About 7:15 a.m. Monday, a Native American woman was found unresponsive off an alleyway near the 1700 block of Fourth Street in Eureka. Though an officer administered CPR to the woman, Debra Jealous of Him, she was later pronounced dead.
Jealous of Him, who most recently lived on the streets of Eureka, had earlier lived in Hoopa.
She was a grandmother and mother who at age 56 died on one of the coldest Eureka nights this last month. Temperatures dipped into the low 30s. The Humboldt County Coroner’s Office says that the cause of her death hasn’t been determined. An autopsy has been scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.
Eureka Rescue Mission Executive Director Bryan Hall, noted, “Especially at this time of the year we should be reaching out even more so and loving our neighbors. Those who have homes and those who don’t.”
He pointed out, “[H]omeless people are people. Living breathing human beings who have feelings and emotions just like everybody else. Some have fallen on very difficult times and not been able to get back up. That doesn’t mean that we should push them to the side and treat them any less than who they really are as beautiful people created in the image of God.”
This article appears in Flash Fiction 2018.
But we get arrested if we leave a dog out in the cold
Thank you, Mr. Bryan Hall, for your thoughtful reminder. How this country, which insists upon being known as a “Christian Nation,” can be so callous about caring for those less fortunate, is truly sad. From sending troops to greet asylum seekers to letting people die on the streets, it makes me wonder just what being a “Christian” means to most people. Apparently, it doesn’t mean being “Christ-like.” R.I.P. Debra Jealous of Him, and prayers for her family. I’m so sorry that she died alone, suffering the cold in an alley.
Does anyone know if she was one of the Jealous of Him twin girls?