength to be the new Tom Joads.

[Odin2005]

11. OMG!!!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. What's sad is some redneck could have shot him and then buried him with a tractor.

Or, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it in 1892:

"Good heavens!" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?"
"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."
"You horrify me!"
"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser."


-- Sherlock Holmes in "The Copper Beeches"

[Kali]

25. eh, as far as I know there hasn't been much violence in this area

Rob Kreuntz was killed, and there have been a few bodies, but most of the violence has been robberies and kidnappings west of Tucson. (and for the most part by Mexican gangs, not rednecks)

Most of the "rednecks" around here are actually pretty decent human beings, despite their politics. I can't think of any of my neighbors who would do such a thing.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

28. Isn't that what they always say?

Whenever someone goes on an insane rampage the neighbors always say how the person seemed so nice and normal.

[Kali]

31. yeah but it is usually the family they wipe out

I don't think this scenario is very probably in this case.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

35. Still, some people are really good at crafting what they present to the world.

[nolabear]

13. Oh Kali I'm so sorry.

How many of us can even imagine? The heat alone could have killed him, not to mention so many deliberately violent people. I hope someone can help them.

[Omaha Steve]

14. 11 Immigrant bodies found in train car (bodies had been in the rail car at least four months)

I remember this like it was yesterday.

http://columbustelegram.com/news/article_c545d487-b946-5c78-82a7-848805893d5e.html

Posted: Tuesday, October 15, 2002

DENISON, Iowa (AP) - A rail car found to contain as many as 11 badly decomposed bodies was sealed and shipped to Des Moines for examination today by criminal investigators and the state medical examiner.

The bodies were found Monday afternoon by workers flipping open the lids of rail cars so they could be cleaned before loading at a grain elevator west of town, Crawford County Sheriff Tom Hogan said.

Jerry Heinauer, Iowa-Nebraska district director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said he was told by the Mexican consul that the rail car left Matamoros, Mexico, in June. It had been parked in Oklahoma since then, before heading to Denison, about 60 miles northeast of Omaha.

Matamoros, near McAllen, Texas, was once one of the major centers for illegal immigrants seeking to enter the United States. The increased border enforcement in the 1990s shifted many immigrants away from Matamoros and further west.

Read more: http://columbustelegram.com/news/article_c545d487-b946-5c78-82a7-848805893d5e.html#ixzz20N82f4mW

[SCantiGOP]

15. I won't wish death on anyone

but can't you wonder how it might change their thinking if Sheriff Joe and Jan Brewer and all those asshole border militias had to spend 2 or 3 days wandering lost in the desert? I can't understand how so many people in this country, most who claim to be ardent Christians, have absolutely no compassion for other human beings.

[seabeyond]

16. that is so very sad. wow. no, i would not want to imagine. nt

[Ikonoklast]

17. And maybe the 'lost' cousin doesn't want to found.

Just a thought.

[Kali]

18. today I found this taped up at the end of our road

and another was on the bulletin board in the post office

[freshwest]

29. Now, why isn't the state looking for him? Instead of flying people to HI for Obama's BC?

I hope you can help organize people in your area to make law enforcement seek this young man out. I was talking to an officer who was sent to contact an elderly neighbor someone hadn't been able to raise on the phone and they were worried. It turned out she was okay but having phone trouble and didn't know it. He had made a welfare call, uniform and all.

That's what Sheriff Joe and his gang of misfits ought to be doing for the state of Arizona, not grandstanding. And the BP is flying overhead, probably looking for people. So can you guys get them to try to find him?

[Kali]

32. I think they were.

He said he had called BP and oddly enough back on Monday a guy that helps out around here was checking watergaps on our SE boundary when he came across a bunch of "official" types all over the place - they told him they were looking for a body. At the time we thought someone had seen one and reported it but now I think they were looking as a result of this guy's call to the BP.

[freshwest]

33. Good and bad news, that. At least a humanitarian purpose served by BP. I'm sure there are others.

Looking for a body sounds pretty depressing, I hope that he's just taken a long ride to another area and got busy. Which does happen at times.

[lunatica]

24. I hope he's OK

And that he contacts them very soon.

But no matter what I hope they know soon.

[xchrom]

26. oy vey, oy gevalt.

frightening and so very sad.

[Tikki]

30. In another place and time it could be any of us...

I wish I could help. Sometimes I wish I was mega rich...rich enough to really help.


Tikki

[turtlerescue1]

34. There's got to be some connections for the family

as leads, did he cross alone, with a group-.Mom must be crazy with grief and fear.


Hugs to her:


And what a phone call to fall into.

Hugs and prayers to the family and this cousin.