Empty Promises Read Free Page B

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital in Santa Maria, California. His father, David Kent Sherer, was twenty-two years old and worked as a bricklayer. Like Jami's parents, David Sherer came from North Dakota. His mother, Sharon Ann BleilerSherer, known as Sherri, who was born and raised in California, was only seventeen when she gave birth to Steven. She and David would have two more children— Saundra and Laura.

Sherri was a very pretty petite brunette. David Sherer was five feet six and had blue eyes. His son would grow to resemble him physically and be genetically predisposed to some of his father's weaknesses, but he didn't inherit David Sherer's strengths. From his early days as a bricklayer, the elder Sherer worked his way up with business savvy and hard work.

The Sherers left California and moved to Lynnwood, Washington, where the building boom had just begun. Their younger daughter, Laura, was born there. David Sherer started a construction company— Sherer Quality Homes— in Everett. He caught the wave of the Northwest's construction boom in the seventies. He bought acreage cheap where no one but his partner saw any promise. Some of that land became Mill Creek, which would soon be one of the most desirable suburbs of Seattle.

The Sherers were soon richer than they could ever have envisioned. They had a house in Lynnwood as well as vacation homes in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Palm Desert, California, near Rancho Mirage.

Steve drove a new blue Ford pickup truck when he was still in high school. One of his school friends, David Harrington, recalled that the Sherers were a very nice family. "Things were pretty darn good in his house," David said. Sherri Sherer had invited him to live with them for the last half of his senior year in Alderwood High School, and he was amazed at the good life that Steve took for granted.

After they graduated, David and Steve rented a"dumpy little house" together in Montlake Terrace. They were eighteen then and far more interested in partying than in education. For a year, the two of them held a full-time open house and enjoyed having liquor and marijuana available with no one to stop them. They also did some cocaine, although that was mostly light experimentation. There were girls and discos, but eventually David and Steve vacated their rental house. "We might have gotten tossed out because of the parties," David said later, looking back to that time.

In 1982, David Harrington joined the Marine Corps and his close association with Steve Sherer ended. He saw Steve occasionally on leaves, but Steve hadn't changed. He was still involved in the same kind of life they had shared when they were eighteen— girls and booze and drugs. It was as if time had stood still for Steve Sherer. When David saw Steve in 1987 after his own discharge from the marines, they had virtually nothing left in common.

It wasn't that Steve hadn't faced tragedy in his life; he had— but tragedy seemed not to affect him. The month that Steve turned twenty-two, his father died under unusual circumstances. David Sherer had become a multimillionaire by the time he was forty-four. He never got to enjoy his wealth, however.

During 1983, Sherri and David Sherer had many arguments over his drinking. All his wealth and business acumen had not made David Sherer happy. Maybe he had too much time on his hands and liquor was always around; maybe he was genetically predisposed to alcoholism. In November of that year, David Sherer packed up and left Lynnwood, reportedly headed for their Palm Desert home so he could "get himself together" and stop drinking. The Sherer vacation home in PalmDesert was in the exclusive Lakes Country Club, a gated community with private security guards. Friends who lived there played golf with David Sherer almost every day and saw how distraught he was about the disintegration of his marriage.

November 24 was Thanksgiving Day, a sad day for anyone to be all alone and thousands of miles from family.