Sarah Clark wore her demons on her sleeve.
The young woman from Kingsley affected no smiling facade. She wasn't a happy-go-lucky kid who chattered about boys, shopping, college, a job.
Hers was a troubled life, of which she began to lose control at age 15, following a car crash that left her badly injured and hooked on painkillers, her bridge to harder drugs. Sarah's subsequent addictions conspired with depression and tugged her deeper into a pit from which she imagined no escape.
Who among us can fathom the pain, fear and despondency that gripped Sarah when she knotted her socks and pulled the ugly little noose around her neck, its tag end around a shower rod, then stretched a sheet of plastic across her face and let her legs buckle?
What must she have been thinking in those terrible last seconds as she strangled amid streaming water, isolated in the Grand Traverse County Jail, ignored for at least a half-hour by the corrections officers who were paid to watch over her?
Sarah, 21, died March 3, a few days after she hanged herself.
But her death shouldn't be ignored, or swept aside as if she didn't matter. Mental illness plagued her; she emitted suicide warning signs like fireworks, for all to see.
Grand Traverse County Jail officials can't dodge blame for her death, despite Sheriff Scott Fewins' best attempts to do just that.
Authorities hadn't considered Sarah a suicide risk, "had not gotten any clue," Fewins claimed shortly before her last breath.
That wasn't true, of course. Sheriff's department documents obtained by the Record-Eagle under the state Freedom of Information Act show the department absolutely knew of Sarah's suicidal tendencies. Those documents are rife with such references, based on the department's many contacts with Sarah dating to 2004.
Sheriff's officials simply didn't take the steps required to prevent the young woman from harming herself, even though they're required to do so under their suicide prevention policy.
A medical assessment after her February arrest on drug charges contained references to Sarah as a potential suicide risk, but a corrections deputy wrote then that "Clark has past suicide attempts, at this time she states not suicidal."
He took her word for it. And despite Sarah's request to see a mental health counselor on Feb. 27, the day before she hanged herself, sheriff's officials didn't connect the dots, didn't keep a watchful eye on a troubled young woman who was provided ample time and opportunity to take her own life.
Sarah's death occurred on Fewins' watch, and though he feigned "any clue" as to her condition, it's just latest in a litany of problems that indicate the sheriff is in far over his head.
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