Zoe Damon

Binghamton University
Tropical Forest Initiative
July, 2011

Just shy of 21, Zoe was a beautiful and exceptional individual going into her senior year of college, double majoring in biology and painting. She was a high honors student, who for years had been a scholar athlete lacrosse player. She played classical piano since the age of 9 and painted like a true artist.  She wrote poetry like a sage and deeply loved her life, her family and her friends. Our Zoe never came home from a one month study abroad program through Binghamton University and the Tropical Forestry Initiative (TFI) in Costa Rica.

Two weeks into the program, I was visited by 2 State Troopers delivering the news that she died in a car crash the previous night. Her professor had been driving a van of students and lost control.  Their van tumbled down a ravine and landed in a river upside down – my daughter was the only one who didn’t survive.

I am still feeling the shock of her death as I describe it again.
I am a seasoned trauma therapist, licensed clinical social worker and Diplomate of the American Academy of Experts on Traumatic Stress and the National Center for Crisis Management.  I understand and feel the full and lasting impact that this event will have on my life and the life of my surviving family. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) complete with panic attacks, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, will plague us for some time. The grief will be with us forever.

How could we have expected this? How could this have been avoided? Would I have sent her on such a trip if I had understood that the professor would be driving instead of a local professional driver, or  if I’d known that there are a percentage of students who never return from their studies overseas?
A few months ago I came upon a website founded by Sheryl Hill, www.ClearCauseFoundation.org. I was relieved to see someone else who had been through a similar experience, years earlier, who was wanting to protect children and families by advocating for more transparency,  more oversight,  and some form of  regulation of these programs.

In researching this issue, we find it is common that schools abdicate responsibility, professors do the same, and the trips resume, without any reporting to the subsequent groups of students and parents. ClearCause Foundation is attempting to bring more awareness to this growing problem, as our President with his 100,000 strong initiatives and more and more schools and colleges are encouraging students to study abroad.

I believe the students and families should be given full disclosure of their schools’ safety and security records, of all the risks connected with travel programs, so parents and students can make informed choices about the risks they are taking.

We will be living with the loss of our daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece, cousin, friend, for the rest of our lives. Being left with a feeling of powerlessness is a natural response to loss, but I have decided to direct that energy toward making changes that can help others. As a result, I have recently joined the Board of Advisors of ClearCause.  I hope that together our efforts to create a mandate for more transparency and regulations can help to save the lives of some future travelers.


Noelle Damon,
Bereaved mother of my beautiful and mutli-talented, 20 year old daughter, Zoe (Bless you!)

See Zoe's press release here.
Watch the video below to learn more about Zoe's story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgkyTx2kxN4