“She was daddy’s girl – from the beginning,” Don McCrum said.
McCrum, 62, is speaking of his daughter, Lauren McCrum, who was murdered two years ago in her Petaluma home by her boyfriend. She was 28.
After killing her, the man purposely drove his motorcycle into oncoming traffic on Highway 101 and died after crashing into a car.
“My quest,” Don McCrum said, “for the remainder of my life, is for her story to be heard.” And he hopes that, by telling her story, he can be a voice decrying domestic violence.
Lauren grew up in Petaluma, attending Old Adobe, Kenilworth, Casa Grande and the Petaluma campus of Santa Rosa Junior College. “Lauren was a happy person,” McCrum said. “She never judged anyone. She was lovable and tolerant, generous, kind and friendly. She was able to see things from others’ viewpoints and was comfortable with herself.”
He shared photos of her, pictures revealing her sense of humor and playful side, always posing for the camera. Other photos showed the family: Lauren with Don, mother Patty and older sister Emily. More photos portray a smiling Lauren and her daughter, Lyla, who was 5 when her mother was killed.
She loved the town, McCrum said. “She told me about the times she walked downtown, about things she’d seen and people she’d met.” After her death, he said, sometimes he retraced her steps. “I’d want to feel her, want to know what brought happiness to her life. It brings me close to her in my heart.”
Experts say that the loss of a child may be, in the words of Boston University sociology professor Deborah Carr, “the worst trauma a human can experience.”
“Parents and fathers specifically feel responsible for the child’s well-being,” Carr said in an online lifestyle magazine. “So when they lose a child, they’re not just losing a person they loved. They’re also losing the years of promise they had looked forward to.”
Act of desperation
McCrum has been a tow truck operator, mostly in San Francisco, for 35 years. “You never hear about the tow truck operator as a first responder,” he said, “but about 80 percent of the time, I’m first on the scene, the one who calls for the police or CHP, fire trucks and ambulances."
For the past two years, he’s struggled to find meaning in a world without Lauren, his days and nights marked by grief, despair and anger. In speaking of the murder, he chooses to not refer to her murderer by his name. Instead McCrum calls him, “the person who took her from us.”
That person, the family learned, had a history of violence. In 2015 he was found guilty of domestic violence against a different woman – a ruling upheld the following year – and sentenced to three years in prison and four years of probation.
McCrum’s anger hasn’t dissipated. One of the resources he’s discovered is “Speaking Grief,” a documentary that validates the grief experience, reassures that there is no “right” way to grieve and illustrates grief as a universal, yet individual, experience.
He’s learned that those in grief go through anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, and anger. “I’m not trying to be angry, and I’m not a freak because I’m angry. I had therapy in the beginning, and now I’m back in therapy again because I feel so angry,” he said.
At one point, he felt unable to go on. “When Lauren was killed, I was killed. I died the night she did. I didn’t have the ability to feel or express happiness anymore.”
A plan formed in McCrum’s mind: He would go to his daughter’s gravesite, at Cypress Hill Memorial Park, and take his own life.
“I arranged everything, closed my accounts, took a blanket and a pillow and went to the cemetery. I lay down by Lauren.” But, he went on, “I could not gather the courage to leave behind Emily and Lyla.”
McCrum had sent a final text to Patty, his now ex-wife, and when he returned to the place where he was living, the police were waiting. He recalled them saying, “We understand you’re thinking of hurting yourself.”
His reply: “I think of hurting myself every day.”
He said they talked with him for 30-40 minutes, until a crisis team showed up.
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January 07, 2023 at 12:24AM
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Father of slain Petaluma woman tells her story, and his: 'I've become a messenger' - Petaluma Argus Courier
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