On Sept. 15, a neighbor found three people dead in a San Carlos home. They were close friends, the couple and their young daughter, and the neighbor, Karen Pearlman, a long-time San Diego journalist, has grappled with her emotions since the profoundly painful discovery. She writes for Times of San Diego and its community newspapers, including the Mission Times Courier. So does editor Dorian Hargrove, whose son attended school with Mya Voight, the daughter of Amy and Dave Voight. Here Dorian and Karen share their thoughts about the Voight family and the heartache and disbelief of having tragedy hit so close to home.
By Dorian Hargrove
Neighbors die. Marriages dissolve. Residents relocate. Kids who once congregated in front yards head off to college.
These are the inevitable changes that every community experiences.
But what happened in San Carlos, off Boulder Lake Drive, on Sept. 14 is something no neighborhood or community should ever experience.
A well-liked neighborhood dad, a fixture known for tinkering with things in the front yard, backing up ATV trailers, digging fence posts and puttering in the garage, suddenly snapped on a Tuesday night, killing his 13-year-old daughter and his wife – it was her 54th birthday – before turning the gun on himself.
To say this tragedy was unexpected or came as a shock is an understatement.
That Tuesday at around 9:10 p.m., the tragedy unfolded in a quiet, hilly stretch of San Carlos, just a few blocks from Cowles Mountain.
Now gone is the dad, Dave Voight. Gone is his wife, Amy, a witty, strong, loving mom. Gone far too early is their daughter, Mya, a charismatic and sweet 13-year-old middle school girl with a boundless future.
Piercing quiet
For neighbors on Boulder Lake and the surrounding side streets, Mya’s outdoor chalk parties and the accompanying giggles of her neighborhood friends have been replaced. A piercing quiet surrounds the corner home that until so recently was loud with happiness, love and laughter.
The three loud bangs that sounded in the cozy San Carlos community that Tuesday night have dissipated, but the memory of them and what they meant rattles inside the heads and hearts of neighbors.
It shakes a middle school too, touching homes such as mine. My son went to school with Mya.
The day the family was found, as I drove my son and his friend to soccer practice, I listened to the seventh graders talk about Mya. They spoke of their brief interactions with her. They talked about how nice she was. My son said Mya gave him a piece of gum a few days before. They listed all their friends who knew her.
I felt the rattle as I drove. As a parent, an incapable one at times, I wondered how to respond. As a journalist, a reluctant one at times, I knew some of the details.
The questions from the two boys began.
Did they find the killer?
Did they find guns?
Why did he do it?
What were their final moments like?
I know other kids asked their parents these same types of questions. I know other parents whose children were close with Mya faced questions I could only imagine; I prefer not to.
I kept quiet and responded in brief, controlled sentences. I left details out. I stopped short of any response that could prompt follow-ups. I wondered if I was doing them a disservice. I thought about how hundreds of other students were likely asking their parents or whomever similar questions. I wondered if they had better answers. They likely did.
No easy answers
The rattle isn’t just personal. It’s a reminder of years and decades of tragedies that we have seen and heard on the news. We have no answers for them either.
This is not a debate over mental illness or a discussion of gun control. This is a reaction to a sudden loss, one felt even by someone like me, who had never known of the Voights’ existence before Sept. 15. This is a community’s attempt to answer a question no one, no place, ever wants to try and answer.
The neighborhood, while transformed, will live on. A new family may eventually move into the home on that corner lot.
But for those who considered the Voights friends and valued their presence in the community, the reminders will be impossible to forget; the pain and grief will linger and bubble under the surface.
Karen Pearlman was so close to the Voights that her pain goes beyond mere questions. It was Pearlman, a longtime journalist, among the Voights’ closest neighbors, who walked into the home and stumbled into the unthinkable.
During nearly four decades of covering East County for the San Diego Union-Tribune, and more recently as a contributor to Times of San Diego, Pearlman has found herself at crime scenes. She has interviewed people unable to process, unable to escape the quiet grasp of grief. Now, like them, she is living with questions that can never be answered.
On the following page, she shares what it’s like to face that void, while also fondly remembering the dear friends she lost.
