The Day We Found My Son Javier
by Sybil Mendoza Krause
(Yakima, WA. USA)
Javier Andres Mendoza RIP
My son's name is Javier Andres Mendoza,age 21 of Auburn, WA. USA
I am a single mother of 4. On March 1, 2001, I decided to go back to school. I was 40 years old, and at this time my children's ages were 24, 20, 18 and 15. My youngest child and myself moved back to Eastern Washington and I started school Fall 2001. I finally graduated June 2004 with an AA in Information Technology. At that time, I decided I would move back to Western Washington, to a town called Auburn.
On Friday, August 6th, I didn't feel well, so I left the next day and arrived at my sons' apartment in Auburn around 6 pm. I had made plans to stay with my son Felipe who is my oldest and Javier who is my youngest son until I could get a job and rent my own place.
When I arrived, my oldest son told me that he was worried about Javier because he hadn't seen him since Friday the day before. I didn't think much about it since Javier was now 21 years old. Felipe told me it wasn't like him not to come home.
The following day, Sunday, August 8th 2004, His girlfriend of 5 years was very worried since she too hadn't seen Javi since mid-day Friday, so we called the police and filed a missing persons report. The police didn't seem alarmed since my son was 21 years old, but they did take the report.
That day, my son and I went up to some apartments at the top of Lea Hill to see if anyone had seen Javi, the girls that shared an apartment up there said the last time they had seen him was around 2:00am Friday going into Saturday morning, and he was with a friend of his who had a car and who was the driver. They also informed us that both had been drinking. These apartments were 1.5 miles east of our apartment.
On Monday, August 9th, my eldest son and I again went to look for him with no luck. Later that day around 4:00 pm, Felipe, Alicia, John, and Chris said they were going to find my Javi, and weren't going to stop looking until they did.
Within 15 to 20 minutes my eldest son showed back up at our apartment and told my that my youngest son Javier, was not coming home. They found the car wrecked 30 feet from the road, and the driver and my precious boy was in it, and they were both deceased. They had been deceased in the car from Friday going into Saturday morning around 2:00 am until they were found, Monday the 9th, around 4:30pm.
The police said that they must have been traveling at a high rate of speed when they went off of the road and hit several trees, causing branches to come down on the car, and camoflage it so it could'nt be seen from the road. The reason why my son and his friends were able to find the car was because they saw some bushes on the side of the road that looked pushed down. At that time, they parked their car, and went over to the side of the road, were they were barely able to see the blue paint of the little 88 Mazda. My son Felipe, could not bring himself to look into the car to see if they were in it, so his friend took it upon themselves to look in the car and see my Javi and the driver deceased, both sitting in the front seat.
5 months later, for my sons 22 birthday, I purchased 2 memorial "Please don't Drink and Drive" signs to put at the crash site. From that day on, there hasn't been one day that I haven't thought about my beautiful son Javier Andres Mendoza. Sometimes it seems so long ago that he died, and sometimes it seems like yesterday. No one thinks it's going to happen to them, but it can.