http://www.thetimesherald.com/artic.../906140309/Connell-Sara-Ylen-battles-her-life
Was she faking cancer as well? She was under hospice care in 2009?
James Eugene Grissom, who was convicted of the brazen daylight rape of a woman in the parking lot of the Meijer store in Fort Gratiot eight years ago, could leave prison as early as March 2018.
His victim, Sara Ylen, should be so lucky. She is looking at a possible death sentence.
Ylen, 34, is under hospice care at the Lexington home she shares with her school-age sons, Keenan and Ethan. She is waging a difficult war with cancer.
"We're in the 11th hour; we really are," says her good friend Barb Soffin, a sergeant at the Michigan State Police post in Sandusky.
Ylen is partially paralyzed and has taken a leave of absence from her job at the Sandusky post.
Her many friends and admirers have been sharing cards and letters as well as prayers. Organizations such as the Port Huron chapter of Woman's Life and the congregation of North Street United Methodist Church have reached out with donations of food and household items.
IF YOU'RE not familiar with Sara's story, let me offer a summary.
Shortly after noon on May 12, 2001 -- a lovely spring day -- Ylen stopped at the Meijer store on her way home to Sanilac County. She had driven into Port Huron to have her hair done in anticipation of a wedding rehearsal that evening.
I wrote about her case six years ago. Here is how I described what happened in the Meijer parking lot on that sun-splashed Saturday:
"The moment Ylen stuck her foot out the door of her minivan, her life changed in ways that would prove horrific and irreversible.
"She never saw her attacker coming. When she reached back for her purse and a handful of coupons, he struck from behind, shoving her deeper into the Grand Caravan with its darkly tinted windows. Bold and cruel, he stunned her with the fury and violence of his assault.
"'Every time I would attempt to call out, he would hit me. He knew how to do it, where to hit to keep me from yelling out.' As she described the scene, she touched her collarbone and winced, as if remembering the pain."
SHE LOST consciousness. When she came to, she found herself alone but bleeding, bruised, partially unclothed and in excruciating pain.
To this day, Ylen does not remember the 25-mile drive home. What she does remember is deceiving her husband, telling him she had been mugged and insisting there had been no rape.
They contacted the authorities, but it was three days before Ylen summoned the courage to tell others of the sexual assault. By then, it was too late to do a proper "rape kit," or the collection of physical evidence such as semen or hairs.
Investigators had no reason to suspect Grissom, a Meijer employee.
A few weeks after the assault on Ylen, the late Elaine Butts, a detective with the Port Huron Police Department, arrested Grissom for molesting a 6-year-old girl. He would spend much of the next year in the county jail.
GRIEF IS said to have seven stages, from shock and denial to acceptance and hope. Victims of violent assault typically go through a similar process.
It took nearly a year, but Ylen gradually regained her strength and resolved to bring her attacker to justice.
She found a tremendous ally in Sandy Jacobson, a tough-minded detective with the St. Clair County Sheriff Department.
Port Huron police had no jurisdiction in the case, but Lt. Phil McCarty, who has since retired, agreed to let Ylen look through the department's voluminous mug-shot files.
Ylen's attacker had used an oversized ring in an especially vicious way. She remembered the ring vividly. She also recalled a skull tattoo. Both would help confirm the identification after she found Grissom's mug shot.
He went on trial in August 2003. Jurors deliberated only 50 minutes before finding him guilty on all counts.
On Sept. 22, 2003, Judge Peter Deegan handed down a sentence of 15 to 35 years. "Frankly, for what you are, I don't think that's enough," he told Grissom. "Unfortunately, I'm limited by the law."
THE STORY should have ended there, a satisfactory ending if not precisely a happy one.
But this is real life, not theater, and three acts weren't enough.
Ylen and her husband separated. She and her sons moved to a rental near Lexington. She took a job with the Sandusky post, where she found herself surrounded and shielded by strong, good-hearted people.
Grissom, now 51, has served six years of his sentence. He is currently housed at the Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson.
Rape victims are seldom identified, but Ylen voluntarily went public with her story. She hoped other women might learn from her mistakes, particularly her failure to report the rape promptly.
Her story appeared in the Times Herald and Lansing State Journal. It inspired an episode of "Captured," a TV series featuring real-life crime dramas. She was interviewed on national television by a callous Montel Williams. She joined "Take Back the Night" rallies and spoke with rape-survivor groups across Michigan.
WITH THE same courage she had shown in pursuing her attacker, Ylen quietly began a long battle with HPV, a sexually transmitted disease.
She believes the infection occurred during the attack, although she has no way of proving it.
With each passing year, her health has deteriorated. The HPV became cervical cancer. In 2007, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells.
The disease has spread throughout her body including tumors on her spine and clavicle. "Her bones are like lace," Soffin says.
Ylen is partially paralyzed. Her bones snap at the slightest misstep. The options for treating her cancer are complicated by the hepatitis, which is destroying her liver.
SARA YLEN has a glorious smile. It shows itself only reluctantly, begrudgingly, before it becomes luminous, as if lit from a lamp deep within.
Her smile is never brighter than in the presence of her sons, who give her strength. I have seen that smile take form, like God bringing brilliance to the void, even when her eyes were moist with tears from the ever-present pain.
Let us be brutally honest here. Ylen's situation is difficult. Her friends fear for her.
And yet hope remains, a fragile tendril, a rootlet reaching for moist soil.
When all the usual options failed, her doctors decided on an alternative and largely experimental treatment.
IT'S CRAZY stuff. Crazy and cutting edge. Basically, her bones are deteriorating as part of a life-or-death race between the cure and the cancer. If all goes well, the cancer --- all of it -- will be destroyed before Sara is.
It will be a close-run thing.
Job of the Old Testament had nothing on Sara Ylen. Those who have watched her relentless suffering, and who have witnessed her unconquerable spirit, can offer nothing except our love, our admiration and our prayers.
Those who wish may send Sara a card in care of Sgt. Soffin at the Michigan State Police, 90 W. Sanilac, Sandusky, MI 48471.
Mike Connell is a freelance writer and a former Times Herald reporter. Contact him at
fortgratiot@gmail.com.