This story just made me feel glad to be alive and to enjoy every day, hug my family, and smile. Sorry to be so syrpy, but this story really struck me.


www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld ... 3871.story

A frantic search, a tragic end

'I was just riding around in the streets and alleys calling his name, telling him we were looking for him.'
By Azam Ahmed, Tribune staff reporter; Tribune staff reporter Jeremy Gorner contributed to this report

July 21, 2007

When Rachel McKee woke at 1 a.m., her husband still wasn't home.

Steven O'Rourke had gone to a concert with a friend and should have been home hours earlier. She called his cell phone, but he didn't answer.

For the next two hours she continued calling, leaving increasingly frantic messages. She cleaned the house to keep busy. Finally, at 3 a.m. Thursday, she stepped outside to look for him. Their three children were asleep, so she couldn't go far.

She followed the path he usually took home and reached the intersection of Foster and Marmora Avenues, about a half-block away.

There, on the rain-soaked pavement, she discovered her husband's red umbrella and gray sandals.

Screaming his name, she ran back home and banged on a neighbor's door seeking help. The couple came over to her house, and McKee called the police. She was told police had received two calls about 11 p.m. reporting a pedestrian had been hit at the intersection, but responding officers couldn't find a victim.

Now hysterical, she left again and searched on her bicycle for more than an hour, tracing the route her husband usually took home from the Jefferson Park stop on CTA's Blue Line.

"I was just riding around in the streets and alleys calling his name, telling him we were looking for him," she said Friday. "I had this sinking feeling that he was dead. All I could think about was finding him."

About three hours later, O'Rourke's body was found beneath a white Lincoln Continental parked nearly a mile from where he was hit.Police believe another car first struck O'Rourke on Wednesday night at the corner of Marmora and Foster.

1 driver questioned, released

The Lincoln came along shortly after, police believe, and O'Rourke became entangled in its undercarriage.

"[The driver of the Lincoln] didn't know he hit him," said Grand Central Area Lt. Mark Hawkins.

After questioning the owner of the Lincoln on Friday, police released him without bringing charges.

Hawkins said pouring rain and the size of the vehicle contributed to the driver not knowing he'd hit someone.

Police are still searching for the driver who first hit O'Rourke.

McKee, a high school English teacher, said while she doesn't understand how someone could have dragged a person beneath their car for nearly a mile without knowing it, she doesn't want retribution.

"I don't want justice, and I don't want them to have to pay," McKee said. "I have no room for that kind of bitterness." I would not be that understanding or forgiving...

She hopes her husband's final thoughts were of home.

"I hope his last memory was crossing the street, steps away from being home," McKee said.

Children face loss of father

As she recounted the events on Friday, the couple's children sat nearby. Sophie, 9, jumped in to talk about what happened with her father. Atticus, 4, played with a cell phone. Errol, 1, flipped through a wallet.

"It feels sort of like a dream," said Sophie. "I was just like, 'How could this happen?' When my mom came to tell me, I said, 'I don't even want to know.'"

McKee held her daughter's hand. "Sophie and I wear our hearts on our sleeves," she said.

Atticus, busy scribbling on a note pad, chimed, "Even me."

McKee had already begun to worry about raising the children alone, paying the mortgage.

"He had just enough life insurance to cover the funeral services," she said. "We didn't plan for this."

The couple met 15 years ago as undergraduates at the University of Michigan. In May, they celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary.

"We chose to have a big family and we chose to both pursue jobs that made us happy. We didn't have a big screen TV. Those things aren't important to us," she said.

O'Rourke worked for the last several years as a project manager and licensed architect at HPZS architecture firm.

"He treated his work seriously and was very competent and was certainly a valued and reliable employee," said Jim Peterson, the firm's president.

He said he remembers O'Rourke as a family man.

"That seems to be one big memory I have of Steve," he said. "We usually tend to start the workweek off by exchanging stories about the weekend, and invariably it would turn into a conversation about his family."

O'Rourke worked on several residential projects, as well as school projects for Chicago Public Schools, Peterson said. His most recent project involved the Dearborn Homes for the Chicago Housing Authority.

Architect led tours of city

McKee said her husband was a volunteer at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, conducting architectural tours of the city.

"He liked teaching kids about his craft," she said. "One of his favorite things was giving architectural tours of the city."

Despite her loss, McKee said she feels blessed for the time she had with her husband and for their children.

"I'm just trying to keep busy. The hardest part will be when the family leaves and then going through the daily routines not having a partner," she said. "We'll just kind of run into these moments of emptiness."