Arlington Heights Woman Killed In Bicycle Accident A 'Beautiful Soul'

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL — A local family that hired a woman years ago to babysit for and then help raise their five children is now helping to raise money to establish a scholarship in an Arlington Heights resident’s memory after she was recently killed in a bicycling accident.

Slywia Wagner-Jarosz is being remembered as “a beautiful soul” who leaves behind a husband and a legacy of helping others after she was killed in a bicycling crash last week. Wagner-Jarosz worked as a teacher working with Polish students at the Long Grove Country School and was riding to work on her bicycle when she was struck and killed by a landscaping truck in an accident that shut down Lake Cook Road for nearly 10 hours.

She was 45. Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Thomas of Villanova Catholic Church in Palatine.

Now, Kristie Norvell, whose family hired Wagner-Jarosz to help watch her five children more than 10 years ago, is hoping to establish a scholarship at Long Grove Country School in the teacher’s honor. She has established a GoFundMe effort that as of Wednesday morning has raised more than $5,600. In addition to the scholarship fund, funds will be used to create a garden at the school in Wagner-Jarosz’s honor.

Wagner-Jarosz started at the school as a volunteer and spent 10 years working there as a paid teacher, the school said.

Norvell said that Wagner-Jarosz single-handedly established the Polish program at the Long Grove school and is being remembered as a beloved teacher who possessed the unique ability to make every child feel welcome, loved, and encouraged, the GoFundMe says.

“Words cannot express how much we all loved her and how dearly she will be missed,” the school wrote on its Facebook page after the teacher’s death. “Those of us fortunate enough to have met her know that she was always an angel. I would always tell her that she was like a Fairy Godmother to all of the children at school. Now she has her wings and will be able to watch over all of us. “

For Norvell, whose sister-in-law hired Wagner-Jarosz as a nanny before she came to work with Norvell’s children, the loss of a woman who she said would do anything for anyone is still hard to take.

“She worked so hard — no matter what she did,” her heart and soul were in it,” Norvell told Patch on Wednesday. “She was so responsible and loving, and I’m not the first person to say she was a beautiful soul. You can’t say one negative thing (about her). You can’t find it.”

She added: “She would do anything to help you.”

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