HILLSBORO, Ore. — Many are saying enough is enough after a Hillsboro woman was killed early Tuesday morning while trying to cross Tualatin Valley Highway near Northwest 341st Avenue. Her family and others are now calling for safety improvements.
Leslie Schmadeke, 51, never learned to drive, so she relied on public transit to get to and from work. Her family said she crossed the highway almost every morning and evening to get to and from the bus stop.
“We begged her as a family to drive, it would’ve been super helpful, but she was just adamant that she just wanted to take public transport she didn’t need to learn how to drive. She didn’t want to and at 51 she had never learned and she got around just great,” said Schmadeke’s cousin, JenRenee Fairlane.
Schmadeke’s mother said she was always careful crossing the highway, but it was dark and foggy the morning she was hit and killed.
Over the years, her family said her father called the Oregon Department of Transportation many times because they were concerned about the safety of the highway.
“He had always complained about that road, it’s honestly so dangerous,” Fairlane explained. “I won’t even take a left turn out of that 341st, I take a right and then I turn around if I have to, and she was actually crossing this big street. I would say, you have to go out of your way you have to find a crosswalk and she said do you know how far that is? And it is. That’s ridiculous how far it would be for her to walk out of the way. So, they’ve got a bus stop, but they have no way to get to the bus stop.”
Schmadeke's family now hopes someone will listen. They would like to see a traffic light put in where she was killed in memory of her.
ODOT is planning to install three flashing crosswalks along TV Highway. Others, though, do not think that goes far enough. Jonathan Maus with Bike Portland said he has seen too many crashes there.
“There’s just been multiple bad things happen on that stretch of road, I’ve covered several and I’m just one person who only looks at certain types of crashes for the most part, so I mean it just keeps happening,” Maus explained.
Maus thinks it will take more than new crosswalks.
“You can’t just go put a little crosswalk and think that’s going to change things,” Maus said. “People won’t stop, they won’t stop in time, you need to actually do a complete transformation of how that road works.”
Deputy Metro Council President Juan Carlos Gonzalez agrees more needs to be done. For the past year he has been working on a measure to improve the safety of several stretches of road around the region, including TV Highway.
“I grew up along TV Highway and every single day I see people risking their lives walking across five lanes of traffic at 50 miles an hour just trying to get to the bus stop, trying to get to the grocery store, trying to get to school and I think that's unacceptable,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez hopes to get the measure on the November 2020 ballot. You can learn more about the measure and proposed safety improvements here.
Schmadeke is remembered as a fun-loving person who enjoyed crafting and origami.
“She was a super fun person, very creative, she did a lot of origamis and making crafts with found paper, so not paper you would buy, but envelopes and all kinds of things that she would find and reuse,” Fairlane said.
Her love of crafting is something she got to share with others while working at the Portland Children’s Museum. Her coworkers there said she is already greatly missed.
The museum released a statement saying, “Our staff & visitors mourn the loss of beloved Museum Experience Facilitator, Leslie Schmadeke, who joyfully shared her gifts of origami & crafting with families for the last 9 years.
"Leslie's second work family was Moda Center at the Rose Quarter. There, she was also known for her love of children & worked in MODA's area for young families.
No one could ask for a more dedicated & faithful member of our team. We take comfort in hearing your memories of Leslie & will always treasure the many ways in which she touched our community. She will be dearly missed by all.”
Her coworkers plan to honor her in a special way at their staff meeting next week. They also closed the museum early the day she was killed.
Her family is working on funeral arrangements.
“I think one of the biggest things I’m going to really miss about her is that my parents would have this huge Halloween party every year and she was just a huge presence every year at the Halloween party, she’s going be really missed,” Fairlane said. “Her costumes were always just super detailed and lots of fun and she would dance until 2, 3 in the morning, as long as the music was playing.”