Monday, May 20, 2013: Hi Sam! I had a very interesting meeting with Alicia today. We talked about a couple things. They agree that being in that house is not doing anyone any good. It’s too dangerous to continue doing what we are doing. With Adriana Coronel Tenorio’s (AKA Adriana Howitt Coronel, Ari Coronel, Ari Coronel Tenorio, Ari Howitt, Ari Howitt Coronel) propensity and history for violence, we should be able to make some significant changes this time.
On another note altogether, Alicia shared with me her gnarly Boston Marathon experience last month. I did not write in your journal about what happened last month at the Marathon. I don’t know why. It did not have anything to do with our situation. Yet I have tried to talk about current events in order to put the timeline of what we have been dealing with into some context. What happened in Boston last month was a big story. A global story. And it still is. Alicia was directly affected by what happened that day.
The Boston Marathon is one of the biggest and most prestigious marathon in the World. You have to actually qualify to compete in it. Alicia qualified. On that fateful day, two brothers made homemade bombs and set them off at the finish line of the Marathon. The bombs were set off 12-seconds apart and 3-blocks away from one another. The blasts killed 3 people, injured dozens more, and did all sorts of damage to property as you can imagine. This day in age with 24-hour news cycles and camera phones, the videos of the horror was all over the place. These brothers picked the wrong city to do this in because from the moment the bombs went off the Boston Police Department were on them. The following few days were tense as the manhunt went on. Eventually they cornered the two terrorists, killing one of them and arresting the other.
So, in our meeting we are talking about her perspective of that happened that day. Since she told me her story, I have not been able to get it out of my mind. Alicia’s husband was literally standing at the finish line as Alicia made her way down the home stretch. The first bomb was only 10-feet away from him. Yet in-between him and the bomb were 50+ people. When the first bomb went off everyone in front of Alicia’s husband went down. By the grace of God he was OK, barely a scratch even after being blown into a clothing store window right behind him. In front of him, 2-people lost their lives and scores more lost limbs. He found himself dragging the injured into the Adidas store; pulling clothes off the rack to use as tourniquets.
As that was going on, the second bomb went off down the street right near Alicia. The force of the blast knocking her down as she was running towards the finish line. One person died in the second blast while injuring many others. Next thing Alicia sees is a wall of police officers running up the street laying themselves out over the runners to shield them from any other bomb blasts that could have went off. Thank God that was it but in the moment, who can be too sure? Alicia knew her husband was near the finish line however the police were not letting anyone near it. So, there she was wandering aimlessly through the city streets trying to figure out what to do and how to find her husband. The people of Boston opened their door to Alicia that day. Taking her in to calm down, clean up and even gave her a change of clothes. Then they went off to help reunite her with her husband. I can’t even write this post without my eyes welling up. It took a while, but people helping Alicia’s husband track his wife down were on the Marathon website tracking Alicia’s movements with the chip the runners put on their shoes so the Marathon can keep track of running times. From there, it was easy for them to connect even without mobile phones.
Alicia was not only running for herself, she was running for all of Mexico as the only runner in the Boston Marathon from Mexico. Alicia was running for charity too. She raised money for a charity that deals with human trafficking. Something Alicia is passionate about, which explains the passion she brings to our case. Doing research on parental child abductions, I found myself running into human trafficking stories all over the place. There is a lot of ugly in the world Sam.
Suffice it to say, when Alicia flew back to San Diego, they were met by throngs of media from the United States and Mexico. Being the only competitor in the Marathon from Tijuana & Mexico, they wanted to listen to Alicia’s story. You can Google this to get the full story from Alicia herself. Along the way a politician running for mayor of Tijuana saw the story and hired Alicia and Carlos to help with the campaign. For the next several weeks they will not have much time to devote to cases and I may need to work with another attorney for a while. We’ll see what happens. I am scheduled to meet with them again next Monday because they want to introduce me to someone.
I miss you terribly Sam. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!
