Learning From Tragedy

In the winter of 1987, my younger brother, Michael, was missing for five days. He’d been jogging near Pierce College, ran across a street and was hit by an oncoming car. Because he had no identification on him and because of some idiot at Northridge Hospital, our family did not locate him until almost a week later.

It was, without a doubt, the worst five days of my life. I remember driving with Michael’s girlfriend through the streets of the San Fernando Valley, searching every area where we thought he might be, looking for his prized Mazda RX-7. At that point it had been four days and it was raining, a cold drizzle. All I could think of was him lying in a gutter somewhere, hurt or worse. I remember going home and trying to pray, instead finding myself yelling at G-d, “You’ve taken away all these people in my life – don’t you take Michael, too!”

Somehow, we got lucky. The next morning my mother came tearing up the stairs, newspaper in hand, yelling, “I think we found him!” There, in the paper, was a report on a John Doe at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. My uncle, a doctor with privileges at the hospital, called and confirmed the young man there matched my brother’s description. He had been in a coma and by some strange chance started to come out of it that very morning. It took six months for his severely broken leg to heal; longer still for him to be back to his usual energetic self. But he was alive. That was all that mattered.

The family of Nicholas Markowitz was not so lucky. The 15-year-old West Hills boy went missing for 11 days before his body was found in a shallow grave in the Los Padres National Forest near Santa Barbara, shot execution-style. What relief there may have been for his parents in solving the mystery of their child’s disappearance would have been instantly wiped away by the brutal manner of his death. It is a fate no young person deserves, made worse because it had nothing to do with him – reportedly the motive behind the killing was a drug debt owed by his half-brother.

Nicholas’ murder has rocked the entire San Fernando Valley community. A nice Jewish boy who attended El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, Markowitz had had a few problems. But the kids who knew him characterize him as a friendly person, not a troublemaker.

“I met him when we were 14, at Hale Junior High,” recalls one classmate who asked not to be identified. “I talked to him every morning at school, at El Camino, too. He would hang out with us at lunchtime. I liked him. He was nice, very down-to-earth. I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

The family belonged to Temple Solael at the time of Nicholas’ Bar Mitzvah three years ago. Rabbi Ron Herstik remembers Nicholas as “a thoughtful boy, very pleasant. He had a wonderful soul. There was a look in his eyes, not quite mournful, but there was a depth there, a sense of searching for something.”

Following his Bar Mitzvah, Nicholas had given the rabbi a gift, a sculpture in copper and alabaster of a Torah scroll with a small plaque engraved, “Thank You Rabbi Herstik, 4 Elul 5757, Nick Markowitz.”

“I always kept it close to my desk because it was such a beautiful piece and it was given to me by one of my students,” Herstik said. “Now I will look at it and remember him.”

Even the identity of the five suspects in the murder case produced shock waves. Accord-ing to news reports, several of the young men played with Nicholas’ brother, Benjamin, on a West Valley Baseball League team. A teammate – who asked to remain anonymous because the suspect is still at large – recalls 20-year-old Jesse James Hollywood as an angry boy.

“He had a hot mouth and a temper,” the former teammate said. “But he had a lot of friends. He wasn’t like a bad guy, but he had a bad attitude.

“Everyone’s pretty blown away that something like this could happen and that they know the person who did it,” the young man continued. “They’re just as astonished by who it is as what it was. [Hollywood’s] mom and dad were always at the games and they were nice people. It just doesn’t make sense.”

No, it doesn’t make sense that a group of young people would kidnap a 15-year-old child and hold him at one of their houses in the presence of a suspect’s parents, while the parents never even questioned what was going on. It doesn’t make sense that these young men could take the same child, the brother of one of their teammates, walk him up a hiking trail and shoot him in cold blood. It doesn’t make sense, not in this world, not in any world.

The murder of young Nicholas Markowitz could become just another headline, one more story of a life snuffed out by youths gone wrong. That would be an even worse tragedy. But if it causes even one family that’s been moving on a fast track to stop and pay atten-tion to where their teenagers are going, what they are doing and with whom they are keeping company; if this incident stops even one young man or woman from endangering the lives of others with reckless behavior or for even one person to have the courage to stand up to his or her peers and say, “Stop, this is wrong!” then perhaps that will provide some small comfort to Nicholas’ loved ones.

Because not all of us get lucky.