Smith: Sebastopol rape victim comes forward with plea

AWFUL SERIES OF EVENTS: Tilly Cretcher is the Sebastopol resident who six weeks ago told police a man grabbed and raped her as she walked toward her home not far from the Main Street/Healdsburg Avenue bend.

Cretcher is speaking up and publicly revealing her name, which is unusual for a victim of sexual assault. No suspect has been identified or arrested in her case.

A 51-year-old caregiver, Cretcher said she's conflicted about telling her story, but she and her husband, Bill, whom she says was disabled by a stroke and is unable to work, are in a terrible spot financially.

On Jan. 5, less than three weeks after the reported rape, Cretcher was badly injured in a traffic collision on Gravenstein Highway South. The CHP says it appears she attempted a U-turn and pulled in front of another vehicle.

“I have a broken neck and I have a shoulder injury that prevents me from using my left arm very much,” she said. “I won't be working for three or four months.”

Friends of Cretcher have posted a crowdfunding appeal at www.gofundme.com/f639vcuc.

“It has been a very rough patch,” Robin Durrie wrote in the online GoFundMe request.

The appeal asks for $20,000 for living expenses and the costs of medical care and a replacement car.

Cretcher said she hopes that for her to reveal her name and describe her hardships since alleged Dec. 20 attack “might be helpful for the community. It's like a way to channel the anger that they feel.”

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After the Valley fire hit Cobb Mountain, it was questionable whether sixth-graders at the Lake County community's elementary school would make their avidly anticipated trip to science camp at Occidental's Alliance Redwoods.

So many other needs bore down on Cobb Mountain Elementary and its students, 60 of the 163 of whom lost their homes to the blaze.

In Sebastopol, members of the Interact Club at Brook Haven School heard the Cobb students' science camp was in peril, and they acted. They hoped to raise as much as $1,000 at a jog-a-thon, but instead it brought in more than $5,000.

Oh, yeah. On Feb. 6, Cobb Elementary's 25 hyper excited sixth-graders are coming to science camp.

Brook Haven kids also gave $500 to classmate Amelia Meister Beltz and her mom, Jana Beltz, who came to Sebastopol after their Cobb home burned.

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PAT & BUZZY SHOW: Sebastopol music man, author and advocate of troubled youth Buzzy Martin may do some singing this evening on San Francisco radio.

From 6 to 7 p.m., Buzzy will be on KGO with talk-show host Pat Thurston, who honed her art at Sonoma County's KSRO.

They'll talk about Buzzy's attempts to redirect kids in juvenile hall from the path to prison, his experiences teaching music to inmates at San Quentin and the quest to make a movie of his book, “Don't Shoot! I'm the Guitar Man.”

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SIMPLE SCARVES appeared here and there the other day in the heart of Cotati. They were tied to sidewalk benches, trees, utility poles.

On each was safety-pinned a handwritten note similar to this one: “I am not lost. If you are stuck out in the cold, please take this to keep warm.”

Pretty sweet. A virtual hug around the neck for someone who might really need one.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.