The Zuber family continues to tend to a memorial every day for their daughter, just a few hundred feet from their front door. On the other side of their home is the cemetery where Sarah is buried.

For the past six years, all they’ve wanted are answers about what happened to their daughter, so they live a life that doesn’t feel stuck. The parties of a true crime story – the police, the community, the media – have mostly failed to deliver those answers.

The “Hush” team sits down with the Zubers for a final interview to lay out the facts of this case and seek some accountability from the people who have let this family down.

Listen to all episodes of the “Hush” podcast here.

Rebecca Zuber: So let’s see, so do we want to share with them about what… Do you guys want to hear the story?

Ryan Haas: Whatever you want to tell us.

Leah Sottile: Yeah, whatever you want to talk about.

Sottile: Sarah Zuber’s parents placed a large white cross on the side of the road where her body was found. And over time, people have added mementos to the spot.

There’s a statue of an angel, some candles and painted rocks. Sometimes the Zubers didn’t even know who was leaving things, but every time a new object appeared, it meant something.

March 13, 2025 marked six years since Sarah died. That morning, Rebecca picked a fistful of daffodils from her garden, and Ryan and I followed her and Randy up the road.

Randy Zuber: … We’re messed up, man. People in general, you know? Something about death. Everybody is enthralled with it, but everybody, no one wants to really deal with it or talk about it. Some people just don’t, I don’t know, but I keep that candle going so maybe someone will remember or know someone cares.

Sottile: Randy took the flowers from Rebecca and put them in a vase. The ground was wet from rain that morning.

Rebecca Zuber: So Randy adds to this. Once in a while he’ll add more lights and stuff. He takes real good care of this.

Sottile: For the family, this is a way of remembering Sarah. But it’s also a permanent marker of their grief. Go one way out of their driveway, they pass it. Drive the other way, they go by the cemetery where Sarah is buried.

Randy Zuber: Can I ask you three a question?

Rebecca Zuber: Yeah, go ahead.

Randy Zuber: Because this is what’s always gotten me. I always thought that Sarah, or anyone… How would you walk up this road? Wouldn’t you cross over there? You wouldn’t be walking on this side. And on the way down, you would still walk on this side because it’s too bad of a corner. There’s no way to get off the road.

Sottile: The Zubers try to weigh the daughter they knew – the quiet, naive girl – with the person the district attorney, the police and the medical examiner described in their official reports. Someone so drunk, she couldn’t make it 400 feet to her house.

Haas: But, I mean, you also keep this really beautiful memorial …

Rebecca Zuber: And we stay here, we live here.

Randy Zuber: It looks better at nighttime.

Rebecca Zuber: Was that your question again?

Haas: Yeah, why?

Rebecca Zuber: I have a friend who asked me the same thing. She’s like, if it was me, I would’ve wanted to move right away. I would’ve wanted to get out of there. And I’m sure that that’s probably what’s happening with Kati and Abbi. They never come and spend the night. They’ll come once in a while, but they rarely come over here.

Randy Zuber: They don’t like it because I cry a lot.

Rebecca Zuber: But I couldn’t. I just am not ready. She’s here, I feel like. I’m not ready to leave her. We have talked about it, but…

Haas: You like having her close though?

Rebecca Zuber: Yeah.

Randy Zuber: That’s the thing. Until they find out what really happened, tell us something that’s based in evidence and fact.

Rebecca Zuber: Maybe we’re afraid that if we move…

Randy Zuber: That they’re going to forget about her.

Rebecca Zuber: One of my biggest fears, yeah, is that she’ll be forgotten. That everyone will forget about her. She’ll be forgotten.

Sottile: The Zubers stay close to this spot because they want to remember their daughter’s life. But they’re also held here by all those unanswered questions about her death.

Maybe they could move on if they just bought the story the powers that be in Columbia County have tried to tell. But they can’t. Something about it feels wrong. Like it’s a story that’s convenient for everyone else but them.

From Oregon Public Broadcasting, this is “Hush.” I’m Leah Sottile. This is episode 8: The allure of an answer.

I think one of the most frustrating things about true crime storytelling is that it makes you believe any death is solvable if you try hard enough. For years, the sheriff’s office made an effort to solve what happened to Sarah, and the best answer they could offer was that she was drunk. They point to a medical examiner’s report and a blood alcohol test as definitive proof about what happened.

But, is it?

The Zubers never knew their daughter to be a drinker. Neither did her boyfriend, Vishal Christian, who was one of the closest people to Sarah when she died. And her sister Kati, the last person to see her alive, said without a doubt that Sarah wasn’t drunk when she walked out her door. Everyone we talked to said they were surprised by this alcohol story.

Sottile: What the medical examiner concluded is that she died from a super high alcohol content in her system.

Noah Nelson: No way.

Sottile: Yeah. And hypothermia, is what they say …

Nelson: That’s crazy.

Sottile: One day I called Noah Nelson. He was friends with Vishal and was living with Vishal’s family at the time of Sarah’s death. He hung out with Sarah and Vishal. Noah said he’d heard all kinds of crazy theories of how Sarah died. That she’d been choked to death. That she’d jumped out of a moving car. But nothing involving alcohol.

Nelson: It’s unexpected, because she did have a very innocent demeanor.

Sottile: Again and again when we’d talk to people, they’d tell us how surprised they were by the official conclusion.

Taylor Elliott: I mean, she was just a good kid.

Sottile: This is Taylor Elliott. He owned Grocery Outlet back in 2019, but has since sold it and moved out of state.

Elliott: She worked for me. I don’t think it was longer than six months before she passed away. I don’t know how long it was, but I always enjoyed seeing her. She was a good employee. I think everybody at the store really cared for her. She was very quiet, very, very to herself.

Sottile: When Ryan told him Sarah died from drinking, Taylor was shocked.

Elliott: Really? Oh, I didn’t hear anything about the autopsy. I literally, that investigation happened, and then freaking nothing.

Haas: Wow.

Elliott: I didn’t hear anything.

Haas: So the police just never came back or said anything?

Elliott: No, no. I was surprised, because literally it was the day after, maybe the next day, I can’t remember. But it was like that happened and that was basically it.

Sottile: Taylor had a hard time believing this girl who worked for him at Grocery Outlet would have died that way. We could see in police reports that Lt. Steve Salle interviewed the employees at the store. He even went through Sarah’s locker. There was a uniform and some kool-aid packets, but that was it.

Taylor had employees who he considered unreliable, or even shady. But that wasn’t Sarah.

Elliott: That doesn’t seem in character for her at all, I would say. To hear that there’s alcohol involved seems very odd for her. She seemed very, I don’t know, maybe a little sheltered, but I just couldn’t see her doing that.

Sottile: It was so hard to make sense of the disconnect between the Sarah that everyone knew – punctual, reliable, smart, sheltered – and the Sarah that the sheriff, the district attorney and the medical examiner believed was real: a girl who was secretive, a heavy drinker.

We decided we had to sit down with Detective Dave Peabody one more time to try to understand these two Sarahs: the one everyone knew, and the one everyone was being told to believe was real.

Det. Dave Peabody: I keep my little book right here on the Zuber thing. It’s obviously coming apart because I’ve used it so much.

Haas: These are binders that you keep.

Peabody: Those are all binders on one case.

Sottile: Peabody told us at this interview that he was retiring. He planned to pass on the Zuber case to another detective. We asked him if there was something he wished he could have done differently for the Zubers.

Peabody: If there was a chance we could come to something resolute and say without question what happened to Sarah, that is the only thing we could really do for her family. Whether they accepted that or not, that’s not my issue, right? But that is the respect that we could show her family. And I think they’ve been done so much harm already.

Haas: What do you think has been harmful to them?

Peabody: I think this whole Justice for Sarah Zuber, I’m not saying the cause isn’t legit. I’m saying the motivation behind the cause, I don’t believe was pure, and I think they were used in something else. I think you don’t benefit or use someone else’s tragedy that way. That’s not … I might get emotional about that. I don’t, that is not what we do. I think that’s wrong. My feeling is it was politically motivated and I think they’re paying a price for that, and I don’t like that.

Sottile: In previous interviews, Peabody said he had used his breathalyzer to examine a bottle found in Sarah’s pocket when she died. That test was also mentioned as proof of Sarah’s drinking when District Attorney Jeff Auxier officially closed the case in 2021.

Sottile: Do you have documentation of that test?

Peabody: I don’t know that I ever … I think this came up that something to the effect that report ... Yeah, I don’t know if I did a report on that. I think I thought I did. I think it was, I put that out there in the meeting, and at the time out on the scene did all that. But I think that might’ve been something missed in … that I missed in an actual report.

Sottile: OK.

Sottile: In all of our records requests on this case, we never received a report that Peabody documented his breathalyzer test. And remember, the lab test on the liquid in that bottle didn’t confirm alcohol. It said the liquid was dirty water. And here was Peabody saying, yeah, I don’t think I ever did a report on that.

In the DA’s closing memo, he also pointed to messages Sarah had sent the night she died as evidence of what happened – like the “h-e-p-l-0” message police interpreted to mean “help.” We could see in the police records there was an unsigned warrant for Sarah’s Facebook messages.

Haas: You had filed an affidavit for a search warrant in, I believe this was April 2019 for Facebook messages involving Sarah Zuber. I guess I’m curious, did you end up getting that information?

Peabody: Can’t tell you that right now. Normally speaking, I usually pass the Facebook off to one of our younger deputies.

Haas: Well, but I mean you’re the one who filed for this warrant and it says you’re filing, I mean, it was filed under possible murder charges. I guess, explain that to me.

Peabody: So there was not …This warrant’s not even signed.

Haas: Right. Well, I mean I guess that’s why I was wondering. Did it get filed, was it…

Sottile: Did you get any…?

Haas: … Did you get anything?

Peabody: That’s what I’d have to look into.

Sottile: We didn’t see any Facebook records in the police files and now Peabody was telling us he couldn’t be sure they even filed the search warrant. It was another error that happened during this investigation. Like Dr Millius’s typo that said Sarah’s minor injuries could have caused her death. Or Dr. Millius’ autopsy report that said Sarah had a neck fracture, which she told us never existed.

We were being asked to believe that the official conclusions about what happened to Sarah Zuber were correct, even as errors seemed to keep piling up.

Toward the end of our conversation with Peabody, things took a strange turn.

Peabody: What if she got the alcohol herself or we can never pin it to a person? What if, unprovable to all of us, what if she got it on her own, she went out, was drinking. She had an obsession with walking on the road, right? You’ve read the reports. Read anything like that?

Sottile: I mean, I don’t know that I would call it an obsession, but she did walk on the road. Yeah. Yes.

Peabody: Heard anything about poetry?

Sottile: Oh yeah. We’ve seen her writing.

Haas: We’ve read her writing.

Peabody: Anime? OK, at some point is that not an obsession?

Sottile: I don’t know.

Haas: I don’t know if I would characterize it that way.

Sottile: I think it was just what she was into. Yeah.

Peabody: OK. Better word then, something she’s into. But either way, what if it’s just that simple? If that’s really the truth – and I’m not saying it is ‒ I’m just saying if, unbeknownst to all of us, that really is the truth and it’s just that simple. All of this stuff we’re doing is for naught, because there’s really nothing else out there to get. We’re searching for something that’s not there. That doesn’t mean we don’t stop searching, because we don’t know.

Sottile: It felt like he was grabbing at straws, trying to hold onto anything. It was confusing what he was trying to say, and all we could come down on is that this was his way of pointing the blame at Sarah. An implication that kids who like poetry, or anime... they’re weird. And weird kids die in weird ways.

Law enforcement and the medical examiner couldn’t find a clear answer for what happened to Sarah. So they pieced a story together from a few facts about alcohol.

Have you ever seen the image of the ouroboros? The snake eating its tail? I feel safe saying that everything about the Zuber investigation is like that: a never-ending circle of accusations and questions.

When the Zubers felt the sheriff’s office couldn’t give them a good answer, they turned to Jennifer Massey for help. Jennifer said the sheriff’s detectives failed, and told a story of Sarah dying in a hit-and-run. But she also looked past the fact that Sarah didn’t have broken bones or serious injuries.

And now Peabody was saying one of the biggest problems with this whole ordeal was that Jennifer gave the Zubers false hope. That she inserted herself in the situation for political gain.

This dysfunction, this picking of facts that fit a story, seemed to be the real problem here. We don’t know for sure what happened to Sarah Zuber. And yet, so many people are claiming they do. They are making their best guesses and trying to convince this family it makes sense, even when a medical examiner changes her reports, or a warrant isn’t signed or filed, or a former district attorney refuses to answer questions, or a politician points to a convenient suspect without any real evidence. The message is simple: Pick the person you want to believe.

I’m betting none of this is the true crime ending you were hoping for. We’ve spent a long time understanding this case, and gaining trust from people in Columbia County. We spent a lot of time knocking on doors, driving the backroads, seeing the ways people move about their lives here.

We’ve tried to get the most accurate story of what happened to Sarah. A story backed up by facts. This is the part of the media’s role that I think has fallen apart in the true crime world. Understanding a tragic death like Sarah Zuber’s is about more than pointing fingers and speculating. A journalist’s job is to get the straight story and hold people in power accountable when something goes wrong.

That was one of our main goals when we interviewed Columbia County Sheriff Brian Pixley. The Zubers have long felt like Sheriff Pixley hasn’t done enough to solve Sarah’s death. We started with a basic question. If 18-year-old Sarah Zuber died from alcohol, who gave her that alcohol?

Sottile: Because I think that that’s one thing that we’ve never quite seen addressed is, here’s this girl who had almost no friends, very small community, very sheltered. Where did she, just that basic thing, where did she get this alcohol? I don’t see that there was evidence of that?

Sheriff Pixley: And I believe we looked for that, but we couldn’t find any specific evidence. There was no parties. I remember specifically we tracked her vehicle when she left Grocery Outlet that night, she actually went west, away from her house, and then we followed her until we couldn’t find her on cameras anymore.

But we interviewed people who we thought may have furnished her alcohol. We just don’t know. There’s nothing that points to a specific person. Did she get this from off the liquor cabinet at home? What does this look like?

Haas: When you’re doing an investigation like that, are you not writing up those? Like, I never saw anything in the records about, “I talked to so-and-so and asked them questions about, did you give Sarah alcohol?”

Pixley: The common thing would be yes, to every time you write up, or you have a contact, you document the contact. I can’t speak to why that didn’t happen in this case.

Sottile: So here was Pixley saying he was certain his people asked around about the alcohol. And we were saying, if they did, why isn’t it in your reports? To that, he wasn’t sure. But even so, he trusts that Sarah was drunk.

Sottile: It’s just this thing is a real head scratcher, obviously, and we go around and around talking about it because it’s like, nobody knew her to drink.

Pixley: So years ago when I worked for the Scappoose Police Department, I went to a report of an MIP party, and this was my first experience dealing with this, right? Underage kids drinking. And so I was out there, I was interviewing this 14, 15, 16-year-old girl, however old she was, waiting for her parents to show up. And literally we’re talking, and mid-sentence she falls over and she can’t stand up anymore. She hadn’t had anything to drink for the 20 minutes I’d been talking to her. But I think she drank so much, so quick, that it just all hit her at the same time.

Sottile: The story the sheriff and other officials are asking us – and you, the listener – to trust boils down to this: Sarah got Who drunk in the short few minutes between when she argued with Kati and walked out the door. Then she hid the evidence of that alcohol so well no one would ever find it. Sarah sent two drunken text messages, then passed out on the ground in the cold weather. And for the next 13 hours, people drove by and no one saw her laying there.

Or, another possible story is that Sarah left Grocery Outlet, went to buy Kati her soda, got extremely drunk somewhere, drunk-drove all the way home up those windy rural roads, fought with Kati, then laid down and died. And yet, no one has ever answered this one simple question: Who got Sarah the alcohol?

Haas: If someone did supply an underage person with alcohol and then they died from that, I mean, is that in the realm of criminal or is that just an accident?

Pixley: If I gave you too much alcohol and you died and we could piece that together, then yeah, I think we can get a murder charge, or at least a crim neg homicide on this person. Something to charge, make them responsible for that death, if that makes sense.

Haas: No, that makes sense.

Sottile: So, if you did find a person who said, yeah, I gave her alcohol or whatever...

Pixley: I would talk to the district attorney’s office about prosecuting.

Sottile: We asked Pixley if there was anything he would have done differently in the Zuber case, or if he’d like to say anything to the family.

Sottile: Do you feel like there’s any situation where you might want to apologize to the Zubers, or offer any kind of apology?

Sheriff Pixley: I don’t know what I would apologize for. If it makes them feel better, I’d be happy to tell ‘em sorry, but I wouldn’t. It would be a hollow apology because I don’t know what to apologize about, I guess is what it comes down to.

Sottile: Pixley has a daughter who is Sarah’s age, and said he can’t imagine what it would be like to be in the Zuber’s situation. But he doesn’t think he has anything to apologize for, because according to him, District Attorney Jeff Auxier was leading the major crimes team that assembled. And it wasn’t his job as sheriff to figure out what happened.

We played parts of our interview with Pixley for the Zubers so this podcast wouldn’t be the first time they heard what he had to say.

Pixley: I’m trying to think of the right way to say this without sounding like an asshole. If you are a family trying to heal from the death, unfortunate, tragic loss of your daughter, and then you have this, you’re being told by the people who are actually investigating the case, “This is what we have found.”

Randy Zuber: We never got told.

Pixley: And you have this other group of people over here saying, “Well, they’re wrong. I heard this. And that means they’re wrong.”

Randy Zuber: No, that fucking guy…

Sottile: Randy started to get really agitated.

Pixley: We’re putting the band-aid on, and every time that other group tells ‘em something else, they’re ripping the band-aid back off. And I think that would confuse the hell out of anyone. And that, especially when you’re trying to heal from such a tragic incident that’s like, from my perspective, that’s being re-victimized over, over and over again.

Randy Zuber: He doesn’t know us. He thinks we’re a bunch of low IQ … Maybe we are.

Rebecca Zuber: No, he’s saying…

Randy Zuber: He thinks we’re stupid.

Rebecca Zuber: No, being re-victimized, like there was two different people telling us two different things.

Randy Zuber: He’s never fucking talked to us.

Rebecca Zuber: He never told us anything.

Randy Zuber: If he would come and talk to us, I could straighten him out and he wouldn’t go, “Well, you know what, Mr. Zuber is just a grieving father. And I’m not just speaking out of my ass. I got a body of evidence to look at.”

You don’t know me, Mr. Pixley, but I know you a little bit because I see your writings and your bullshit and how you put me off and you lie about us. You don’t know the first thing about us.

Sottile: The Zubers say for a sheriff who prides himself on knowing people in this small community, he’s completely avoided speaking to them or apologizing for any mistakes.

Pixley: … sorry, but I wouldn’t, it would be a hollow apology. I don’t know what to apologize about, I guess is what it comes down to.

Rebecca Zuber: He said, I don’t have anything to be sorry for. I mean, he is like …

Randy Zuber: This is not my investigation.

Rebecca Zuber: … what would I say sorry, I don’t have anything to be sorry for. And I mean, even at the very slightest, you don’t have anything to be sorry for?

Randy Zuber: ‘Cause he doesn’t have any idea about the scope of this investigation ...

Rebecca Zuber: … anything you could say you’re sorry about? And the other thing I was thinking was, well, I mean, I guess if it would make them feel better, I’ll say that. I’ll say I’m sorry.

Randy Zuber: What a stupid … who says that?

Rebecca Zuber: No, no, no. A child says that. I can think of lots of little things that he could say he’s sorry for. He’s sorry that he wasn’t clear with us on what he believes happened to Sarah. He’s sorry that he never actually sat down with us to tell us.

Randy Zuber: We could go on and on for a day.

Rebecca Zuber: There’s plenty of little things that he could be saying he’s sorry for.

Randy Zuber: I don’t even have a word. I’m speechless and I’m usually not.

Sottile: Randy got up and paced around the room. Rebecca looked calm and had much more cutting words for the sheriff.

Rebecca Zuber: I’m just gonna say, just listening to this, it reminds me that Sheriff Pixley spends a lot of time on feelings, just talking about, “Oh, well, if I was a parent, I would feel horrible too.” And he spends a lot of time talking about feelings and defending, hurting feelings or whatever, but he doesn’t spend any time talking about facts. He never told us about facts.

Sottile: Facts. That’s all the Zubers want. Facts of how Sarah died. Facts of where she went in that hour after work. Facts: Did she spend money that night? What did she write on Facebook? Who else did she text? Did she willingly drink alcohol or did someone force her? Was she lying there all night long on the side of the road?

They all seemed like questions that could have been answered. But they weren’t. And now the Zubers want facts about why exactly they never got any answers.

There could be a lot of reasons. It could be that the autopsy findings steered the detectives in the wrong direction. It could be that the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office was unable to handle a complex case like this. It could be that political drama got in the way.

It’s hard to really believe anything completely in this case. And so you’re left to believe whatever you want. Do you trust the family that knew Sarah for 18 years, or the police? Do you trust the police whose job it is to solve homicide investigations, or do you trust a group of Facebook sleuths? Do you think that a girl with no serious physical injuries was hit by a car? That a girl who was months away from starting college and who didn’t party drank herself to death? That a neck fracture in a medical report never existed? Do you believe that a sheriff has no responsibility for a death investigation that fails to produce answers?

These are the questions that keep the Zubers attached to the memorial next to their home.

So many people over the last six years have tried to find answers about what happened to Sarah. And maybe part of that is because they think finding a clear answer would help the Zuber family move on. When we visited Oregon State University professor Justin St. Germain to learn about true crime, he told us he understood that desire. It’s part of what drove him to write his memoir about his mother’s murder.

Justin St. Germain: What I would tell myself is, if I don’t tell this version, it never gets told. This is an unsatisfactory version. It’s like an imperfect version, but it’s this or nothing.

Sottile: We wanted to know if writing what happened to his mother helped him move on. He did find a clear answer for who killed his mom. But it seemed like it may never be clear what happened to Sarah.

Sottile: They don’t have a clear answer. What do you think made you need that answer?

St. Germain: I think for me a lot of it was that I just felt like, a lot of it wasn’t rational, honestly. It’s just like you’re carrying around this thing. I thought, ”OK, I’m going to move on. Just put it behind me, move on.” There’s all this pressure to move on. There’s all this pressure in our kind of culture not to whatever it is: linger, wallow, that kind of thing. And also, I mean, I just think that part of the story is very uninteresting to audiences, it seems like.

The actual awfulness of grief, just not a lot of demand for that. People don’t really want to know that part of a murder, you know what I mean? What the parents are going through, you know? But for me it was less of a rational decision. Then at some point, I think it was seven years later, I was like, “Oh, I have not moved on.” You know what I mean? “And I’m probably not going to until I talk about this.”

Sottile: We constantly debated if we were really doing any kind of good here because we didn’t have clear answers about what happened. And that drove us to do more reporting. We tracked down places Sarah might have gone for a diet cream soda after work.

Sottile: Hey, Ryan. Guess where I am? It’s Sunday, almost two o’clock. It’s 1:40 and I’m in the parking lot of Grocery Outlet in Rainier. If there’s a diet cream soda to be had across the river in Washington, then I’m going to make the drive.

Sottile: We wrote letters to the prison where Nick, the dangerous driver, was incarcerated. And he wrote us back a one-paragraph letter that asked us five times to give him money.

Sottile: Why? What did he say?

Haas: OK. Well, I will read it to you right now. I have the letter here.

Sottile: OK.

Haas: “If you want the truth, I can tell you who did it. I used to hang out with the dude who did it. I tried to talk to David Peabody about it, but he was always too busy. I want the reward money if I talk about it though, as it will start problems for me. If you want to give me the reward money, I’ll give you the name and address and word-for-word statement he told me.”

Sottile: We tracked down people who knew Sarah and had given alcohol to underage girls before. We pressed Lt. Steve Salle – who took over the case after Peabody left – to more thoroughly explore that question.

Sottile: Well, on the alcohol thing, I mean, are you any closer to figuring out where she got that alcohol?

Lt. Steve Salle: No. Still talking to people. I have, I think, three other people that I’m going to go out and contact.

Sottile: Still, we had no answer. And that weighed on us. Maybe we had bought into the false promises of true crime storytelling, too. Maybe we were just like everyone else, and thought we could find a clean story about what happened.

We could see now – after all, the mistakes our reporting uncovered – that calling this true crime couldn’t be more wrong. It was so much worse than that. It was bureaucratic horror.

All we could do was be honest with the Zubers. We could tell them the facts, laid out in order. Show the mistakes. And admit what we just didn’t know for sure. Because that’s what journalism is supposed to do.

Sottile: You know, six years has gone by and you’ve been like saints, I think, with your patience with these people.

Haas: I think so.

Sottile: It’s admirable. But I really hope we haven’t added any trauma or anything here. I know it’s hard to…

Randy Zuber: I’ve been wanting to tell you how traumatized you’ve made me. [Laughter.]

Sottile: Well, it’s like talking about the worst thing that’s ever happened.

Rebecca Zuber: No, it is terrible. As a matter of fact…

Sottile: Talking about all the details of this horrible thing.

Randy Zuber: Yeah, it is.

Rebecca Zuber: … I’ve constantly said, “I don’t want to relive it anymore. I’m sick of it and stuff,” and I stress out. Just the idea of having to talk to you guys and stuff.

Randy Zuber: But me, on the other hand…

Rebecca Zuber: I’m happy. I am totally happy with everything you guys have done and the fact that you put this together and just like you said, just putting all the facts in order in a spot that’s recorded forever, that’s there.

Randy Zuber: Everything you’ve done for us is good medicine. It only makes us better and helps us to carry on.

Sottile: The Zuber family has carried on despite everything that has happened to them. In March they gathered their neighbors and friends in downtown St. Helens for a dinner. They were starting a scholarship fund in Sarah’s name.

Speaker #1: It’s 4:30. Weren’t we supposed to start something at 4:30?

Speaker #2: Yeah, I’m going to start the coffee.

Speaker #1: OK.

Sottile: Seven long tables filled a little room next to the movie theater. A group of volunteers were running around making coffee, arranging centerpieces and cutting up carrot sticks.

It didn’t take long for the room to fill in. Randy and Rebecca welcomed every person who came in. There were the FAFODDS people. Jennifer Massey. There were admins of different Facebook groups. People we’d met, and people we hadn’t. Everyone noticed pretty quickly the two people sitting in the corner with the microphone.

Sharrie Ryan: We have no newspaper out here and we need representation.

Speaker #3: That’s why they’re here.

Sharrie: I’m so glad you’re here.

Sottile: As everyone settled in, Randy stood up at the front of the room.

Randy Zuber: I’ve always wanted to do this. Makes you feel important. I saw it in a movie, I saw it in a movie. Anyway, thank you, friends, countrymen, neighbors. Some of you have come from far away and some of you have come from not far away, but every one of you, I want you to know how much we appreciate you and you being here to support us. You’re all very caring, you’re the heart of your communities. People like you that show up and that put themselves out there and have compassion and love and kindness for your neighbors. That goes a long way.

Sottile: He handed the microphone off to Rebecca, who had written a speech.

Rebecca Zuber: So we thank you all for making this event tonight possible and for participating in the kickoff of the Sarah Zuber Memorial Scholarship Foundation. Now all these years later, I see the importance of doing something to keep literally a memorial of the name Sarah Zuber. We love her so much. She is so alive to us. We know there will never be another Sarah Zuber, but we can help others to achieve their dreams.

Sottile: That night the Zubers told their own story of who Sarah was, not what happened to her. They wanted to nurture other kids like her however they could. So they started this scholarship. It could send a kid to Europe. Maybe help with college.

This is the Zubers’ story. Sarah was… just Sarah. Artsy. Funny. A girl who loved animals. Someone who joked around with her sisters all the time.

Sarah Zuber: Ooo, yeah. Check it out. Right outside of the window. Will you look at this. It says 100% clean mac and cheese.

Kati Zuber: It won’t have dirt in it.

Sarah Zuber: Nope, no dirt. This is a city.

Sottile: Sarah was someone who walked around St. Helens with her friends wearing a minion head.

Sarah Zuber: We’re just a lonely troop of minions on a long and winding road.

Unknown speaker: A long and lonely road.

Unknown speaker: This is quite tiring.

Sarah Zuber: The road full of traps, demons out for us.

Sottile: She was a good student. A night owl. A bored teenager who made videos of mundane things.

Sarah Zuber: I have nothing to watch on Netflix, so you know what? I’ll just take after my brother and watch anime.

Sottile: If you’ve ever lost someone in a tragic way, I think it’s normal to mine every memory you have of them, looking for some missed clue. Any sign of the end, something that was maybe always there and you just missed it. But then eventually, you have to separate your memories from the tragedy. See that person for how they lived, not how they died.

Sarah Zuber: You know what else is pretty awesome? I might even say pretty cool? Is uh, I love you.

Sottile: Sarah was someone who didn’t give herself to everyone, but when she did, it stuck with you. And that’s who the Zubers are trying to remember. The teenager who was on the cusp of figuring out what kind of person she was going to be.

A person whose love was irreplaceable.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/11/26/hush-podcast-episode-8-sarah-zuber-allure-of-answer/