Remembering Nick One Year Later, It’S Safety First At Post Falls Schools

Nick Scherling was 863 steps from home when a drunken driver took his life.

His father, Mark Scherling, knows.

He counted.

A year ago Tuesday, the seventh-grader was walking with his best friend, Gavin Krieg, beside West Seltice Way a little after 6 p.m. They had just finished the afternoon shift at Post Falls Middle School when Connie C. Bickley’s pickup swerved off a straight stretch of road and hit Nick.

The 13-year-old died at the scene.

“It completely destroyed my life,” said Mark Scherling of Post Falls. “When you take the most important bond in someone’s life, it’s hard to explain what happens.”

Plenty has happened in Post Falls over the past year, especially to improve safety for children.

There is a paved pathway along the side of the road near where Nick was killed. Street lights for the area are coming soon.

Students in the afternoon shift at the middle school leave an hour earlier and now wear flashing red lights in the dark to warn motorists of their presence.

Because voters passed a school bond four months after the accident, students soon won’t have to attend classes at Post Falls Middle School in two shifts.

And Bickley, 55, is in prison.

“It’s nice to know they’ve put in the sidewalk and they’re putting in the lights,” said Nick’s mother, Jana Scherling of Spokane. “It’s too bad it wasn’t done a year ago.”

Many say nothing could have saved Scherling from being killed by a drunken driver. Others say he might not have been on the road in the dark if the school wasn’t split-shifting.

After the accident, “some people were ready to jump on the bandwagon and say split-shifting killed Nick,” noted Post Falls Middle School Principal Don Boyk. “That wasn’t the case at all.”

Jana Scherling agrees.

“I don’t blame the City of Post Falls, and I don’t blame the schools,” she said. “It was Connie’s fault.”

Nick Scherling would be on a regular schedule next year as a ninth-grader at the high school. In the fall of 2000, he would start 10th grade at a new high school voters approved in March. The issue passed with exactly the two-thirds majority school construction requires.

Students aren’t talking as much this year about Scherling’s death. But Krieg, now an eighth-grader, still easily pictures the oncoming car and his best friend’s bicycle flying through the air.

“He was almost part of the family,” Krieg said. “He was like a brother.”

Krieg acted the way adults ought to on the night of the accident, Mark Scherling said. Krieg helped police track down Bickley by identifying her pickup.

Scherling wishes Krieg and other people who helped his son - including two women who stopped and attempted to resuscitate him - would have more recognition from public officials for their heroic efforts, he said.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have people like this, who jump out of a car on a dark night and try to revive a stranger who was lying dead on the street,” Mark Scherling said. “They tried to breathe life back into my son. That’s incredible.”

Bickley, meanwhile, is in prison at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center, serving a six-year sentence for vehicular manslaughter. She could be paroled after a year.

Last month, her attorney, Suzanna Graham, asked that she be transferred to the county jail, that she have better access to alcohol rehabilitation and counseling programs and that the judge who sentenced her consider an early parole. The judge has not yet ruled.

“Her feelings about the accident have not changed: She’s very remorseful,” Graham said.

Jana Scherling said Bickley’s request stinks.

“She’s said before that she needs to pay her debt and now she’s trying to worm her way out of it,” she said. “It just appalls me.”

Unlike his ex-wife, Mark Scherling said he doesn’t think prison is the right place for Bickley.

“She’s going through her own internal hell,” he said. He’d prefer that she be out warning people of the hazards of drinking and driving.

The passage of a year hasn’t made dealing with the loss of her son any easier, Jana Scherling said.

“I wouldn’t wish this pain on my worst enemy,” she said.

She and Mark Scherling will hold a candlelight vigil Tuesday night at the scene of the accident in honor of their son.

To deal with her grief, Jana Scherling participates in a support group for victims of violent crime. Mark Scherling reads the Bible and sees a counselor regularly.

“I was just reading through the cards that the kids left (after Nick’s funeral) and …,” he paused and sighed, “that’s tough. I wanted to refeel everything. I wanted to feel what they felt as well as what I felt.

“I don’t want people to forget who Nick is.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: Tribute Jana and Mark Scherling will hold a candlelight vigil in memory of their son, Nick Scherling, on Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of his death. It will take place at 6:30 p.m. on West Seltice Way near its intersection with McGuire Road - the site where Nick Scherling was killed by a drunken driver.