A second chance: Mother of girl who died in foster care cleans up her life

On Oct. 10, 2007, Prisoner No. 136645 was taken by wheelchair to a room at Memorial Hospital, not because she was a patient, but because the steel shackles around her ankles made walking difficult.

Her 2-year-old daughter, Alizé Vick, lay lifeless in the bed with a plastic tube jutting from her tiny head, hair still crimped from where the pigtails had been. The tube was there to relieve the swelling, but the blow to the toddler’s skull had been too severe. Alizé was clinically dead and soon to be pulled off life support.

No. 136645, aka Ashley Lindenberger, rose from the wheelchair to be with her daughter — a child who ended up in foster care because Lindenberger had been addicted to drugs. The foster mother, Jules Lynn Cuneo, would be charged with Alizé’s death.

With tearful good byes, Lindenberger realized her daughter would never live to see her fulfill a promise she’d made “to make things right.”

But she was determined to uphold her pledge. Now, two years later, she’s proving to be a woman of her word.

The 22-year-old once identified by those six numbers on a forest green jumpsuit is clean of the meth addiction that drove her into a host of criminal activities. She’s employed and going to school. She regained custody of her son, Anthoni Vick, who was an infant when his sister died. She has a baby, 3-month-old Jenna, and is getting married this spring. She’s mended a relationship with her grandmother that was damaged when she stole $40,000 from her collectibles business to buy meth.

Yet for all of her success in turning a tragic past into a hopeful future, Lindenberger still struggles. At times, she said in a recent interview, there are breakdowns. Nightmares that began from the time of her daughter’s death continue. Although she tries not to think about what happened, Cuneo’s trial, scheduled for February, and a lawsuit against the El Paso County Department of Human Services keep it on her mind.

First the children, then prison

Lindenberger was high on drugs in March 2007, when social services, acting on a complaint, came and took Alizé and Anthoni. They were placed with Cuneo, who had two children of her own and initially seemed like a promising fit.

A month later, Linderberger was arrested on drug-related and theft charges.

In prison, Lindenberger committed to cleaning up and enrolled in a prison boot camp program. In a letter she wrote to her mother on July 8, 2007, from the Buena Vista Correctional Complex, Lindenberger talks about turning her life around and wondering whether Cuneo could bring Alize and Anthoni for a visit.

“Hey Mommy! How are you? Have I told you I’ve been taking parenting classes? Well I have been. I enjoy them very much so. We are learning alot of techniques. I’ve been missin my kids like crazy mommy. I want Jules to be able to bring the kids to see me. Do you think DHS will allow them to come up here and see me? That would be cool.”

Three months later, on Oct. 9, Cuneo allegedly threw Alizé against a coffee table, causing a fatal head injury, according to police records.

Lindenberger was driven to Memorial Hospital to see Alizé. “I’ll always love you, and I’ll talk to you in my dreams,” she told the girl, covered in a pink floral blanket and surrounded by stuffed animals.

Lindenberger was released from prison in February 2008 and spent two weeks in Minnequa Community Correction in Pueblo. There, she met Anthony Medina, 23, who was awaiting release after serving time for possession of police property. Like Lindenberger, his time behind bars persuaded him to make a new life, and a courtship began.

The couple severed ties with their old friends and found accountability in one another. Lindenberger found a job at Subway, Medina at IHOP. Lindenberger enrolled in classes at Pueblo Community College. Medina was promoted from a bus boy, to cook, to waiter.

In September 2008, she got her son back — he’d gone to live with relatives after Cuneo was arrested — and in August, she and Medina had Jenna.

“We have a house to come home to,” she said. “We spend all our time together.”

Finding family

The idea of family has eluded Lindenberger most of her life. Her mother, who was a crack addict, gave birth to her as a teen and relinquished her to the system. Lindenberger bounced around 18 foster homes as her mother missed parental visits.

Today, her days are split between work and spending time at home with Medina and the children.

“We’re like an old married couple,” she says. Lindenberger has fulfilled her obligations to DHS, and, after paying $1,800 in remaining restitution, she says she will have fulfilled her probationary obligations.

Medina says their life together proves people can make good on second chances. “If you work hard enough, it will come to you.”

Alizé, though, continues to permeate Lindenberger’s life. She sees children that resemble the girl at her son’s preschool, and memories come flooding back. There are days when she breaks down in tears or gets angry. One day, she tore up a scrapbook of photos of her daughter, only to reassemble it later. Lindenberger said she benefited from grief counseling, but finances forced her to end it.

As much as she tries not to think about 2007, Lindenberger is having to relive it in detail for the courts. On Oct. 9, two years to the day of the incident, she filed a lawsuit against DHS in U.S. District Court. And she plans to testify at Cuneo’s trial, where details of her daughter’s death and the months leading up to it are sure to be aired and rehashed in exhaustive detail before strangers.

Yet, for all the pressure and bad memories — feelings that could drive a recovering addict back into drugs — Lindenberger is committed to sobriety. The thought of doing meth, she said in an October interview, “makes me sick.”

She copes by looking forward. She is changing her major from early childhood education to business management with a specific goal in mind: to start an organization to help children.

There are moments, Lindenberger says, when it feels as if her daughter is around. A Dora the Explorer sticker turned up around the house, a reminder of Alizé’s favorite cartoon. Lindenberger’s grandmother likes to say that when Alizé is around, a feather falls, so Lindenberger keeps a feather on top of her TV has a reminder.

“Those make me happy,” she says.

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