LoudounNow LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
[ Vol. 2, No. 38 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
20 Drinking, data centers fuel economic boom
[ Aug. 3 – 9, 2017 ]
‘A TRAGIC END’ After Weekend Search, 3 Found Dead in Creek BY NORMAN K. STYER
Courtney Ashe
Danielle Nadler/Loudoun Now
Fabbioli Cellars employees, from left, Arturo and Lupe practice their English on the job with Sarah Ali, executive director of Loudoun Literacy Council’s Adult Literacy Program.
Changing Lives, Building Bridges Literacy Council Moves out of the Classroom and into the Workplace BY DANIELLE NADLER
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abbioli Cellars was busy with employees hard at work on a recent afternoon. One man broke a sweat building a deck off the barrel cellar, while another chopped and neatly stacked wood, and a woman tidied up the tasting room in preparation for a weekend of thirsty visitors. And at the far northern end of the property, a language lesson unfolded beneath the shade of an Asian pear tree. “What do you do with the pears?” Sarah Ali asked her students, 20-year-old Lupe and 25-yearold Arturo. “Make…I don’t know how to say in English,” Arturo said. “Brandy?” “Yes,” Lupe confirmed.
“Excellent,” Ali said with a nod. Similar scenes are playing out more and more throughout the county as part of Loudoun Literacy Council’s new teaching strategy to deliver language lessons to the workplace. The nonprofit organization started in 1980 to tutor recently arrived adult immigrants, and shortly after, it offered free or low-cost English courses in an effort to arm them with basic literacy skills. But it’s typically provided lessons to 10 to 20 students at a time in a classroom setting. Now, they’re finding there is a better way. “It’s one thing to teach vocab in a room. It’s another thing to walk with them in their job—in their day-to-day environment,” said Ali, the organization’s new executive director. Loudoun Literacy pairs a volunteer tutor with LITERACY >> 39
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Cameron Martin
Jaylen Sills-Russell
It was just a short drive from Ashburn to Leesburg, but Courtney Ashe never made it there Friday night. Ashe, a 27-year-old mother of three, was a Suffolk resident who grew up in Loudoun. She was making the trip between the homes of two family members with her 5-year-old son, Cameron A. Martin, and 9-year-old cousin, Jaylen C. Sills-Russell. When they failed to arrive at her uncle’s house, family members began searching. The Loudoun County Sheriff ’s Office was notified about the disappearance around noon Saturday and opened an investigation. On Sunday, the Sheriff ’s Office posted an alert on its Facebook page asking residents to help find them. The next day, a Fairfax Police helicopter was called in to help. Family members, some coming from New Jersey, also continued to search the area. On Monday afternoon, Jaylen’s stepmother confirmed the family’s worst fears, finding Ashe’s four-door 2002 blue Ford Taurus upside down in Sycolin Creek, along Evergreen Mills Road near Hogeland Mill Road south of Leesburg. Within minutes of the discovery being reported at 5:30 p.m., dozens of emergency responders rushed to the scene, including specialized teams for water rescue operations. Any glimmer of hope for a rescue quickly faded. The preliminary investigation indicated that Ashe lost control of the car, struck and then flipped over a guard rail and landed upside-down in the creek’s rising flood waters. The car was found with the windows rolled up and all three victims inside. “Just as tragic as it can possibly be,” Loudoun Sheriff Mike Chapman told reporters at the scene. While it was not yet clear whether another car could have been involved in the crash, Chapman said there was TRAGIC >> 37
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