Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [16]
I thought I’d made a friend. Truly, I didn’t think Gabby wanted to get romantically involved with me. But she was beginning to see the possibilities. The distance, my divorce, her busy career, my busy career—she was hesitant, but willing to give us a try.
Gabby talked about me to her mother. Gloria liked to say that Gabby was on a lifelong quest for “a glamorous guy who will understand and adore her.” That was a tall order. So far, as her mother saw it, Gabby had been coming up blank, dating men who were mostly self-involved and not fully comfortable with her smarts and ambitions. “I’ve always known my life would be pretty irregular,” Gabby told her mom. “I need a guy who will support me and my career, but who is strong enough to stand on his own.”
As she gave her mother a few details about me, she pulled out a photo taken in China of the entire young leadership group. “So which one do you think is Mark?” Gabby asked.
Gloria studied all the faces in the photo. She thought a Navy pilot in the astronaut corps would be tall, blond, well-built, and movie-star handsome. Not expecting a bald, regular guy like me, Gloria couldn’t pick me out of the lineup. When Gabby pointed me out, her mother said, “Hmmm, OK.”
With her mother’s lukewarm endorsement, Gabby took the lead. In November 2004, she called me in Houston and asked me out on our first date, though it didn’t exactly sound like a date to me. “I’ve got to go to the Arizona State Prison in Florence,” Gabby said. “I need to visit Death Row. Want to come with me?”
She was working on legislation in the Arizona Senate regarding capital punishment and, always diligent, figured she’d better get an up-close look at the issue before she weighed in on it. That was Gabby. Her idea of a date included a foray into public policy.
As for me, the son of cops, this trip sounded like an adventure. Not everyone gets the chance to visit a maximum-security prison and possibly sit in the chair in the gas chamber. It would also be nice to see Gabby again.
Because I was training then as a pilot on the space shuttle, I was required to log a considerable amount of time flying the Northrop T-38 Talon, the supersonic jet trainer. I needed a lot of hours in the air, so I could take it up pretty much anytime I wanted and fly it anywhere. “I’ll fly the T-38 over to Tucson and meet you,” I told Gabby.
I reserved a room at the officers’ quarters at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. But then four days before the trip, Gabby called and said it wasn’t a good time to come. Her dad wasn’t feeling well. I’d later learn that her dad’s health was secondary. In truth, she was getting cold feet. Did she really want to start a long-distance relationship with a divorced father?
I told Gabby I’d already reserved the jet and the room at the Air Force base. “I’ll come anyway so I can get the training hours,” I said. “I’m sorry I won’t see you.”
A couple days later, Gabby reconsidered. She called and told me her dad would be OK. She wanted to take me to the prison. I flew in as planned and she picked me up at the air base.
It was a forty-five-minute drive to the prison, and at first we talked mostly about the criminal-justice system. She had been a supporter of the death penalty, but her feelings about it were shifting, and she eventually changed her position. She had been reading a book about death penalty cases in the United States, and how mistakes were made in some of them.
“Innocent people have been executed,” she told me. “And besides that, I’ve come to believe that the state shouldn’t kill its citizens.” I told her I agreed with her. (Our conversation in the car that day would return to my mind after Gabby was shot, when the U.S. Attorney’s Office asked for our views on the issue of capital punishment. As a victim, Gabby will get to weigh in as the government decides