Young teacher touched ‘lot of lives’
Funeral services for a young educator killed, officials say, by an alleged repeat drunken driver in Maine will be held today at the Quincy school where Emily Alicia Zarnoch was to begin teaching next month.
Dozens waited patiently to say their goodbyes yesterday outside the Keohane Funeral Home in Quincy, hugging, swapping stories and sharing tears.
Teaching “meant everything to her,” said an emotional Jameson Foley of Worcester, who wasn’t just Zarnoch’s classmate at Framingham State University. “It turns out we had the same birthday,” Foley said.
“She was the sweetest girl,” he added. “Her smile would just brighten the room. She was friends with everybody.”
Zarnoch turned 24 last month. A celebration of her life will get underway at 10:30 this morning at Central Middle School, where the former substitute teacher was about to start work as a full-time seventh-grade reading teacher.
A lifelong Quincy resident, she died last Tuesday while walking in York, Maine, with her boyfriend on Ridge Road near Long Sands Beach when she was allegedly struck by a GMC Yukon driven by a local waitress, Carolyn Lee, 21. It was Lee’s second arrest for drunken driving in two years.
The first charge in 2013 was dismissed as part of a plea deal, according to the Portland Press Herald. She is slated to be arraigned Oct. 9 in York Superior Court on charges of manslaughter, drunken driving and leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in personal injury. Out on bail, she could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Retired Boston Public Schools teacher Michael Bradley, who knows Zarnoch’s father, said of Emily, “She touched a lot of lives being a teacher, being so young.”
Tom Baird and Michael Lorenzano, who said they coached running with Zarnoch, a member of the Quincy Track Club, were among those paying their respects to her parents, John and Gwen, and brother Kyle. “I told her parents we knew her only for a short period of time, but in that short period of time she affected us deeply,” Baird said.
“Emily was an awesome young woman,” Lorenzano added. “It’s a sad situation.”