Common sense says you don’t leave a widow with three kids out

Common sense says you don’t leave a widow with three kids out in the cold. But that’s exactly what the state is doing to Vanessa Walsh. Late last year, Walsh’s husband Brian was guarding a perimeter while his fellow Federal Way police officers looked for a suspect with a gun. Brian wasn’t hit with a bullet — it was a heart attack that felled him — but he still died in the line of duty.Nevertheless, Washington’s Department of Labor and Industry just denied Vanessa the survivor’s benefits that would have provided her with a check every month. An important lifeline considering she’s got a 12-year-old, four-year-old and one-month-old at home, the main breadwinner in her family is dead and we’re currently in the middle of a recession.But these are bureaucrats we’re talking about. Which means that while they may do the right thing eventually, they’re first gonna make the nice lady whose husband just died fill out a mountain of paperwork.Worse, they forced her to hire a lawyer to argue on her behalf. Which means we all get to hear an explanation for why she deserves her husband’s pension that’s an insult to our intelligence.Walsh’s lawyer says that the November murders of four Lakewood police officers took their toll on Brian. But instead of just saying the guy was stressed out on account of his very dangerous job, because he’s a lawyer he had to say that Brian was making “emotional exertions” at the time of his death.Ugh.Look, how a cop dies is immaterial; if they’re wearing the uniform it should be a cut-and-dry case. You want someone to put his or her life on the line for you every day? Provide for his or her family should the unthinkable happen.Survivors like Walsh have a tough enough time as it is losing a loved one. That the state asks for their dignity too when trying to recoup what’s rightfully theirs just compounds the tragedy.