Just a few weeks ago, Sheila Milosky, principal of Paul Revere Elementary School in San Francisco, was sentenced to community service hours and 9 months of rehab following a DUI arrest in May.
Well, actually, she was sentenced to 30 days in jail, but prosecutors decided to hand her an orange vest and make her clean up the city instead. Prosecutors also decided to drop the hit-and-run charges.
She got off the hook if you ask me.
Not everybody is lucky enough to sideswipe two vehicles, run away without a scratch, deny the charges, and have half the charges dropped. Not everybody has the audacity to plead not guilty though caught in a hit-and-run with a blood alcohol level way above the legal limit of .08.
A month after the hit-and-run, Milosky still wasn’t willing to admit her mistake; she ended up pleading no contest.
Already unpopular with some parents, this was the second time in less than a year that the principal has made the headlines. Even if she was trying to avoid further press, running away certainly doesn’t improve public opinion.
Since the collision happened on a weekend and was unrelated to Milosky’s job, The San Francisco Unified School District found no reason to fire her.
Granted, the full details of the story are not revealed. In fact, we don’t even know if she’s an alcoholic. But one thing's for sure: If she continues to deny what happened, rehab won’t do her much good. You can’t fix a problem unless you admit that the problem exists.
Realizing that there’s a problem and having the courage to try and fix that problem is where true recovery begins.
And hopefully, Sheila Milosky will see that.