So many things to do at work today. Working on a big project and hoping to finish most of it before I go out of town. Most of the time I can go through my job without asking a question to one of our engineers. But if I get stuck with something, I write an email. I work from home most of the time so sending an email with my questions is more convenient.
There is always one person I send most of the questions to because for one thing she replies to me all the time and no matter how busy she gets she still finds time to help others. I sent an email to my friend Jess around 10am in morning. Few minutes passes by then an hour passes by without a response. I just thought that she wasn’t in the office. So I looked at the calendar to see if she took the day off today. The calendar didn’t show anything about her being out of the office today.
It’s not like her to not respond to my email. After I took my lunch, I noticed that she didn’t respond yet. So I sent her a second email. Still no response.
After lunch around 1:30pm, the engineering manager emailed the entire staff for a meeting. I google talk to one of my other coworker to ask what the meeting was about since she was working in the office that day. She told me that the news is very bad. I told her what does she mean. She told me it was about our friend Jess. She emailed me an article that talked about the gruesome murder of 5 people in San Francisco. I said ‘I hope this isn’t true!’
After reading the article over and over again, I was in shock. I cried out. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Learning about it was so hurtful. I was like ‘Jess? She can’t be dead!’ Luckily my son was still napping. I didn’t want him to see me cry.
I called my office at 1:45pm. All staff were in the large conference room. The engineering manager told us that something bad happened to Jess and that she is dead. I asked if it was really her who died and whether if she was acting differently in the office the past few days. My coworkers told me that she acted normal and nothing was out of the ordinary. After hearing the news, I still didn’t want to believe she was dead.
While in the car later in the day after work with my husband, the radio station 106.9 KCBS reported that one of the victims who was found dead in the house was named Yingxue ‘Jess’ Lei who worked as a software engineer at a medical office in Emeryville. At that point, I had to accept the truth that she was gone… that she was one of the dead victims.
Later in the night, I watch the 10 o’clock news on channel 2 and the 11pm news on channel 5. The news on channel 5 even showed a video of my company in Emeryville to show where Jess had worked.
I was tired but I couldn’t sleep. I kept waking up in the middle of the night. I was thinking about the pain she had to endure and the fear she had to face. I was still thinking ‘my friend gone?… why?… how could someone do this terrible thing to her and her family?’ ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’
I have known Jess for about 5 years. She was a gentle person. She isn’t the type to hurt anyone. No matter how bad and stressed things got at work, I always saw her happy side. Out of those 5 years I have known her, I have only seen her vent out her anger once about something. We were having lunch at Buckhorn Grill in Bay Street Emeryville. While eating, she was venting out certain issues about something in her life. I was actually kinda amazed to see her angry because I wasn’t used to seeing her like this. But overall, she was the nicest, happy, thoughtful person.
One of the things I like about Jess was that she was neutral. She never took sides. She was there for me when I needed to vent out. She never got tired of listening to my issues. She was always there to listen and give me advice.
When I went to the office to work, Jess was always the person who visited my cube to say Hi, Goodmorning and to just simply chat. She would always ask about my son Nathan. She met Nathan one time when I took him to Emeryville and I had time to stop by my workplace.
Jess loved Buckhorn Grill. Whenever we go out for lunch, she always wanted to go to Buckhorn Grill. I asked her ‘why do we always go to Buckhorn Grill?’ 🙂 I got her into liking the lamb shank at Elephant Bar because that is what I always order from there. So whenever we had lunch at Elephant Bar, she always ordered lamb shank.
Between 2pm – 3pm, we always took our breaks together. We would just go downstairs and walk for a while and just talk about anything (life, work, vacations, etc).
Now everything about her are just memories. I will never be able have more fun times with her.
Earlier when this incident first came out in the news, the reporters said it may have been a murder-suicide. Now the story goes that it may be that the family were specifically targeted to kill due to some stupid debt. One of Jess’s family member named Vincent Lei had some ties to a Chinese gang about 10 years ago according to the news. The gruesome deaths may have been gang related. If the killer isn’t among the 5 dead, I hope the bastard(s) gets caught. This was a senseless murder.
I feel angry, I feel sad. My friend didn’t have to suffer like this.
Here is the article from SF Gate
Jess has been my coworker for some years but I also consider her as a dear friend. She was so young. She will be greatly missed.