Hurricane Sandy Victim Is Son of New York Judge and New Hampshire Bar President
The story tells of a mother’s agony as she waited for her 24-year-old son to return home as Hurricane Sandy struck New York City on Monday.
Marcia Sikowitz, a New York housing court judge, fell asleep without hearing from her son, Jake Vogelman, the Daily Beast reports. He had ventured out during the storm to accompany his longtime friend, Jessie Streich-Kest, to check on her ailing father.
When Sikowitz awoke on Tuesday, her son still was not home. She dialed her son’s cellphone every 15 minutes until a detective answered. There was bad news, delivered by the detective when he arrived at Sikowitz’s home.
The two friends had died when they were struck by a falling tree. They had been walking Streich-Kest’s pit bull mix, Max, when they were killed. Vogelman was a stage and lighting designer working on a master’s at Brooklyn College. Streich-Kest was a high school teacher and activist, according to the New York Times and the New York Observer.
A message posted by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law says Vogelman’s parents both have ties to the school. Sikowitz is an alum. Vogelman’s father, Larry Vogelman, co-directed Cardozo’s intensive trial advocacy program and its criminal law clinic along with Barry Scheck in the 1980s and early 1990s before moving to New Hampshire. Larry Vogelman is currently president of the New Hampshire Bar Association, according to the association’s Bar News.
Streich-Kest is daughter of Jon Kest, executive director for New York Communities for Change.
