Jessica Warren, 22, (left) poses with her mother, Jennifer Lynn Warren, 39. Jennifer Warren died Sunday while performing her job as a community support specialist for Columbia Community Mental Health. She was stabbed to death, allegedly by one of her clients. Jennifer Lynn Warren was killed three days before her 40th birthday, an hour into her Sunday shift as a mental health support worker for Columbia Community Mental Health.
The St. Helens woman who had struggled much of her young adulthood to overcome a methamphetamine addiction had spent the past 10 years giving back to the community, delivering medications to people with mental illness.
?She took care of people who were struggling and she loved them,? said her father, Kenny Warren Sr., 63. ?What I taught my kids is helping others is more than any kind of money. I?ve lost an angel.?
Kenny Warren said he was readying to go to church when one of his daughter?s co-workers came to his home with his 22-year-old granddaughter, Jessica Warren. He sensed something was amiss.
The co-worker broke the news. ?She said, ?my daughter is dead,? ? he recounted. ?I think of myself as a strong person, but that just knocked me for a loop. I had to sit down. I felt very weak and dizzy.?
Jennifer Warren lived with a longtime companion and was engaged to marry him this summer. Besides her daughter, she had three sons, but had to give the boys up for adoption, relatives said. Relatives described her drug recovery as successful.
She spent Saturday jet skiing on the Columbia River with a friend, and reported to work by 7 a.m. Sunday.
Jennifer?s daughter, Jessica Warren, said she knew some of the people that her mom delivered medications to had been found guilty except for insanity of various crimes. ?I was concerned about her safety. It was something that I brought up to her. But she loved her job,? she said. ?My mother was very nice to these people. I don?t know what made the guy snap, but it was definitely out of the ordinary.?
Jessica Warren, who lost a brother to suicide last year and her father to suicide in 2001 (both not related to Jennifer), said she feels lost without her mom. ?This isn?t the first tragedy in our family,? she said. ?Hopefully, it will be the last.?
Co-workers were crushed by the news. Corina Fesler, 41, who like Jennifer worked as a community support specialist for the non-profit agency, said Jennifer Warren was warm and supportive to clients, and used humor to handle challenges.
When Jennifer Warren wasn?t able to work at one home because a client was having delusions about her, she took it in stride and worked elsewhere, she said.
?She was funny, outgoing,? Fesler said. If anyone needed help, Warren would step in, Fesler said. ?I just can?t imagine.? She left home yesterday morning to go to work and do her job.?
Amid their sorrow, there is anger.
?We know for a fact that everybody ? when these people coming down off their medication, or are changing their medication, anything can happen,? Kenny Warren said. ?So the administrators ? if they don?t step up and take responsibility ? they?re just as guilty as the man who did that.?
? Maxine Bernstein
Article source: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/05/murdered_st_helens_mental_heal.html
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