Honor Angel's Memory: Bring Her Home

Hello, my name is Rebecca Bessette and I’m raising funds for disinterment and cremation of my sister's remains so that I can bring her home to Vermont with me.

My sister Angel left this earth on January 22, 2023, and was buried in an unmarked mass grave in a potter's field on Hart Island in the Bronx. A potter's field is where unclaimed remains of the deceased are buried. The truth is, I lost my sister years before she died. We’d been estranged for about 20 years, although I looked for her during that time. In my latest search just over 2 weeks ago, I discovered that she died alone in a Bronx hospital. She was just 40 years old. From there, her body spent almost 200 days waiting in the Brooklyn ID unit morgue for someone, anyone, to claim her. The two people that were contacted declined, either unable or unwilling. There was no story about her life, no service, no photos, no obituary, no memories shared by others. The NYC Chief Medical Examiner's Office and their outreach team helped me to learn a little bit more about how she died, but there was little information otherwise. My sister was not unclaimed or unloved, and she has a story. A story worth sharing because her life was valuable and she mattered. She mattered to me.

Angel was born on February 23, 1982. My father married her mother in 1986 when Angel was 4 years old, and she became my sister. While her mom struggled with addiction, she went into foster care. By the time she was 9, she lost her mother to a brutal homicide. Angel was bounced around between foster homes, group homes, facilities, and institutions. She was tough and full of grit, and her tenacity to be loved drove her to seek out my dad and me, even when the broken system she was in the custody of, to forbade it. Once around 1997, Angel ran away from Allen Brook group home where she was living in South Burlington. Using a photo , she carried constantly of she and our father standing in front of a house on North Winooski Avenue in Burlington, She found her way to that house, knocked on the door, and asked the person who answered to please call her dad. They did, and my father went to get her, ultimately having to return her to Allen Brook. As a teenager, she continued to run away from placements, and sometimes, was really hard to track down. I remember so many times having to find her and try to help her out of bad and scary situations. She was not easy, but no one could expect her to be given what she’d already been through. She wasn’t easy, but she was loved. In 1999, she became a victim of human trafficking. In the early 2000s, she and other young and vulnerable girls became a part of a federal case in which two people were convicted, and one of those girls, her best friend, died. I made trips to Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx and tried countless times to bring her back to Vermont. As hard as I tried and as much as I wanted to, I was not able to get my sister back. She never returned to Vermont, and we had very little communication from there. My sister deserved so much more than the hand she was dealt, and I wish things had been different. Finally, I have an opportunity to claim her and bring her home. For her, and for me.