GENERAL FEATURE

MARK PATINKIN, The Providence Journal, R.I.

In February 2003, Rhode Island experienced one of its greatest tragedies: a catastrophic fire at a packed
nightclub called The Station. It eventually claimed 100 lives, including that of Pam Gruttadauria. I
approached this project not just as the story of Pam, but in a larger sense, through her, as the story of the fire
itself. For example, showing how a hospital such as Massachusetts General Hospital coped the night so many
fire victims came its way. Pam took a turn and died weeks after I began gathering material. I don’t like to do
stories that are only a portrait of grief and tragedy. So I worked hard to weave in what I felt were positive
themes: the valiance of the caregivers, Pam’s own life and perhaps most importantly, the mother’s strength.

THE STATION NIGHTCLUB DISASTER

At the end, her lips moved,

and it seemed her head nodded
T
hey were at their daughter’s bedside
when Dr. Kenneth Haspel, the doctor
in charge that night, said it would be
good if they could talk in a private
conference room.
Joe and Anna Gruttadauria understood.
“Do you want anyone else with you?” the
doctor asked.
“No,” said Anna. “We want to hear on our
own.”
The three went into the room. It was part of
the Massachusetts General Hospital’s surgical
intensive care unit, where the sickest patients
are treated.
Dr. Haspel closed the door. Anna could tell it
was hard for him to get the words out. He had
been part of the team treating her daughter
Pamela for two and a half months. She had
been brought in hours after the Feb. 20 Rhode
Island nightclub fire. She had been kept sedat-
ed and unconscious ever since.
Pam, Dr. Haspel said, had been in decline
for the past 24 hours. The infection she’d had
for weeks was overwhelming her. Her blood
pressure was continuing to drop. Her kidneys
were failing, and so was her liver. Medications
weren’t working anymore. Pam was going into
multisystem failure. Dr. Haspel wished he
could offer more, but there were no real op-
tions left.
He suggested they consider turning off the
kidney machine.
Anna asked if that would be like pulling the
plug. It was 6 p.m. last Sunday. Her daughter
was 33.
No, said Dr. Haspel, the dialysis was barely
working. At best, it would artificially sustain
Pam a bit longer while her organs continued
to shut down.
Anna asked what would happen next.
It’s not like television, said Dr. Haspel, where
you turn off a switch and the patient dies. Pam
would linger for a number of hours.
Joe asked if her kidneys might kick back in.
He was sorry, but there was almost no
chance of that. Then he left to allow Anna and
Joe a moment alone.
The two sat in silence. They had been ex-
pecting this since midmorning, when Joe’s cell
phone rang while they were having breakfast
with friends. It was Maureen Kroll, the ICU
nurse who had been caring for Pam since she
first came into Mass. General as a Jane Doe
with some of the worst burns from the fire at
The Station nightclub.
“Is it bad?” asked Joe.
“Why don’t you come up as soon as you
can,” said Maureen. “And anyone else who
wants to say goodbye to Pam.”
The parents got to Mass. General just before
noon. For the next six hours, the staff worked
hard to try to help Pam. Nothing worked.
And now Joe and Anna, both 58 years old,
were in the conference room.
“I think Pam’s tired,” Joe said to his wife.
“She’s fought a good battle, but she’s tired.”
Anna agreed that removing the kidney ma-
chine was the best thing for Pam. She was
comforted that their daughter would not feel
pain.
She didn’t want Pam to go, but knew it was
no longer her decision to make. It was Pam’s
decision. And she seemed ready.
They went back to Room 14 of the fourth-
floor ICU, and told Dr. Haspel. He had the
nurses unhook the kidney machine and stop
the respirator. Pam continued to breathe shal-
lowly on her own.
The parents went to her bedside.
“Hi, Pam,” Anna said to her daughter. “Mom
and Dad are here. We’re going to sit with you
for a while.”
✦
These past months, Anna told herself, had
been a gift, especially since early on, she was
convinced her daughter had been killed the
night of the fire.
She had begun to face it around 6:30 a.m.
the morning after when the Red Cross repre-
sentatives told the family there was no “Pam
Gruttadauria” on the current survivors list.
Like others, the parents began to call hospi-
tals. Pam was 5 feet tall, they said, with brown-
ish-black straight hair. Massachusetts General
had two Jane Does, but the early description
had them both at 5 feet 4 inches, in part be-

22
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000)
With their daughter Pam’s health weighing on their minds, Joe and Anna Gruttadauria take a moment in their living room between
trips to the hospital. Joe Gruttadauria gives Pam’s dog, JD, a scratch.
cause burn victims develop swelling so mas-
sive it can make height measurements impre-
cise.
Back in Johnston, the Gruttadaurias’ small
home was filled with family members telling
each other they’d find Pam, somewhere. But
Anna kept looking at the TV footage of the fire.
She could not imagine anyone surviving it.
Anna is a gentle woman, a librarian who
spends her evenings reading. But those who
know her say she has exceptional strength.
Around 3 p.m., 16 hours after the fire, she went
into a bedroom and closed the door. Anna
Gruttadauria felt she needed to begin funeral
arrangements.
Her daughter worked as breakfast supervi-
sor at the Holiday Inn Express in Warwick. She
often spoke of how much she loved the job.
Anna got the Holiday Inn manager on the
phone.
“I think my daughter died in the fire,” said
Anna. “I’d like to have her funeral breakfast at
the hotel.”
✦ in his 20s who stood out because he was so
Of the 14 fire victims who came into Massa-
chusetts General Hospital during the early
morning of Feb. 21, about half were unidenti-
fied. In addition to the burns, many either lost
jewelry or had it cut off by frantic medical
workers fighting dangerous swelling.
Dr. Lawrence Park, Mass. General’s emer-
gency-room psychiatrist, organized a system
to figure out who they were.
As hundreds of calls came in from people
looking for loved ones, Dr. Park and others
took down name, age, height, weight, clothing.
They asked about scars, piercings, eye color,
tattoos and teeth. Because most were burned
on their faces, hands and upper bodies, they
asked for size and descriptions of feet.
By mid Friday, they had named all but two
Jane Does. They were the last hope for those
still awaiting word.
Dr. Park spent much of the day having to say
“I’m sorry” to the scores who drove to the hos-
pital.
Some responded to the news by crying. Oth-
ers told Dr. Park that they didn’t believe him, or
to look again. He remembers one young man
quiet and polite. He came looking for his sis-
ter, describing a mole she had.
GENERAL FEATURE
Photos by MARY MURPHY/The Providence Journal
Dr. Park personally went upstairs to check
for him. It wasn’t a match. He found the young
man sitting alone, apart from the dozens of
others in the hospital support room.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Park said.
The young man didn’t say anything for a
long time.
“So she’s not here?”
“No, I’m sorry. It doesn’t look like she is.”
And then he asked if he might sit with his
thoughts for just a little while.
✦
By mid Saturday, there was only one Jane
Doe left, referred to officially as the “unknown
woman in Room 14.” The Gruttadaurias de-
cided to call Mass. General again. This time,
they were asked for a more elaborate descrip-
tion. They mentioned that Pam had acne scars
on her upper chest and a chipped front tooth.
Dr. Park had been pushing hard to make the
final identification. He knew that even uncon-
scious patients do better when their families
are around them. His team narrowed the Jane
Doe to three or four possibilities. They remea-
sured Pam with her swelling in mind and
found she was actually 5 feet. Then they got
23

the information about the chipped tooth.
Dr. Park called back the Gruttadaurias.
“We can’t be sure,” he said, “but we have a
person here who might be Pam.” He asked
them to come to the hospital.
Anna Gruttadauria is not the big-city type,
and had only been to Boston twice in her 58
years. She and Joe weren’t sure how to get to
Mass. General. She called Chief Richard Tam-
burini of the Johnston police to ask for help.
He sent two cars to escort them.
Dr. Park was waiting. There was a lot of me-
dia, so he brought Anna, Joe and Pam’s 30-
year-old brother up a back way. Dr. Park
watched as the three held hands in the eleva-
tor, trying to gather courage.
Outside Pam’s room, he told the parents
their daughter was very badly injured. They
wouldn’t be able to see her face and hands,
both being fully bandaged.
“It may sound unusual,” Dr. Park said, “but
we’re going to try to ask you to identify Pam
from the waist down.”
Only one person would be allowed in at a
time. Who would be first?
“I want to go,” said Anna.
She got into a gown, gloves, cap and mask.
The room was very hot, since burn patients’
temperatures often drop.
The patient’s feet were terribly swollen, but
Anna looked beyond that. She knew Pam had
a little toe that crossed over the one next to it.
This patient had an overlapping toe. The pa-
tient also had toenails cut straight like Pam
used to cut them. She had familiar skin scars
on her unburned upper chest. And she had
the exact same chipped tooth.
“This is Pam,” Anna said.
Then she thought: “My daughter survived
hell.”
She placed her hand on Pam’s leg.
“Mom’s here,” said Anna.
The others were allowed in.
“It’s Dad,” Joe said. “We love you.”
The nurse in the room began to cry. “I am so
glad we found Pam’s parents,” she said.
✦ Pam had always had her dad wrapped
As she sat by her daughter during the final
hours, Anna looked at the photos of Pam cov-
ering the walls and remembered when Pam
was 7 and wanted her ears pierced. Anna hesi-
tated, having never pierced her own ears, but
Pam kept pushing until they went together to
the mall.
Once there, Pam insisted on going first. Af-
terward, she said, “It doesn’t hurt, Mom. You
can do it. It’s all right.” And so, at age 32, Anna
got her ears pierced. If she can do it, thought
Anna, I can do it.
Almost every day since the fire, Anna had
thought almost the exact same words.
24
Pam Gruttadauria
Joe, too, looked at the pictures and remem-
bered the way his daughter began playing
softball at age 8, and would quit every year.
“I’m not going to play again,” she’d say at each
season’s end.
“It’s up to you, Pam,” Joe would tell her. “I’m
not going to force you.”
But every new spring, Pam suited back up,
right through age 15. Now, Joe thought about
how she was never the kind to quit until she
had to.
As a little girl, Anna felt Pam was a Gemini to
the hilt — two personalities, grouchy one
minute, smiling the next. She had a ton of en-
ergy, and could be very stubborn. Around age
8, Pam was cast in a key role for a big church
presentation. At the last minute she decided
she wasn’t in the mood. There was no talking
her into it, so they had to scramble for a re-
placement.
These past months, even the nurses said
they could tell by the fight in her body that she
was stubborn.
around her finger. Joe admitted as much.
Every year, he’d take her to the father-daughter
dance at Johnston’s Barnes elementary school.
Soon, she’d run off with her girlfriends, and
leave him standing there. But Joe never com-
plained. As long as Pam was happy, and Joe
was somewhere in the picture, that was good
enough.
She loved to ride her bike around the neigh-
borhood with Patty Lyons, her best friend
across the street. One day, when Pam was 13,
the two disappeared for over an hour, panick-
ing her parents. Joe got in the car, tracked her
down and sent her to her room. Anna asked
GENERAL FEATURE
her husband how that was punishment; Pam
loved hanging out in her room, having both a
TV and stereo in there. Joe just shrugged. He
didn’t have it in him to punish Pam any harder
than that.
When Pam was 16, she got a job in house-
keeping at a nursing home. She lasted a
month. She told her mom that when she went
into each room to clean, the people begged
her to stay and talk because they seldom got
company. It broke Pam’s heart so much she
decided she couldn’t go in anymore.
She graduated from Johnston High in 1987.
Three and a half years ago, at age 30, Pam
moved back home after a long-term relation-
ship ended. Anna felt her daughter bounced
back pretty well, but Pam would sometimes
wonder whether she’d ever find the right guy.
“Too many guys have baggage,” she’d say. “I’ll
have to stay single until I find one without
any.”
She finished a degree in hospitality at the
Sawyer School in 1999, and worked her way
up to her dream job, food buyer and breakfast
supervisor at the Holiday Inn Express in War-
wick. She had to be there by 5:30 a.m. to set up
for 150 people. She was never late, partly be-
cause of her dad. He’d call into her room be-
fore 5: “Pam, are you up?”
“Yeah, Dad,” she’d say. “I’m up.”
But she wouldn’t be, so he’d call in again.
“I’m up, Dad,” she’d assure him, then fall
back asleep.
Usually, the third wake-up call worked.
She didn’t leave herself a lot of time, and of-
ten stalled on which way to wear her hair.
“That was the Gemini in her,” Anna said. Pam
had shoulder-length hair that she sometimes
wore in a perm, but usually straight. The night
of the fire, she wore it up in a barrette. The
small area beneath the barrette was the only
spot that wasn’t permanently burned off.
The doctors had planned to use that hair to
give Pam eyebrows again, a distinctive family
trait she got from her father. And Anna was
confident there were beautiful wigs out there
that would look just like Pam’s own hair.
✦
Anna liked having Pam back home again,
the way she’d pull up after work in her purple
Geo Tracker, and say “Hi, puppy; hi Ma, I’m
home.”
Her dog, JD, was a goofy rottweiler-shep-
herd mix. She had no idea it would grow to 100
pounds, but she continued calling it “puppy.”
Pam was into routine. The first thing she’d
do when she got home at 2 p.m. was to take JD
for a walk. On summer days, she liked to tan in
the backyard. Then she’d make coffee and
watch a soap opera or two. It was her guilty
pleasure. Anna’s sister Tina, who lives down
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000)
the street, liked the soaps as well, and if Pam
missed an episode, she’d call “Auntie” to get
filled in.
Then she’d exercise in front of a workout
tape, and often get into her PJs early. She was a
real homebody. Sometimes, Anna found Pam
and her dog together on the family couch. An-
na didn’t mind. Both she and her daughter felt
a house was for living in.
Mostly, Pam made time for her niece and
two nephews, the children of her brother Joe,
who developed multiple sclerosis several
years ago.
On Wednesdays, Pam would drive to War-
wick to take the older two to East-West karate
on Route 44. Austin is 7 and Samantha 9. Af-
terward, they’d have dinner at Best Pizza on
Atwood Avenue next to Johnston Town Hall.
Anna worked Wednesday nights at the Marian
Mohr library, and Pam would often swing by
so the kids could read books there or go on the
computer.
Sometimes, one or the other would stay over
on a Saturday — Pam would call it “Aunt and
niece day” or “Aunt and nephew day.” She’d
take Samantha shopping at the mall and out
to lunch at Chelo’s or Newport Creamery.
Austin liked hanging around in his PJs and
watching cartoons, so Pam would do that with
him. Sometimes, she’d joke with Austin that he
was Auntie’s Saturday night date.
Anna remembers that one of the hardest
things she had to do in the days after Feb. 20
was to tell Samantha and Austin that Auntie
Pam was in the fire. Samantha could not stop
crying.
✦ In most cases, burn shock had caused so
An hour had passed since they had removed
Pam from the kidney machine and respirator.
Joe and Anna remained at her bedside. She
continued to breathe, and her heart to beat.
Anna’s thoughts went to the staff. She was
grateful to the nurses, and had a special fond-
ness for the hospital’s three burn surgeons,
who virtually lived at the hospital during the
month after Feb. 20.
An hour after news of the fire broke, Dr.
Robert Sheridan, 47, got a call at home from
Bill Cioffi, surgeon in chief at Rhode Island
hospital. Dr. Cioffi explained about the night-
club, and said there were reports of many vic-
tims on their way. There weren’t enough inten-
sive-care beds in Rhode Island to take them
all. Could Mass. General help?
Dr. Cioffi told Dr. Sheridan they would likely
send up four people.
Dr. Sheridan said Mass. General could take
10.
They ended up with 14.
As they came in two at a time, Dr. Sheridan
kept wondering when it would stop. It got to a
point where he had to seek permission to
open four beds at the Shriners Burn Institute
across the street. It was the first time in 80
years that any of the nation’s three 30-bed
Shriners burn hospitals had taken in adults.
The burns on the victims were alarmingly
deep, the kind that reminded Dr. Sheridan of
electrical high-voltage injuries. They were
fourth-degree burns, down to muscle, tendon
and even bone. Dr. Sheridan suspected the
patients had been stuck in a pile and burned
for a long time.
Pam Gruttadauria, an unknown at that
point, was brought in by helicopter around 2
a.m. Dr. John Schulz, another lead burn sur-
geon, saw her come in. The burns on her
head, arms and hands were terribly deep. Dr.
Schulz saw such facial burns perhaps once a
year.
He thought to himself, “Oh, no.”
Like the others, Pam was intubated. Had she
not been, her throat would have swollen
closed and killed her.
Dr. Colleen Ryan, 46, the third lead burn sur-
geon, was in at 6 a.m.
“You didn’t even know where to start,” she
recalls. “There were just so many.”
The first thing they did were escharotomies
on Pam’s hands, cutting swollen skin to relieve
tourniquet-tight pressure that was cutting her
blood flow. They moved from one patient to
the next, doing the same operation.
For Pam, the escharotomies were soon not
enough — she needed fasciotomies, too,
where incisions are made even deeper to let
tissue fan open.
much leakage out of the victims’ veins that
they were weeping fluid through their skin —
and still nurses had to infuse them with a liter
an hour to keep up their blood pressure.
In Pam’s case, it caused such swelling that
the few parts of her body uncovered by band-
ages, including her feet and lips, expanded vis-
ibly to triple in size.
Over the next 48 hours, the three surgeons
performed dozens of operations, lasting hours
each, mostly removing burned tissue. The sur-
gical wards and burn rooms were kept in the
90s, in some cases over 100. The surgeons
worked in the heat, perspiring under their
clothing and sterile gowns.
Many victims developed infections from
having had dirty snow rubbed on their burnt
skin. It was the right thing to do, but the result
meant more operations to remove gan-
grenous tissue.
Dyna Schmeltz, 30, an occupational thera-
pist, was stunned to find wounds so deep that
muscle and tendons were visible. She hadn’t
seen that since doing dissections in anatomy
GENERAL FEATURE
class.
In one dramatic operation, Pam’s abdomen
swelled so badly Dr. Ryan had to open it to re-
lieve pressure on her organs.
Early on, Dr. Ryan sat down with Anna and
Joe.
“She has an horrendous injury,” she said.
“It’s potentially survivable, but with deficits.”
As they talked, Dr. Ryan sensed the Grut-
tadaurias were a religious family. She told
them to pray that if Pam survives this, she can
endure all she has lost. And if she can’t, pray
that God takes her.
Then she asked: “What do you think Pam
would want?”
Anna understood the question.
She said that Pam was tough as nails. “I
think she’ll be really angry. But we’ll be able to
cope.”
The nurses, too, told Anna and Joe that it
would be a difficult road. “We know that,” said
Anna. “But we’ll do anything. We don’t care
how long it takes. Because we lost her. And we
found her.”
✦
The grafting continued. They began patch-
ing Pam and the others with artificial skin and
cadaver grafts to make a base for more perma-
nent patches from the patients’ own bodies.
Pam had burns over 37 percent of her body,
and 100 percent of her face. She was fortunate
to have unburned donor sites, but it still
meant using an instrument like a vegetable
peeler that left new, raw wounds on her good
skin.
The injuries to Pam’s hands soon became
clear. Dr. Schulz was one of several who broke
the news to the parents.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to save
them,” he said. Then he talked about amputa-
tion, believing you had to repeat bad news to
make sure people accept it. Far more than the
hours and strain of the work, Dr. Schulz felt
this was the hardest part of his job, telling fam-
ilies the truth.
The Gruttadaurias took the news with grace.
They would do whatever possible to help Pam
adjust, said Anna.
The operation took place the day Governor
Carcieri came up from Rhode Island to visit
the patients. Pam was not the only fire victim
facing such a loss. Dr. Ryan’s job that same day
was to amputate four hands.
Pam’s arms needed a lot of work, too, and
Dr. Schulz worried that one arm would have
long-term problems since the burns went to
the elbow.
Next, they began to try to re-establish eye-
lids. Anna was impressed at their skill. “It’s
amazing,” she told people, “that they can do
this.” Still, it was only a first step, and they had
25

to suture Pam’s eyes shut to guard against in-
fection.
The burns had destroyed not just Pam’s fa-
cial skin, but muscle, nerves and tendons un-
derneath that give shape and emotion. It
could take two years to rebuild that base, Dr.
Schulz explained, and years more to do cos-
metic work on top of it. Even then, the muscle
loss underneath would be a permanent prob-
lem.
Still, all three surgeons felt they could help
Pam recover a decent quality of life. Dr. Ryan
said it’s one of the reasons she does this work:
seeing people with terrible burn injuries fight
back to health, hold jobs, get married, have
children.
“A lot of people think you don’t go back into
life with disfiguring burns,” Dr. Ryan said, “but
the vast majority of them do.”
Up to now, Pam’s face had been constantly
bandaged. After the first grafting, they asked if
anyone in the family wanted to see.
“She’s my daughter,” said Anna. “If I can’t see
her, then no one’s going to be able to see her.”
They undid the bandages.
Anna never flinched. Her daughter looked
better than she expected. It was a promising
start.
After several weeks, Pam came down with a
bad infection. It went through her blood, and
drove her temperature to 105. Because of the
depth of Pam’s wounds, it got worse and
worse.
One night, the doctors told the parents it
might be best if they slept at the Holiday Inn
across the street, so they could be available.
Before she left the room, Anna spoke to her
daughter.
“Don’t leave, Pam,” she said. “Try to stay.”
The parents left and Anna got ready for bed.
Around 10:30, Joe told her he was going to see
Pam. It was a raw night outside. She asked if he
really wanted to walk a block through cold at
this hour. Joe said he’d be fine.
He took the elevator to the ICU, gowned up,
and went into Pam’s room. He told her Dad
was here, and chatted for a few moments.
Then he sat there for a long time. Finally, he
fixed her blankets as much as he was able
around the bandages, and tucked her in for
the night.
In the next days, Pam fought her way out of
the infection.
✦ you, Pam.”
It had been two hours now since the re-
moval of the kidney machine, and Pam held
on. Usually, it was Anna’s habit to study the
monitor above Pam’s bed, watching her
blood-pressure readings and pulmonary ar-
tery pressure; her temperature, her oxygena-
tion, her respiratory rate. But the room moni-
tor had been turned off, so Anna’s focus was all
26
on Pam.
She thought back to the routine of the past
few months.
Anna would rise each morning at 5:30, get
the paper, make coffee and then call the ICU.
The nurse would tell her whether Pam had a
peaceful night, or a restless one. Anna didn’t
talk long, knowing burn-patient care was busy.
The first month, she and Joe drove up each
morning, but Anna decided it would be good
to resume part of their lives. The hospital so-
cial workers encouraged it. Joe, a master
plumber and pipe fitter, resisted.
“You have to start living life a little bit,” Anna
told him. “Pam would want you to.”
She worried about Joe. He had lost 15
pounds and often just sat and stared.
He didn’t know where Anna got her strength,
but he knew that whatever strength he himself
had for this, he got from her.
Anna would arrive at the library before 9 to
help open, then settle behind the circulation
desk, where her favorite part of the job was
talking to patrons. She would finish work
around 3, and meet her husband back home.
Joe was working in Canton, halfway to Boston,
but he drove back to get Anna so they could go
up together.
“Hi Pam,” Anna would say when they got to
her room. “We’re here. We love you. You’re do-
ing a good job. Keep up the good work.”
They’d update her on personal news — that
Debbie, Pam’s cousin in New York who mar-
ried last year at 39, was having a baby: “Re-
member how Debbie told you at her wedding
that it’s never too late? And you laughed and
said well, you’d just have to wait for Mr. Right
to come along?”
Sometimes, they’d have Austin and Saman-
tha record their voices and play them back to
Pam.
The parents were impressed by how hu-
manely the staff treated Pam, both doctors
and nurses.
“Pam, honey,” the nurses would say, “we’re
putting cream on your eyes. . . This might hurt
a bit. . . . We’re about to cool you down now,
Pam.” They said they didn’t want her to be sur-
prised by anything they did.
As they worked, they’d tell her it was sunny
outside or snowing.
Other times, nurses like Liz Sgueglia, 31,
would simply say, “I’m sorry this happened to
Both parents were afraid to touch Pam
where she’d been burned, even on the band-
ages, so Anna would usually rub her feet.
If Pam had a bad day, Anna would ask St.
Jude to please watch over her. She felt it was a
miracle that Pam was found alive two days af-
ter the fire, and there was a purpose in Pam
having survived this long. But Anna also knew
GENERAL FEATURE
there was a greater plan, which she could not
know.
✦
On Easter, about 10 family members
planned to go up to Pam’s room to celebrate
with her. She had always been into holidays,
loved decorating the house, making a mess
with her niece and nephews coloring eggs.
Everyone said she’d be the one to carry on the
Gruttadauria traditions into the next genera-
tion.
That Easter morning, Julie Farrar, 30, one of
the nurses, called to say Pam was coming to
the surface, showing noticeable response.
Anna and Joe were soon at her bedside.
“It’s Mom and Dad,” Joe said. “Can you hear
us?”
Pam nodded.
Anna rubbed Pam’s leg and asked if she
could feel it. Pam moved her foot.
“Pam, I’m your nurse,” said Julie. “You’ve
been in an accident. You’ve been in a bad fire.
It’s OK. Don’t be frightened.”
“This is Dad, Pam,” Joe said. “We love you
very much. We’ll always love you.”
Anna considered it Pam’s Easter gift to her
family. She always gave her parents a card on
such holidays. She’d put Xs and Os at the bot-
tom, and sign it, “Love, Pam.” This was her ver-
sion of it now.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Joe said as they
left later that night. Neither parent ever said
“Goodbye” to Pam. It was always “Good night”
or “See you tomorrow.”
After a while, the doctors felt they needed to
increase Pam’s sedation to keep her system
from getting stressed.
Everyone thought Easter had been a big step
forward for Pam.
The next day, she developed another fungal
infection.
✦
Pam’s breathing was beginning to get shal-
lower. As Anna sat next to her on this final
night, the clock now reading 8 p.m., she real-
ized the hardest part of these two months was
that she simply missed her daughter. She
missed talking to Pam, and going to breakfast
with her. She missed shopping with her, and
taking her to dinner at Kris An’s on Atwood.
She missed watching JD run to the window
each day at 2 when he heard Pam’s Geo Track-
er pull up after work. Anna even missed being
awakened at 5:15 a.m. by Pam letting the door
slam too loud.
As she sat at Pam’s bedside, Anna remem-
bered the last time she and Pam talked.
It was brief. It was the Thursday night of the
fire.
Anna got home around 5 and found Pam in
the living room. She said she was about to
change for the concert at The Station.
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000)
Joe Gruttadauria receives a hug from Maureen Kroll, one of Pam’s nurses, during a
reception after Pam’s funeral.
“You know, Ma,” said Pam, “I found out the
band isn’t going on ‘til after 10. I don’t know if I
want to go.”
Pam wasn’t the club type, or into this kind of
music. She liked Barbra Streisand, and
Madonna. She liked rock, not metal. But Don-
na Mitchell, a friend and co-worker at the Hol-
iday Inn, asked if she’d come.
Anna could feel the hesitancy in Pam’s voice.
“Then don’t go,” said Anna.
“Well,” said Pam, “I promised Donna, and I
bought the ticket.” Plus, she didn’t have to
work the next morning.
Anna left first. She was heading to the mall
with her sister.
“Mom’s going, Pam,” she said. “Have a good
time. Be careful.”
“OK,” said Pam. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Pam left behind a note that said, “Dad, don’t
wake me up. I have a personal day. Love,
Pam.”
Anna woke at 1 a.m. and noticed the out-
door light still on. That was a bit odd. Even on
late weekend nights, she was home by 1. Per-
haps she stopped for a bite to eat with her
friend.
Anna was awakened again at 2 a.m. by the
phone. The answering machine picked it up.
She could hear the voice of the caller leaving a
message. It was the night auditor at Pam’s ho-
tel. He had apparently known where Pam and
Donna were going.
“Pam,” said the message, “are you OK? The
place is on fire.”
Joe woke up and asked if Pam was home.
No, said Anna, Pam was not home.
“Something’s wrong,” said Joe.
✦ paused to embrace Joe and Anna after taking
Maureen Kroll, wearing her nurse’s scrubs,
watched as Anna and Joe continued to talk to
their daughter. Maureen kept an eye on Pam’s
signs on a remote monitor just outside the
room door.
Anna looked up at her.
“I’m so glad you were here when we found
her,” Anna said of that first day. “And so glad
you’re here when we’re saying goodbye to her.”
Both the nurses and the doctors felt an ex-
ceptional connection to the Gruttadaurias. Dr.
Schulz remembered a very tough meeting at
the low point of Pam’s first infection. Pam, ex-
plained Dr. Schulz, was on maximum ventila-
tor support, her lungs marginal, her blood
pressure barely holding up. He told them this
could be the time.
“In the face of all that,” he recalled, “they
said they were glad I was taking care of her.” As
much as the work itself, Dr. Schulz felt it was
that kind of moment that made him want to
come to work each day.
“These people are not the norm,” Julie Far-
rar said of Anna and Joe. “I don’t know how
many parents in this situation would be as
calm.”
People have asked Anna where she gets her
strength.
“From Pam,” she says. And for Pam.
✦ It was 10:35 p.m.
As she sat by Pam’s bed, Anna thought about
Pam’s funeral. She decided, as she had
planned two and a half months before, to have
the reception at the Holiday Inn.
And that’s how it turned out.
On Friday, all five of Pam’s main nurses
came down to St. Robert Bellarmine Church in
Johnston for the funeral. So did Dr. Ryan. They
Communion, near the same spot where Pam
GENERAL FEATURE
had been baptized almost 34 years before.
Most of the nurses were weeping. They gave
Joe and Anna a cherry tree to be planted in
Pam’s memory in the Gruttadaurias’ yard.
Pam was buried in the new memorial gar-
den set aside at St. Ann Cemetery in Cranston
for fire victims. A granite wall is planned for
the names of all 100. Pam is the seventh to be
laid to rest there.
And then it was to the Holiday Inn, where
Pam had so loved working, for a final goodbye.
✦
Anna looked out Pam’s hospital window. It
faced a brick wall. She wished the room had a
more open view, because Pam loved the out-
doors. She loved the sun, and the beach, and
the water. Even in the winter, she liked to crack
open her window at home. “Pam,” Anna
would say, “you’re letting all my heat out.”
“Come on, Mom. The air’s refreshing.”
It was night, now, hours after Joe and Anna
had begun their vigil.
Anna rubbed the bandaged part of Pam’s
arm. Then she touched the grafted skin on
Pam’s face, which had been taken from her ab-
domen.
Pam’s breathing grew shallower still.
Another half-hour went by.
Once, Anna wept. But she had come to ac-
cept this was the best thing. She knew how
hard it would have been for Pam to lose so
much, and endure such pain for so many
years.
By now, the other relatives had left. Anna
told Pam to hold on, her oldest friend Patty
was on her way after her shift as an EMT in
Rhode Island.
At 9:30 Patty came and the parents left the
two friends alone.
After a while, Patty decided it was too hard
to stay to the end, so then it was just Joe and
Anna.
Pam’s blood pressure kept dropping. Mau-
reen Kroll came in to give more sedation. She
assured the parents Pam was comfortable.
Pam’s breathing grew shallower.
It occurred to Joe that his daughter had been
through enough.
“You put up a good fight, Pam,” said Joe.
“You fought all these months. We’re proud of
you. If you’re tired, you can rest.”
“We love you, Pam,” Anna said. “If you want
to stay, you can stay. But if you want to go, we’ll
love you just as much.”
Pam’s lips briefly moved, and it seemed her
head nodded.
Maureen came in and said Pam had died.
It happened just after her parents had whis-
pered their words.
Anna is sure that Pam had heard them.
27
 SHORT FEATURE

DAVE PHILIPPS, The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo.

An AP story about an alligator chomping its way out of a box in a post office ended with this matter-of-
fact gem: “Alligators longer than 20 inches long cannot be sent through the mail.” When I stopped
laughing, I called the post office and got a copy of the rules. From there it was just a matter of fishing
out the ridiculous in the book’s vast reservoir of mundane regulations.

MAIL species
Can you send animals as gifts? Sure — if it’s not a snake

T
rue story: A few weeks ago, in a post
office in Milwaukee, Wis., an alligator
tried to chew its way out of an Express
Mail box bound for Colorado.
The toothy snout of the 4-foot gator
chomped through the cardboard even as
workers tried to seal it back in the box with
tape.
Since it’s that package-sending time of year,
it might be a good idea to take this pop quiz. It
was illegal to send this alligator through the
U.S. Postal Service because:
A. Any knucklehead knows not to mail a liv-
ing creature.
B. Reptiles must be detoothed for mailing.
C. The gator was more than 20 inches long.
If you answered anything but C, you are in
danger of letting logic get in the way of postal
codes.
The rules are clearly spelled out in the Postal
Service Domestic Mail Manual’s chapter on
live animal mail-ability. Any alligator or croco-
dile under 20 inches can travel through the
mail with the proper postage.
Not that you should mail an alligator, but
you could.
Surprised? Maybe we, as a nation, need to
bone up on animal mail-ability.
If we don’t, we’ll have no one to blame but
ourselves if our alligators don’t arrive on time
so they can be chewing through bows and rib-
bons on Christmas morning.
SQUIRMY THINGS
First rule:
No snakes.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a poisonous viper ad-
dressed to a personal enemy (that actually
happened this year in Arkansas) or a saintly lit-
tle garter snake that catches pests in the gar-
den. No snakes, period.
And no turtles either, snapping or non.
Newts, crickets, horned toads, millipedes
and other small, cold-blooded animals are al-
lowed and will be welcomed with open arms
at the post office, so long as they aren’t snakes
or legless lizards that could be confused with
snakes. Snakes, we repeat, are not allowed.
Although yeast qualifies as a small, cold-
blooded animal, one cannot send home-brew
through the mail.
STINGING, BITING THINGS
Poisonous spiders have no place in an enve-
lope, nor do any poisonous or disease-carry-
ing insects. This is the law.
But bees may travel the United States, pro-
vided they use ground transportation and not
air. Only queen bees may take a plane, accom-
panied by no more than eight attendant bees.
No kidding.
If a package contains one queen and nine
attendant bees, the sender will be in violation
of postal codes.
Scorpions are quite all right to mail, even
deadly, venomous scorpions that hide in peo-
ple’s shoes, as long as they are being sent for
the purpose of making antivenin, which
makes perfect sense. Please, seal them in an
escape-proof package marked “LIVE SCORPI-
ONS.”
Dead scorpions can be mailed without spe-
cial labeling. So can dead eels, seals and cock-
atiels, so long as they have been obtained
legally and are packaged to prevent oozing
and obnoxious smells. No funny business.
FEATHERED AND FURRY THINGS
Do not mail ocelots, elk, flying foxes or
flamingos. In fact, do not mail any warm-
blooded animal, horned or hoofed, furry or
feathered, mammal or marsupial, that crawls
the earth, not even the slightest shrew, unless
it is specifically named in the postal codes.
Swans are perfectly fine to mail, as long as
they weigh more than 6 ounces and are in an
approved container. This goes for guinea fowl
and quail, too. But do not try to ship a road-
runner. A box marked “LIVE ROADRUNNER”
will be refused.
Don’t joke around, either. If you mail a box
marked “LIVE ROADRUNNER” or “LIVE
SWAN” that actually contains snakes, you will
be sent to lick stamps at a federal prison.
If you need to mail baby pheasants, that’s
fine, but send them only between April and
August, or else. Adult pheasants can be mailed
year-round.
Small sharks are OK. Squirrels are not. Hum-
mingbirds are not. Pigeons are OK. Snakes are
not OK. No snakes.
It may seem strict, but calling birds cannot
be mailed under any circumstances, not even
in the name of true love on Christmas. With
the right vaccinations, however, geese a-lay-
ing, swans a-swimming, French hens, turtle
doves, partridges and pear trees are allowed.
These rules are made to protect mail carriers
and ensure your packages arrive safely.
So mail your legal animals early to beat the
holiday rush — though maybe you’d be better
off giving gifts of food instead of scorpions or
some other living creature. Even the snakes
will appreciate it.

28
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000) SHORT FEATURE

Photo illustration by JODY CONDITT/The Gazette

Alive, online, overnight critters

delivered to your door
A sampling of Web sites that ship live ani- including postage and a reusable carrier.
mals through the mail: www.gjsostrichranch.com

PHEASANT CHICKS: McFarlane Pheasants LADYBUGS: Planet Natural will ship a half-
will send, by Express Mail, 50 chicks for $2 a pint of ladybugs (about 4,500 eggs) for $15.95,
chick, plus postage. Order 1,000 chicks and shipping included. www.planetnatural.com
the price drops to around $1.
www.pheasant.com ALBINO GECKO: Hanley’s Herps will ship a
male albino gecko for $90, shipping not in-
OSTRICH CHICKS: Three Fork Creek Os- cluded. www.hanleysherps.com
trich Ranch will mail six chicks for $80 a chick,

29
 NARRATIVE FEATURE

MIKE SIELSKI, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

Terry Larimer, my sports editor at The Morning Call, told me about Jason Stinsmen and assigned me the
story. Once I interviewed Dr. Joseph Coladonato, the surgeon who operated on Jason, I knew there was too
much drama to the story to keep it to 20 inches. The project took three months to complete. I followed
Jason’s progress during his rehabilitation (attending his daily therapy sessions), researched the type of sur-
gery he underwent, and interviewed his doctors, therapists, friends and as many people as I could find who
were there the night he broke his neck. I wanted as much detail as possible to tell the story with the right
combination of accuracy and flair.

EXTREME ORDEAL: PART I

A tragic twist of fate at midnight

On New Year’s Eve, minutes before 2002
became 2003, Salisbury native Jason
Stinsmen — one of the best in-line skaters
in the world, a 20-year-old man who could
do a double back flip with wheels on his
feet — broke his neck. This three-part series
chronicles how Stinsmen’s life and athletic
career changed forever in one horrible
instant.
while wearing roller blades. At the end of last
year, the Aggressive Skating Association, the
governing body of the sport, ranked him as the
third-best in-line skater in the world.
How much longer he would continue his
skating career, however, he didn’t know. A
sophomore computer science major at the
University of Utah, he spent hours traversing
the slopes at Alta, the renowned alpine resort
near Salt Lake City. Now 20 years old, Jason
and in skates, had twirled himself like a baton
time and time again. A double back flip was no
big deal.
Even if he had drained a few beers earlier in
the evening.
Even if he had smoked a little marijuana at
the party.
Even if his senses and his coordination had
been dulled a bit.
None of this mattered, he would say later —

H
e climbed on the trampoline that
night to impress a girl.
She had short hair and a warm smile,
and the more he talked with her that night, the
more he liked her. Jason Stinsmen had never
met her before then, before the party he threw
this past New Year’s Eve at his parents’ home in
Salisbury Township. Her first name was Lau-
ren. She was a friend of a friend. To this day, Ja-
son doesn’t know her last name.
There were 15-20 people at the party, a tradi-
tion among Jason’s friends from Salisbury
High School, a chance for them to reunite and
reminisce. Most of them were now sopho-
mores in college, scattered around the coun-
try. Bart Singer, who had known Jason since
kindergarten, was attending Dartmouth Col-
lege, studying music and psychology. Michael
Weiss, who also had grown up with Jason, was
a pre-med major at Wagner College on Staten
Island.
Jason was already a professional athlete —
an in-line skater who had competed twice at
the X Games in Philadelphia, who had crafted
a reputation as one of his sport’s most innovat-
ing competitors, who had earned mention in
the Guinness Book of World Records by becom-
ing the first man to land a double back flip
had learned to ski when he was 3, believed he
had a future as a pro skier and thought it might
be time to devote himself fully to that sport.
But these were thoughts for another day. This
was, after all, a party.
One of Jason’s friends had brought his disc-
jockey equipment to the house. Music
thumped within. Several people were playing
a video game on Jason’s Nintendo Game Cube
system. A few people had spilled outside into
the Stinsmens’ back yard, where the trampo-
line was.
The trampoline was more than a toy. Jason’s
parents, John and Jane, had bought it for him
when he was 12, when he first dabbled in ac-
robatic skating. It was where he had practiced
his tricks before he turned pro in 2000, and
where he still practiced whenever he was
home. He even had juiced it up, removing all
the springs from another trampoline and
adding them to his, giving it greater recoil but
stiffening the mat.
He mounted it, intending to show Lauren
his stuff. His body was built for his sport —
lithe and wiry, only 120 pounds. He was strong
enough and light enough to hurl himself into
the air and hang there seemingly as long as he
wished. He had cleared 40-foot gaps in skis
none of it had any effect. Even afterward, his
self-confidence remained unshakable, as it
had been in that moment. He would pull off
the flip once or twice. Lauren’s eyes would get
wide. They would celebrate the coming of
2003 together with a little champagne. No ...
big ... deal ...
Lauren joined him on the trampoline, first
jumping alongside him, then sitting on the
edge. He continued bouncing for a few min-
utes, to warm up. It was less than 30 minutes
before the new year.
Because Lauren was sitting on the trampo-
line, Jason began his jump closer to the mat’s
perimeter, where there is less spring. Then up
he went, flinging himself heels over head.
Once...
Twi...
The back of his head clipped the trampo-
line. He heard one small sound, like a pop.
He landed with his head curled upward and
forward, his momentum rebounding him out
of that position until he lay motionless on the
trampoline. The back of his neck rested on
Lauren’s leg.
He tried to get up.
“I can’t move,” he said. “I can’t move any-
thing.”

30
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000)
Jason Stinsmen was known as one of in-line skating’s most innovative competitors.
Then he started to cry.
THE WORRIES OF A PARENT
Seventeen miles away, John and Jane Stins-
men dined at Blue Mountain Ski Area in Lower
Towamensing Township. The couple had
worked for the resort’s ski patrol team for 14
years, and they had helped to organize a New
Year’s dinner party at the lodge. Nothing fancy.
Nothing raucous. Just a pleasant evening
among friends before the ball dropped in
Times Square.
Jason was their only child, and from the mo-
ment he showed an interest in competitive in-
The Morning Call
line skating, from the moment he saw profes-
sional skaters practicing at Shimerville Recre-
ation Center in Upper Milford Township and
said, “I want to do that,” they had encouraged
him to pursue his passion. They bought him
that trampoline. When Jason was 13, they en-
rolled him in Camp Woodward, a gymnastics
and extreme sports camp in Centre County,
where he could learn the techniques and nu-
ances of leaping and landing in a launch box.
They traveled with him to New York and
Australia and Compton, Calif., and all the oth-
er places nearby and faraway where Jason was
competing. He made his amateur debut in
NARRATIVE FEATURE
1996, went pro in 2000, was named the Ag-
gressive Skating Association Rookie of the Year
that same year, and John and Jane were there
for every mid-air rotation, every standing ova-
tion, every crash to the ground when some-
thing went wrong.
Of course they worried. Particularly Jane.
John had told Jason before, had said to him in
that refined, almost grandfatherly manner he
had, “Eventually, Jason, you’re going to hurt
yourself.” But John couldn’t deny the daredevil
gene his son possessed. Once, as a boy, Jason
went to a rock-climbing facility with Bart
Singer, and he scaled the man-made moun-
tain so skillfully, so swiftly, men stopped to
gape. “He was just a natural,” John, 63, says. “It
was one of those things he just did.”
Jane’s worry ran deeper. Horrified. That was
her word for it. What mother wouldn’t be?
What mother’s heartbeat wouldn’t quicken if
she were to watch what Jane Stinsmen
watched time after time? Her son would de-
scend on roller blades from the top of a semi-
circular pit, gathering speed until he propelled
himself out of the pit and into the sky, flipping
and twisting through the ether, fresh colors
flashing against the sky, until he hit the ground
rolling on thin plastic wheels, ready to lift off
again.
“But,” says Jane, 58, “I knew I couldn’t stop
it.”
Could she understand why he was drawn to
it? Yes. She saw him plot his maneuvers, saw
him take three hours to plan exactly where he
would jump, how long he would be in the air,
where he would land. She saw him compete,
heard his signature song — Queen’s “We Will
Rock You” — pumping from the loudspeakers
and the crowd noise rising to a crescendo. She,
like anyone else there, could almost sense his
adrenaline surging as he prepared to unleash a
Rocket 900 or a 1260 or another trick that he
had mastered and no one else would dare to
try.
“Nobody can spin and flip like Jason,” Carl
Hills, another in-line pro, says. “He’s known as
one of the craziest skaters for going big.”
Yes, Jane could see all of it. But she also saw
the three concussions Jason had sustained,
the vertebra in his lower back he had cracked
during a fall in 1999, the potential in his sport
for an even graver injury. And she would close
her eyes and hope that he didn’t wipe out on a
wayward pebble or an unseen crack in the
launch ramp, that this next jump wasn’t the
one that would end his career forever.
His mother and father were schoolteachers.
They had raced bicycles at the Lehigh Valley
Velodrome. And here he was, a professional in
a sport that was perilous and not particularly
profitable. In the most lucrative of his three
31

seasons of competition, Jason had earned only
$26,000. Sure, he wasn’t going to skate forever,
but why did he have to do it at all? Couldn’t he
pursue a career in teaching? Couldn’t he just
ride a bike? Couldn’t he do something else,
anything else, except this?
No. This was what he did. Reluctantly, Jane
had come to accept it and support it. And after
all, these were thoughts for another day. Jane
and John Stinsmen knew their son was not
skating on New Year’s Eve. They knew he was
having a party. A harmless little party with his
friends.
A DOCTOR’S RITUAL
In his condominium in Emmaus, Dr. Joseph
Coladonato was not having a New Year’s party.
He was reading a book on spinal injuries. On
New Year’s Eve, he had a ritual: He read until 8
o’clock, then went to bed.
Since finishing medical school in 1972, Co-
ladonato had cultivated in himself certain su-
perstitions, rituals born of what he had wit-
nessed every day and night of his career as a
neurosurgeon — swimmers who had dived
headfirst into the shallow end of a pool, skate-
boarders who hadn’t worn helmets, people
who would never walk again.
As a teenager in the Army, he had skydived
more than 400 times as part of paratrooper
training, but he had learned too much since
then to attempt any activity that might render
him paraplegic. He did not ski, for instance.
Too dangerous. Too much risk of injury.
A native of Cherry Hill, N.J., Coladonato had
studied neurosurgery at the University of Mia-
mi. He remained in south Florida after gradu-
ating, operating a private practice until Janu-
ary 2000. His son was a student at Lehigh Uni-
versity then, and Coladonato, familiar with the
region, decided to move north and join the
staff at Lehigh Valley Hospital.
Now 60, with a thin dark mustache and
glasses often perched on his Roman nose, Co-
ladonato and his wife had moved back to
Cherry Hill, but he kept the condo in Emmaus
for convenience. If he was needed at the hos-
pital for an emergency, he could be at LVH’s
intensive care unit within minutes.
Which is why he never left his home on New
Year’s Eve. There were always emergencies on
New Year’s Eve.
So he sat there, reading. The clock struck 8.
He went to bed, presuming he would soon
wake to a phone call.
PANIC AT THE PARTY
“All right, don’t touch him,” Michael Weiss
said.
Weiss had been a pre-med student at Wagn-
er for only little more than a year, but he knew:
32
When someone falls on his head or neck and
says he can’t move, don’t try to move him.
This was the very situation Weiss was faced
with now. Jason Stinsmen was lying on the
trampoline, Lauren’s leg pinned underneath
him. There was no telling what damage Jason’s
aborted back flip might have done to his
spinal column, and trying to pull him off Lau-
ren might worsen the damage. Weiss knew
this. But his friend was scared, crying, panick-
ing.
Weiss took off one of Jason’s shoes and
touched his foot. Jason could feel a slight sen-
sation. There was pain in his shoulder, as if a
nerve was pinched.
“What do you want me to do?” Weiss asked
him.
“Call an ambulance.”
While Weiss called 911, Bart Singer turned
on his cell phone and called his father, Bill, an
anesthesiologist at Sacred Heart Hospital in
Allentown. Bill and his wife had arrived home
early from a dinner party. When he heard
Bart’s voice on the other end of the phone, Bill
thought his son had called to wish him a Hap-
py New Year.
“We need help, Dad,” Bart said. “We need to
get in touch with Mr. and Mrs. Stinsmen.”
Singer hung up and called the ski lodge at
Blue Mountain. He couldn’t get through. Fi-
nally, he called the state police headquarters
in Lehighton and asked them to send a troop-
er to the resort to find John and Jane.
“Tell them to call Lehigh Valley Hospital,”
Singer said.
After several minutes, an ambulance arrived
at the Stinsmen house. Bart Singer noticed the
time: 11:56 p.m.
The emergency medical crew carefully lifted
Jason off Lauren’s leg and into the ambulance.
Weiss climbed in to accompany him.
Jason Stinsmen celebrated the coming of
2003 flat on his back on his way to Lehigh Val-
ley Hospital, a siren screaming above him.
‘WE DIDN’T KNOW’
The fireworks cracked one after another as
midnight came, and after the members of the
Blue Mountain ski patrol had sipped some
champagne and settled back into their chairs,
someone said something.
“Hey, two state cops are downstairs.”
“Uh-oh,” John Stinsmen thought. “They
heard the fireworks. Well, at least I didn’t set
them off.”
The troopers did as Bill Singer had asked.
They told John and Jane to call Lehigh Valley
Hospital.
Jane did. The receptionist told her Jason had
sustained head and neck injuries.
“How is he doing?” Jane asked.
NARRATIVE FEATURE
The receptionist said that doctors were go-
ing to take X-rays of Jason’s neck, that he was
responding to whatever questions the doctors
were asking him.
It took 40 minutes for John and Jane to get to
the hospital.
“The car ride wasn’t that bad,” John said lat-
er, “because we didn’t know how serious it
was.”
FEARING THE WORST
Bill Singer got to the hospital before Joseph
Coladonato. Jason was undergoing a CAT
scan, which would show the bone and soft tis-
sue of Jason’s spinal column and give the doc-
tors an indication of how badly he had injured
himself.
Once the CAT scan was finished, Singer
talked with Jason, trying to reassure him, wait-
ing until a neurosurgeon arrived. Given Jason’s
symptoms — his inability to move any of his
extremities, the shoulder pain — Singer feared
the worst: that Jason not only would never
skate or ski again, he might be quadriplegic,
without function in his arms and legs and tor-
so, a limp vegetable from the neck down.
He didn’t say any of this to Jason, of course.
Then again, he didn’t have to.
“I’ve ruined my life,” Jason said. “I have no
reason to live.”
Finally, a radiologist emerged with Jason’s X-
rays and showed them to Singer. The results
were ominous.
The X-rays showed the alignment of the first
seven bones of Jason’s spinal column, called
the cervical vertebrae. Looking at the region
from the base of Jason’s skull to the upper area
of his chest, Singer could see that the first four
bones were in a straight line, but the fifth had
slipped downward on top of the sixth. The disc
that had served as a buffer between the fifth
and sixth bones was almost certainly crushed.
The spinal cord was bent, and the bones were
pinching the cord, the likely cause of the pain
in Jason’s shoulder. It was unclear what sort of
damage the ligaments surrounding the bones
had sustained.
In medical jargon, Jason had an incomplete
fracture at cervical vertebra 5/cervical verte-
bra 6.
In layman’s words, he had broken his neck.
Singer told the radiologist about Jason’s ca-
reer as an in-line skater, about the risks he
took regularly, about the concussions and the
cracked bone in his back and the thin line Ja-
son walked between innovation and devasta-
tion.
“He’s the proverbial cat with nine lives,”
Singer said.
“Well,” the radiologist said, “he just had his
ninth life.”
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000) A&E FEATURE

TOM ALESIA, Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Wis.

I waited nearly four years to write this story. I saw an early version of “Chump Change” at a local festival in
early 2000 and met the filmmaker. When Miramax bought the film in March 2001, I waited for a release
date. And waited. And waited. What I expected to be a triumphant story about this Wisconsin filmmaker
became a tale about the struggles of even the best independent films. Having the film screened at a
Milwaukee festival before its DVD release gave the story closure. It also reaffirmed how much the film
deserved nationwide art moviehouse exposure.

Funny business
An acclaimed Wisconsin comedy film got bought by Miramax
and never received a theatrical release. In January, it goes to DVD.
What happened with ‘Chump Change’?

M
ILWAUKEE — Onstage at the or-
nate Oriental Theatre, Steve Bur-
rows savors this moment, how-
ever bittersweet, on a shivery No-
vember night. The 1,100-seat Oriental has sold
out twice since the movie palace’s 1987 reno-
vation: its grand reopening and, now, for Bur-
rows’ Wisconsin-filmed comedy.
A UW-Madison grad and Milwaukee-area
native, Burrows introduces “Chump Change,”
which he wrote and directed. He’s also the star.
The next 88 minutes unfold as they have at
festival and private screenings from Madison
to Los Angeles to a Sundance Film Festival
spinoff to Phoenix to Aspen, Colo., to New
York.
The audience always laughs. A lot.
Miramax bought the film’s rights in March
2001, and it appeared “Chump Change” would
become the state’s first homegrown film hit.
Maybe earn a sliver of that post-“Big Fat Wed-
ding” profit cake.
Instead, tonight marks the end of Burrows’
near-six-year battle through a show-business
maze covered with trap doors.
When Burrows returns to the stage after the
Milwaukee International Film Festival’s
screening, he’s asked when “Chump Change”
will “go wide.” That’s industry parlance for a
film’s release schedule.
The short answer: It won’t.
“Chump Change” goes straight to DVD on
Jan. 20.
The film was too risky to make profits on a
national theatrical release, despite delivering
more laughs than a dozen megaplex comedies
combined, critics agree.
“It’s too independent to be mainstream,” a
Miramax official told a stunned Burrows last
September, “and too mainstream to be inde-
pendent.”
✦ When I made ‘Chump Change,’ it took her six
“(From) Milwaukee, huh,” the Los Angeles
agent says, trying to relate to an aspiring actor.
“I love Minnesota.”
— From “Chump Change”
In “Chump Change,” Burrows plays the
character “Milwaukee Steve,” who earns mi-
nor fame starring in a jock-itch commercial.
When his acting career stalls, he appears on
“Wheel of Fortune” and plays the game terri-
bly. (He asks a “Wheel” producer during a
break if he could buy a “y.”)
He then makes a short film about his
“Wheel” experience called “Soldier of For-
tune,” which becomes a film-festival circuit
hit. That’s when “Wheel” guru Merv Griffin
threatens to sue him, preventing any more
screenings, and, inadvertently, turns “Milwau-
kee Steve” into a sought-after screenwriter. A
major studio hires him to write a script, which
takes him one year to finish and is never
made.
All of this happened to Burrows.
Though using artistic license, Burrows calls
“Chump Change” “98 percent true.” During
the opening scenes, for instance, the footage is
real when Burrows’ voiceover describes his fa-
ther’s act playing “Autumn Leaves” with a bow
and a saw on “The Gong Show.”
“I was 13 at the time,” Burrows says from his
Los Angeles home. “It was 1976. ‘The Gong
Show’ was the thing. My aunt in Florida had
filmed it off the TV with a Super 8 camera.
months to find but I got a 3-minute reel of that
show with sound.”
A 1980 Greendale High School graduate,
Burrows attended UW-Madison, where he
studied political science. In the summer of
1984, needing one class to graduate, he took
an acting course. Before that, he had no per-
forming experience. His part-time job was at
the former Madison Plasma Center off State
Street.
Burrows, a natural comic, moved to Chicago
in 1985 and landed a spot with ex-Second City
artistic director Del Close’s improv troupe. For
four years, Burrows mixed onstage roles with
daytime production duties, including work
with Sean Connery, who screamed at Burrows
for cueing the Scottish actor too early during a
rainy scene in “The Untouchables.”
Connery later patted Burrows on the back
and said, “Oh, don’t worry, old chap. We all (ex-
pletive) up.”
Burrows moved with his wife, Margo, to Los
Angeles in 1989. An earthquake struck the day
they arrived. In Hollywood, they moved into
an apartment complex with a landlord who
legally changed his name to “god” and many

33

actors, including one who faced Clint East-
wood’s famous “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
lines in “Dirty Harry.”
Burrows thrived in Los Angeles. He joined
the city’s acclaimed Groundlings comedy
troupe, wrote for TV shows, made guest ap-
pearances, including one on “Seinfeld,” and
did commercials.
Then, in February 1998, after watching his
major studio script wilt, Burrows wrote
“Chump Change” in 25 days, found “three very
wealthy people” to support its filming and
started production.
✦ had faxed Miramax and other studio reps beg-
“This is my impersonation of an Elvis imper-
sonator impersonating Katharine Hepburn in
‘On Golden Pond.’ ”
— From “Chump Change”
The movie jumps from Los Angeles to Wis-
consin throughout the film. In Wisconsin, Bur-
rows as “Milwaukee Steve” meets Sam, a girl-
next-door type played by former porn star
Traci Lords. As unusual as that casting seems,
Lords warms to the role — “our Meg Ryan,”
Burrows boasts — and sports nothing more
revealing than a parka jacket.
Lords’ porn background, however, prompt-
ed a Milwaukee sausage company to prohibit
“Chump Change” from filming with their
mascot.
Still, Lords is the perfect Dairyland match
for Burrows’ hard-luck character. Los Angeles
scenes scream; Wisconsin scenes breathe.
They’re intertwined with a smoothness that
makes the film seem far more expensive than
its approximate $600,000 budget.
“I really liked the script,” Lords says. “When I
auditioned, I told Steve, ‘I think this is a love
story.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Oh, my God,
I didn’t think about that.’ Basically I play Mar-
go, Steve’s wife.”
Lords, who attended the Milwaukee screen-
ing, never flinched at the film’s frozen winter-
time locations.
“I borrowed all of Margo’s caps,” Lords says
with a laugh.
Former “West Wing” actor Tim Matheson
plays an overcaffeinated Hollywood producer.
Burrows also got Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara and
Fred Willard to appear for the actor’s union
minimum rate of $248 per day.
As grueling as filming was for 21 days in Los
Angeles and snowy Milwaukee in January
1999, Burrows calls the experience “euphoric.”
Months later, Liza Minnelli had agreed to
make a cameo appearance but bailed out at
the last minute. Burrows used Abe Vigoda,
whom he met at a Starbucks, for the brief final
scene.
Then “Chump Change” entered a four-year
34
Two months later
at the Sundance Film Festival
off-shoot called SlamDunk!,
“Chump Change” won Best
Comedy and Best Screenplay.
Burrows had a growing pile
of fantastic reviews,
including one from
the influential L.A. Weekly.
whirlwind, rising and falling like a playground
ball.
✦ Regardless, it took “Chump Change’s” suc-
“You look like Jay Leno — or a sickly Chris
Penn,” the agent tells the actor. “You’re what I
call pleasantly unattractive.”
— From “Chump Change”
In the first day of post-production, Burrows
learned that all 17 hours of footage were off by
one frame. This glitch required three months
of work to correct. At the end of that time in
June 1999, Burrows was hospitalized with kid-
ney stones.
By December 1999, Burrows had to wait for
his sound editor to finish work on porn films
to help him. When a rough cut of “Chump
Change” was done, Burrows sent it to Mary
Carbine, director of the Wisconsin Film Festi-
val in Madison.
Carbine loved it and gave “Chump Change”
two festival screenings in early spring 2000. “It
was funny, well-written and well-acted,” Car-
bine says. “I knew this would be a top film for
us.”
Madison audiences raved. The second show
sold out all 300 seats despite running at the
same time as the Badgers’ Final Four basket-
ball game. “Chump Change” received over-
whelming positive response at film festivals in
Sacramento, Calif., and Phoenix, as well as at
Los Angeles’ prestigious AFI Fest.
Burrows spent $15,000 out of his pocket and
borrowed from friends to hire a sales rep to
bring studio officials to the AFI screening. The
rep failed to attract one distributor and Bur-
rows fired him.
Two months later at the Sundance Film Fes-
tival off-shoot called SlamDunk!, “Chump
Change” won Best Comedy and Best Screen-
play. Burrows had a growing pile of fantastic
reviews, including one from the influential
L.A.Weekly.
Still, “Chump Change” barely registered on
distributors’ radar. Carbine understands the
dilemma, citing thousands of independent
A&E FEATURE
movies vying for attention each year.
“I can’t tell you how many times this movie
has bailed itself out,” Burrows says. “It’s like we
built a sturdy ship. No matter how much water
we take on, it’s not gonna sink.”
Adds Margo Burrows, “Every time the movie
screens, good things happen.”
In early March 2001, a screening at the
HBO/U.S. Comedy Arts Festival struck pay-
dirt. The Aspen, Colo., event’s finale had Billy
Crystal giving a Best Actress award to Lords.
The film also won the fest’s Audience Award.
For six months, Margo and Steve Burrows
ging them to see a public screening. The audi-
ence’s laughter, Steve thought, would affect
the bottom-line “suits.”
cess at the Comedy Arts Festival to prompt Mi-
ramax to ask Burrows for a print to screen pri-
vately. He hand-delivered the film at 9 a.m.
and the company executives viewed it an hour
later.
At 11:35 a.m., Miramax called Burrows. They
wanted to buy it.
✦
“I never should have given you my opinion,”
the talent agent tells his struggling client,“until
I found out what it was supposed to be.”
— From “Chump Change”
From April 2001 to February 2003, “Chump
Change” took countless lumps. Immediately
after selling the film to Miramax, the movie’s
producer grabbed her portion of the money —
Burrows won’t say how much Miramax paid —
and walked away from the project.
Miramax officials who bought the film and
supported it left the company or were fired at
various times. By Thanksgiving 2002, “Chump
Change” had nine crucial focus group screen-
ings postponed or canceled. Instead, Miramax
concentrated on “Gangs of New York,” its $200
million release at the time.
“It was like a marathon,” Burrows says, “and
every time I thought I saw the finish line, I was
only at the 15-mile marker.”
Last spring and summer, Miramax finally
turned its attention to “Chump Change.” It
held several focus-group screenings in New
York. Comment cards were favorable, but Mi-
ramax felt “Chump Change” had a limited au-
dience.
“Comedies are very difficult to sell,” Burrows
admits. “Comedies about show business are
even more difficult to sell.”
Then Miramax dropped the bombshell: The
studio would give “Chump Change” a high-
profile DVD release and skip the theatrical
route. Miramax’s accountants judged that
“Chump Change” wouldn’t make much profit
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000)
in theaters.
Burrows fumed. “We get great reviews and
audiences love this movie. What am I miss-
ing?” he told Miramax.
“Chump Change,” they explained, appeals
to working professionals with kids who don’t
get out to movies. But they rent movies, Bur-
rows was told. “Chump Change” will find an
audience on DVD in the same way that “Wait-
ing for Guffman,” “Office Space” and “Flirting
With Disaster” did, they added.
According to show-business publication Va-
riety, studios made $1 billion in theaters last
year but $6 billion in DVD and video sales.
Carbine admits it’s a difficult tradeoff
“where commerce meets art and economics
are at risk.”
“Chump Change” also has a theatrical dis-
advantage. Its cast lacks marquee names.
“I kept saying, ‘What about all the rotten
films released?’ Those films didn’t get better
(focus group) scores than us,” Burrows says.
“They told me, ‘But they have familiar
names.’”
If Miramax makes decent money on the R-
rated “Chump Change” through DVD sales
and rentals, the studio likely will finance film-
ing of another Burrows script. (“One script
takes place in a fictional Wisconsin theme
park Dairyland,” he says. “It’s a murder-mys-
tery-comedy.”)
Last September, a high-ranking Miramax of-
ficial told Burrows, “Would you rather have
‘Chump Change’ open in theaters in 10 mar-
kets like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Mil-
waukee, Denver and wherever? Because we
can get 100,000 people to see this as an art-
house movie.
“Or,” the executive continued, “we could get
10 million people to see this” on DVD, HBO
and other cable outlets and pay-per-view out-
lets.
“When he put it that way,” Burrows says, “I
started to embrace the DVD idea.”
✦ year. I make a good living at that,” he says.
A Hollywood producer (Matheson) shakes
with excitement when he describes his next
project: “It’s ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ — with a
happy ending!” he bursts out. “LeAnn Rimes is
starring — and directing!”
— From “Chump Change”
Miramax offered a premiere screening of
“Chump Change” at a movie theater in New
York or Los Angeles.
Burrows told them he wanted to do it in Mil-
waukee.
“The heart and soul of this movie is Wiscon-
sin,” says Burrows, who incorporates count-
less kitschy and funny snippets of state tavern
A&E FEATURE
names and tourist spots throughout the film.
“It’s a valentine to the state.”
Miramax consented. They let Burrows hire
an accordion player to perform in the Oriental
Theatre’s lobby. Before showtime, he gives
every patron several frames from the film. He
asks the theater to have an organist play its
vintage in-house instrument. (The organist
ends his pre-show set with “On Wisconsin” as
the crowd claps along.)
Burrows greets crew members, cast extras
and moviegoers with zeal in the expansive
lobby. He remains upbeat.
“I’ve been directing commercials for the last
“Selling ‘Chump Change’ gave me time to fin-
ish two scripts and I have a first-look deal with
Miramax. I intend to make my next movie
with Miramax.”
And by next February, if Miramax’s market-
ing executives are correct, “Chump Change”
should make the company a nice-sized profit
on DVD.
When Burrows finally answers the audience
member’s question about the film’s theatrical
release, he takes a rare long pause and men-
tions the DVD release approach.
“The Midwest is called flyover land,” he tells
the crowd. “People in L.A. don’t understand it.”
35
 A&E COMMENTARY

SCOTT EYMAN, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

With a biography of a man who spent much of his life doing something as anomalous as producing movies
— everybody can imagine acting, or even directing, but what does a producer do? — I figured that the most
important things were to give a sense of Sam Spiegel’s professional parameters, to focus him in the reader’s
mind. I always strive to be both informative and entertaining, even if the reader has no particular interest
in the topic of the book being reviewed. Thus, a subtext of the piece became Spiegel’s flamboyant character
flaws: the financial chicanery, the taste for young girls, and how that raffishness informed the making of
Spiegel’s films.

Film’s flim flam man

A new biography captures the swaggering contradiction of Sam Spiegel,
a pathological liar who made great, high-minded movies

SAM SPIEGEL, by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni. When he was in his professional prime, tures — “The Chase,” “Nicholas and Alexan-
Simon & Schuster; 465 pages; $30. Spiegel was essentially a sybaritic version of dra,” “The Swimmer” — but they all had very
Sam Goldwyn: intrinsically classy material, obvious, fatal artistic flaws, and they all lost

T
he most important decision a biogra-
pher makes is choosing a subject. No
matter how elegant the prose, no
matter how extensive the research,
nothing surmounts an uninteresting central
figure.
What you want, if at all possible, is a larger-
than-life figure, a swashbuckler, a rogue who
carries with him a long list of inherent contra-
dictions — someone whose life stimulates de-
bate about his methods, means and motives.
Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni has chosen her
subject very well. Sam Spiegel was all of these
things and more.
Spiegel began as a small-time international
con man and evolved into a movie-maker
who produced a series of great films without
ever changing his basic (lack of) character.
Spiegel produced “The African Queen,”
“Lawrence of Arabia,” “The Bridge on the Riv-
er Kwai,” “On the Waterfront.” The second-tier
stuff isn’t too shabby, either: Orson Welles’
“The Stranger” and “The Last Tycoon.”
Spiegel was born in Galicea (now part of
Poland and Ukraine) in 1901; served time in at
least three countries; bounced checks all over
the world; gradually climbed the slippery pole
of the movie business through relentless devi-
ousness and charm. He was an unhandsome
version of Graham Greene’s scoundrel Harry
Lime. Gore Vidal, who wrote “Suddenly, Last
Summer” for him, wrote that Spiegel was
“spontaneously dishonest on every level.”
impeccably produced, an intriguing contrast
with his primarily disreputable personality.
He had a very strong story mind and was
good on script. It was Spiegel who suggested
changing “On the Waterfront” from the story
of a crusading journalist to the story of the
conversion of an insider, a longshoreman.
That you had to count your fingers after
shaking his hand was the price you paid for
basking in his pasha-like glow. Most writers
wanted to murder him, not just because noth-
ing they wrote was ever good enough, but be-
cause he was a liar. “Spiegel was only capable
of conducting his affairs through misinforma-
tion,” says Fraser-Cavassoni. “Telling the truth
unnerved him.”
Spiegel never grew beyond the inner
rhythms of a grifter, and he spent a lot of time
playing people off against each other. He was
particularly well-suited to a gambler’s life,
which is psychologically more or less identical
to a movie producer’s life.
And then there were the women. Spiegel
was married only a couple of times, but he
consumed females, the younger the better,
and seems to have had a taste for kink in the
bargain. Fraser-Cavassoni lays all this out but
resists the temptation to tongue-cluck, for
which much thanks. She lets us make up our
own minds.
Eventually, Spiegel lost touch with the audi-
ence. After the titanic triumph of “Lawrence of
Arabia,” he contininued to make upscale pic-
money.
(In “Nicholas and Alexandra,” he cast
nonentities in the roles of the last tsar and tsa-
rina, ignoring the fact that passive characters
desperately need a shot of charisma if they’re
to be dramatically interesting.)
The best of his later pictures is undoubtedly
“The Last Tycoon,” in which Robert De Niro
absolutely captures the shy, driven obsessive
Irving Thalberg, whose vision of life is hope-
lessly obscured by his vision of the movies.
Spiegel’s last film was an art movie — “Be-
trayal,” Harold Pinter’s story of a love affair
told in reverse. Literary material, essentially
uncinematic, personally financed by Spiegel.
He died in 1985.
At the end of his life, what seemed to be
driving the work was ego, a belief that he had
been right before and would be right again. It
was ego that made him seek out more mal-
leable directors than David Lean, a foreman
worthy of his steel.
If it’s possible to over-research a book, Fras-
er-Cavassoni might have done it. As the
daughter of Antonia Fraser and stepdaughter
of Harold Pinter, who wrote Spiegel’s last two
pictures, she had absolute access, and she was
obviously determined to quote everybody she
talked to. The result is a book with too many
interjections to achieve a satisfying flow, but
one that is a consistent, revelatory pleasure to
read nevertheless.
One more Sam Spiegel contradiction.

36
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000) GENERAL COMMENTARY

NICOLE PISCOPO NEAL, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

For years, I’d been hearing about the “Baby Think It Over” program, where high school students are
given a highly irritating “infant simulator” to schlep around, in an effort to halt teen pregnancy. I won-
dered what effect the plastic baby would have on a 30-something sitting on the fence over motherhood.
Would his cries awaken my slumbering biological clock? My husband and I picked up Baby Julian and
lasted just over one day before shutting him down and sending him back. ... I always know I have to vent
in “commentary” form when I’m stewing over something and can’t sleep the night before. I consider
myself lucky to have a release valve for the full head of steam!

She’s having a maybe

Eventually, every woman must face the question: A houseful of kids
or a womb of her own? But what if she can’t decide?

T
here’s no nice way to say this, so I’m
just going to blurt it out: I hate Baby
Julian. That piercing yowl when I fail
to adequately support his freakishly
large head. His pitiful “dirty diaper” bleat, a
goat-like vibrato that jolts my blood pressure
like giant electroshock paddles. Even the
hideous sucking noise he makes when I feed
him.
Go ahead and recoil. I’m not proud of my
maternal inadequacies. But at least I’m being
honest, right?
“For. The. Love. Of. God!” I hiss when his
“hungry cry” — a grating staccato squeak
(think amplified windshield wiper) — inter-
rupts dinner for the second time.
Instantly, though, I feel shame. What kind of
wicked, unnatural woman am I!?
“This was your idea,” my husband warns as
I mournfully cradle the bawling mass. “You
wanted this baby.”
Well, not really. But I’d been on the fence for
a couple of years now, and frankly, it gets
painful up there.
Then, as if fate’s fickle finger had enlisted its
other four digits and delivered a surprise slap,
I learn about Baby Julian. He is living at the
Boys & Girls Clubs of Martin County. Could
this be my chance?
The women there are so happy to see us.
(Most of the parents they deal with are unmar-
ried teenagers, after all; I’m sure my husband
and I seem refreshingly mature.) They give us
balloons — “It’s A Boy!” — and a little cake, a
stocked diaper bag and a car seat.
And Julian. “Here he is!”
I expected a rush of maternal love. And rush
it did. No sooner had the mommy instinct
nestled in my bantam breasts when it bolted
to set up house in some cookie-baking,
bootie-knitting, double-cream lactating Real
Woman. What I felt instead was — oh, this is
terrible! — loathing.
“What have we gotten ourselves into?” I
whisper as, flanking Julian,we reflexively smile
for a “family” photo at the Boys & Girls Club.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” my
husband whispers back, through set, frozen
choppers.
I lasted one day, five hours and 24 minutes,
and then we silenced Baby Julian with an un-
furled paperclip to the back.
Try to understand. I’d barely slept the night
before, and what I really needed was a peace-
ful dinner at Wattana Thai.
✦ after you’ve soldered your kneecaps together,
Parents, don’t try that paperclip maneuver at
home.
Baby Julian is a “Baby Think It Over Infant
Simulator,” a bundle of computerized hell-
spawn born and bred to give lusty teenagers
— in this case, health students at Martin
County and South Fork high schools — sec-
ond thoughts about so much as going to the
movies with the opposite sex without first hav-
ing that vasectomy or tying those tubes in a
nice square knot.
But he could just as well be called Grizzled
Ovaries Think It Over, because he has the
same effect on 36-year-olds. Baby Julian is au-
dio birth control, a squealing plastic death
knell to unprotected intercourse at any age.
He may be especially effective for those of us
nearing 40 and still wishy washy about moth-
erhood. Yes, experts say “older” women make
excellent moms — more stable, more mature,
more settled, blah blah blah.
And I’m all of those things. But come on! I’m
also getting tired, I’m slowing down, I find my-
self doing formerly unthinkable things, like
circling parking lots looking for closer spaces.
And other issues give me pause. When I
think about having a baby, my “first thoughts”
just seem all wrong. Not in the right spirit, you
might say. A tad too inwardly focused.
There’s the issue of physical pain. Women
who have given birth will regale you with tales
of wedged infants, their own unholy screams
and — how shall we put this delicately? —
coin-size entry points ill-suited to accommo-
date 8 pounds of rapidly exiting human. And
these same women will inevitably say, “Oh,
you forget all about your pain when you see
your baby!” But what about me? I haven’t for-
gotten about your pain!
Other first thoughts: Without eight sequen-
tial hours of sleep, I make Mothra seem pleas-
ant and reasonable.
And still others: Is it normal for women con-
sidering motherhood to calculate repeatedly
how old they will be when Junior’s victorious
campaign through puberty ends and he’s fi-
nally out of the house? Do they, too, get down-
right resentful as they contemplate college tu-
ition rates and the sacrifices that must be
made: four years of speed-reading
Oprah magazine in the checkout line; ago-

37

nizing nights of Miss Clairol mishaps; or, if pri-
vate school is involved, a shopping basket full
of Little Whiskas (and no cat at home)?
And there’s this shameful revelation. Al-
though reliable, intelligent women insist that,
yes, having a child indeed involves sacrifice,
“but nothing compares to seeing your baby
smile,” I wonder: Am I the only one who
thinks an exciting annual vacation actually
sounds a lot better than seeing a baby smile?
On the other hand, with motherhood’s pros
so well documented, opting out seems just as
risky.
✦ places? She had the Town
Now, I was chugging childlessly along just
fine until Pregnancy — a smocked figure in
empire-waisted floral and black stretchy pants
— waddled into my world. It lumbered
through my office, carting off a few of my co-
workers, who started saying things like “nipple
confusion,” “colostrum” and “bilirubin.” Then
it slowly lowered itself — groaning — into my
inner circle. Seven of my closest friends, and
quite a few on the next tier, have recently had
babies. Some for the second and third time.
Understandably, they very much want me to
join their club. And I very much want to re-
main part of the gang. After all, when faced
with the proverbial fork in the road, will I be
the only one choosing 18/10 stainless over
chunky plastic training tines?
It’s not as if I don’t like babies. I do! I like
playing their goofy games, singing their silly
songs, reading their glossy cardboard picture
books to them, threatening to chew up their
fat feet and going “yumyumyum” while they
laugh.
But I also really like giving them back to their
parents and going to the Carefree.
As a little girl, I, a Barbie loyalist, never truly
understood the baby doll camp, an odd place
where “She Really Wets!” was a selling point.
Who wanted to sit around spooning mush in-
to freaky Baby Alive’s motorized mouth when
Barbie was going places? She had the Town
House, the yellow Corvette, the psychedelic
camper. She also had dozens of friends —
some co-opted from other doll lines, like the
earthy Sunshine Family — and, at least in the
‘70s, stiff arms ill-equipped for baby snug-
gling.
Through my 20s and 30s, too, I’ve suspected
that my biological timepiece is not the steady
and reliable Swiss model other women pos-
sess. I believed, though, that the silence mere-
ly meant I housed a particularly quiet clock.
Perhaps a biological sundial.
And so I’ve waited, year after year, for ovari-
an reveille. I believed at any moment the pen-
dulum would swing and my clock would re-
lease such a screech that I would go to great
38
As a little girl, I, a Barbie
loyalist, never truly
understood the baby doll
camp, an odd place where
“She Really Wets!” was a
selling point. Who wanted to
sit around spooning mush into
freaky Baby Alive’s motorized
mouth when Barbie was going
House, the yellow Corvette,
the psychedelic camper.
She also had dozens of friends
— some co-opted from
other doll lines, like the
earthy Sunshine Family —
and, at least in the ’70s,
stiff arms ill-equipped for
baby snuggling.
lengths to silence it. Wouldn’t I soon be buying
ovulation prediction kits by the pallet at Cost-
co? Wouldn’t my husband take to packing a
stun gun before entering the house on Opti-
mum Fertility Days? If my eggs proved fried,
wouldn’t we be forced to let science fill my
womb to capacity, like an embryonic barracks,
and risk ending up with raising a platoon?
“Do it!” my mind said. “Do it while you still
can!
“Think about your future!”
And I did. It’s a funny thing, though, but
throughout my life, whenever I envisioned My
Future, I saw the same peaceful snapshot:
There’s a couple in a car. He is at the wheel
and she has a map on her lap. They’re ram-
bling down a New England country road, en-
joying the fall foliage.
There is no one in the back seat.
“Well!” my mind snaps. “Maybe they’re on
their way to visit their kids!”
✦ 7:14 to 7:40 a.m. when a litany of complaints
So a couple weeks ago, I decided to officially
Think It Over. It couldn’t hurt, right?
Before releasing their little boy to us, the
kind women at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Mar-
tin County let us in on a secret: Unlike real ba-
bies, Julian features a small hole in his upper
back that, when carefully probed, shuts him
down. “He’ll beep six times,” Marilyn Everett
told us.
They attached a nonremovable bracelet that
GENERAL COMMENTARY
would pacify Baby Julian, thus forcing me, and
only me, to tend to him. If I didn’t get to him in
time and figure out what he needed (or if, for
instance, we played dodge ball with him), his
devious computerized mind would record my
failings.
I would be graded when I returned him.
Two people entered the Boys & Girls Clubs
of Martin County, but a family walked out!
And that, I must admit, stunk.
✦
Yes, my despair was immediate, but not sur-
prising. After all, a woman with a fake baby is
at high risk for fake postpartum depression. As
the three of us settled into a table for lunch at a
Hobe Sound restaurant, I could only prime
myself for Julian’s first shrill outburst, not to
mention the looks of incredulity mixed with
hatred aimed our way when diners realized a
grown woman and her dolly were making the
ruckus.
Immediately, everything became difficult.
Could I go to the bathroom without him?
Would our food arrive before he had a me-
chanical meltdown?
How could I enjoy my turkey on wheat
when, at any moment, he might spring to life
and shrivel every uterus within earshot? We
took our lunch to go.
It wasn’t the inconvenience of Baby Julian
that struck me, though. It was how poorly I
handled the inconvenience. More likely my
synthetic son just amplified my true personal-
ity — skittish, obsessive, tightly wound.
Having him around was like slowly cranking
the handle on a Jack in the Box, or easing open
a can of spring-loaded snakes, or tap-tap-tap-
ping the Pillsbury biscuit tube on the counter
and knowing at any second that sucker’s going
to pop wide open and scare the crap out of
you. I found myself unable to do anything but
wait for Baby Julian to drive me crazy.
✦
And he did not disappoint.
When he was not a silent, staring, psychic
suck, he was bawling for food, yowling for a di-
aper change, or just weepy because he’d wok-
en himself up and wanted to be put back to
sleep. My moments of keenest regret occurred
from 1:01 to 1:22 a.m., 5:38 to 5:55 a.m. and
saw me and my husband, squinty and mole
eyed, tending to an inconsolable bundle of
mewling microchip.
He would startle us awake with what I
quickly recognized as his hungry cry. In record
time, I had the computerized bottle affixed to
his lower lip while he made his schwuck,
schwuck, schwuck feeding noises.
Soon thereafter he would screech again.
Burping, I presume? We took turns patting
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000)
(and then pounding) his little back until we hit
paydirt:
Blep.
I would settle him back into his bassinet,
ever so gently lowering him by one arm (al-
ways careful — lest his bloodcurdling shriek
lure lusty tomcats from as far away as Boynton
— to provide adequate head support) and
turn out the light.
Not so fast. A minute later, his siren-like wail
inevitably cranked up again, forcing us to cir-
cle the bedroom while jostling Baby Julian and
saying tender things like, “Shut up, you plastic
pain in the #$*.”
Eventually he would settle, and eventually
we would drift off to sleep only to be startled
awake by a jarring mechanical coo of content-
ment.
Now, I know that I was caring for a plastic
baby and that we are truly hard-wired to love
our own children or we would most certainly
kill them. (And I know that, in the scheme of
things, Baby Think It Over is easier to deal with
than its older sibling, the yet-to-be-invented
Pimply Adolescent Think It Over, a mopey
couch anchor who intones phrases like “Yeah,
whatever” and “You’re, like, scaring me, OK?”)
I know choosing childlessness is a lot of biol-
ogy to overcome. I have heard it all — not hav-
ing a baby is selfish; having a baby is selfish.
Not experiencing motherhood is sad; moth-
erhood is not all it’s cracked up to be. I know
women with children who swear they are
completely happy and mothers who admit
that if they could turn back time they would
choose a different path.
In an uncharacteristically Forest Gumpian
moment, my husband, who has children,
likened choosing parenthood to choosing ice
cream over cheesecake. Both are good, but
you can have only one. And it’s a 51 percent/49
percent thing — tilted in one direction or the
other, depending on the day — and not the
all-or-nothing proposition it’s so often made
out to be.
That is the most helpful thing regarding
motherhood that anyone has ever told me.
✦ “Let’s see how you did,” Marilyn says, hook-
Baby Julian is mine, if I should so choose, for
three days. But what can I say? I’m a quick
study. I call my husband at work the next day.
Will he bring home a large paperclip?
After the decision is made, a burden lifts. Ba-
by Julian and I fill his final hours happily
enough. We make a play date with my friend
and her baby. We have a family picture taken
at the Sears Portrait Studio. I enlist his help in
putting my dog through a series of character
tests — how, for instance, will she react if a
plastic baby dips one stiff hand into her food
bowl? (She passes admirably.)
When the time comes, though, I cannot in
good conscience euthanize Baby Julian my-
self. (I’m the type, after all, who gets a little
pang of sadness throwing away a carved
pumpkin.) “Hasta la vista, Baby,” my husband
GENERAL COMMENTARY
says gleefully, jabbing in the paper clip.
Beep . . . Beep . . . Beep . . . Beep . . . Beep . . .
Beep.
Flatline.
Instantly, of course, I wonder: Did I give fake
motherhood an honest effort? Am I taking the
easy way out with Julian?
And in life? Am I being lazy and selfish, or
worse, fearful? Or just honest, true to myself?
Motherhood is not for everyone, is it? The
world needs crazy aunts, too, right?
I drive to Hobe Sound the next day, a silent
Julian staring at me from the back seat.
He is to speak one more time, though.
ing him up to the computer. A slip of paper
snakes from his back: Despite a few “rough
handling” demerits, I receive . . . an A?
What?
He loves me? I’m a good mother?
I can see little Julian in years to come, run-
ning toward me to deliver the “World’s Best
Mom” picture he’s drawn that day in kinder-
garten. I can see those Mother’s Day morn-
ings, Julian earnestly flipping a large, mis-
shapen pancake for my surprise breakfast. I
can see him on the valedictorian podium:
“The real A-student here,” he tells the captive
crowd, “is my mom.”
Oh, that is so sweet . . .
Damn it! Does this mean I have more Think-
ing It Over to do?
39
 FEATURE SPECIALTY REPORTING

TONY LEYS, The Des Moines Register, Iowa

I found Shayne Eggen’s story the old-fashioned way — the phone rang, and I picked it up. Eggen’s mother
said her daughter, Shayne, who was schizophrenic and bipolar, had been kept in solitary confinement in an
Iowa prison for weeks at a time because prison guards were incapable of providing the intense care she
needed. In the prison cell, she had plenty of time to listen to the “demons” in her head. They quoted the
Bible, telling her that if her eyes offended her, she should pluck them out. So she did. The biggest challenge
in writing the story was that prison leaders refused access to Eggen. But her letters, combined with inter-
views of relatives she’d loved and strangers she’d injured, helped personalize the fate of mentally ill
inmates.

Tortured mind lives hopelessly

behind bars
D
ECORAH, Iowa — The demons in
Shayne Eggen’s head urged her to
heed a Bible passage:
“If thy eye offends thee,” they told
her, “pluck it out.”
Eggen’s eyes had offended her plenty of
times. She had watched herself being shunned
for decades of strange behavior, had seen her-
self do terrible things to others and had wit-
nessed the grim circumstances of prison —
where she was often locked in a room alone
because staff members couldn’t control her.
Two years ago, while in the Winneshiek
County Jail, she plucked out her right eye with
her finger. Three weeks ago, at the state
women’s prison in Mitchellville, she did the
same to her left eye.
“She’s like an animal caught in a trap that
will bite its leg off trying to get free,” says
Eggen’s mother, Elizabeth VouVakis.
At 39, Eggen has added blindness to her dis-
abilities, which include schizophrenia and
bipolar disorder. Her family contends that the
tragedy might have been averted if Iowa had
long-term mental facilities for people such as
Eggen.
Society, her relatives say, should have a bet-
ter place than prison for those people.
They also say that if prison administrators
had been more careful when they released
Eggen after a previous sentence, she might not
have committed the crime for which she’s now
serving time.
Her lawyer agrees. So does the county attor-
ney who prosecuted her, the businessman
whose building she set ablaze — even the for-
mer police chief she stabbed.
✦ alike would coo over the bright little girl with
People like Eggen used to be locked in men-
tal institutions for years at a time. That prac-
tice ended with the demand for patients’
rights and the development of psychiatric
drugs that help countless people function
peacefully in society.
For those in the minority who can’t tolerate
the new system, the alternative is bleak. They
live as Eggen did for 20 years, bounced be-
tween short-term treatment and chaotic exis-
tence on the outside. The shrinking state men-
tal institutions, which were designed as a safe-
ty net, typically treat people for a few weeks
before they are released into community pro-
grams.
When their behavior veers from odd to
criminal, they are arrested and thrown behind
bars.
“We have people in prison who need treat-
ment, but what they’re getting is punish-
ment,” says Patrick Smith, executive director
of the Northeast Iowa Mental Health Center in
Decorah.
Prison authorities say they can’t comment
on Eggen’s case, and they wouldn’t allow an in-
terview with her. But they say they are doing
their best to play the difficult hand they’re
dealt.
“We make the effort,” says Dr. Harbans Deol,
the Department of Corrections’ medical direc-
tor. “I can’t say we’re 100 percent perfect, but
we make the effort.”
✦ there, swinging a steak knife at his chest. He
Eggen’s mother, who calls her “Shayney,” re-
calls how decades ago, friends and strangers
the startlingly blue eyes.
But as she approached adolescence, Eggen
became increasingly defiant and disruptive.
Mental illness struck her at an earlier age than
is often the case. Her family says the problem
was compounded by use of marijuana, which
allowed her delusional thoughts to run wild.
By the time Eggen was 13, her parents and
teachers could no longer control her. The state
took custody and started an odyssey of institu-
tions and group homes, punctuated by fre-
quent releases, escapes and injuries.
Her parents eventually moved to Michigan,
but Eggen stayed in Iowa. She was known
around Decorah as a relatively harmless ec-
centric — until a September afternoon in
1997.
The first word of serious trouble came from
a caller to the police station, who said some-
one was bleeding at an apartment house for
the disabled.
Then-police Chief Ben Wyatt drove to the
building and found a bloody Eggen outside.
She had thrown herself through a plate-glass
window after becoming upset that a counselor
had confiscated two collectible knives.
The chief tried to talk to her, but she silently
walked from the yard into her apartment and
closed the door. Wyatt says she didn’t respond
when he called to her. “I just wanted to know
how badly she was hurt,” he says.
He opened the door, and Eggen was right
turned instinctively to block the blow, and the

40
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000)
Photo illustration by
The Des Moines Register
FEATURE SPECIALTY REPORTING
knife plunged five inches into his shoulder —
so deep that part of the handle followed the
blade into his body.
Eggen jerked the knife out, and Wyatt
slammed her into a wall. With the help of a
counselor, he managed to handcuff her and
arrest her on an attempted-murder charge.
A few weeks later, the wounded chief re-
ceived a disjointed letter from Eggen.
“Dear Cheif of Police,” she wrote. “I have
been feeling really bad about what I did to
you. I didn’t stab you because I hate you. . . .
“I remember you saying my name but I
wouldn’t listen. I grabbed the knife out of my
sink and thought kill him. I went to stab you in
the heart but you turned. I’m sorry.
“Love, Shayne.”
Wyatt, who retired a year ago, re-reads the
note and shakes his head. “I never have fig-
ured out if she was sorry she stabbed me, or
sorry I turned,” he says.
The experience led him to join a regional
board that tries to improve mental-health
treatment. He helped send many mentally ill
people to prison in his 33 years as a police-
man. He had to, Wyatt says, because they were
too dangerous to be on the loose, and there
was no other secure place to put them.
Wyatt believes Eggen is too far gone to be
rescued. He also believes she was insane at
the moment she attacked. “Absolutely,” he
says. “Yeah, absolutely.”
✦
The law takes a skeptical view of insanity.
It didn’t believe Jeffrey Dahmer was insane
when he killed and ate young men in Milwau-
kee. It didn’t believe Charles Manson was in-
sane when he ordered ritualistic murders in
Los Angeles.
It wasn’t likely to believe Eggen was insane
when she stabbed Wyatt.
“Was she ‘crazy’ in layman’s terms?” asks her
lawyer, Jayne Schambow. “Of course she was.”
Layman’s terms don’t count. In 17 years as a
public defender, Schambow has never had a
client who escaped a felony charge by claim-
ing insanity. She’s only aware of a handful of
times when the defense worked.
Psychiatrists settled the matter in this case.
“Ms. Eggen understood the nature and
quality of the behavior in which she was al-
legedly involved,” they wrote the judge.
She knew right from wrong. She was head-
ed for prison. The only question was for how
long.
Schambow cut a deal with the prosecutor.
He agreed to reduce the charges, and Eggen
pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced her to up
to five years, a sentence that would automati-
cally be cut in half when she entered the sys-
tem.
✦
41

Throughout years of tumult, Eggen’s case
workers and family made sure she got month-
ly birth-control injections. A baby, they all
agreed, was the last thing she needed.
Those shots were stopped after she was ar-
rested, says Patricia Jewell, her aunt. After all,
she couldn’t become pregnant behind bars,
could she?
Somehow, she could. Her family says it hap-
pened at the Oakdale prison, where new in-
mates go for evaluation. A male prisoner got
Eggen alone for a few minutes, and that’s all it
took.
The pregnancy complicated efforts to med-
icate Eggen for psychosis. When she went into
labor, she was handcuffed on a hospital bed,
her family says. Her legs were shackled until it
was time for the delivery. The staff wouldn’t let
her touch her son, saying they feared she’d
hurt him.
Eggen’s younger sister, who already had an
infant son, adopted the newborn. She breast-
fed both and promised to raise them as broth-
ers.
The director of prisons would later write to
Eggen’s outraged aunt, saying the pregnancy
was “a concern.” He said rules had been tight-
ened to prevent inmates from having sex. He
thanked Jewell for suggestions on how to im-
prove the system.
Eggen’s baby went to Michigan with his new
family. The inmate returned to Mitchellville,
determined to serve her sentence and be free.
✦ didn’t contact local mental-health authorities.
Over and over, Eggen drew herself as an
American Indian maiden atop a graceful
horse.
Iowa prisons are praised for progress in treatment
Researchers say prisoners are much more
likely than others to have a serious mental
illness. About 5 percent have schizophre-
nia, for example, compared with 1 percent
of the general population.
Mental-health advocates say prisons
aren’t designed to treat those people, but
they give Iowa authorities credit for trying.
A new, $26 million psychiatric wing
opened last year at the men’s prison in Fort
Madison. Its construction was ordered by a
federal judge who ruled that mentally ill
inmates had been living in “shameful” con-
ditions.
The facility can handle men with severe
and violent mental problems, administra-
tors say. The corresponding facility for
women, in Mount Pleasant, is not as
sophisticated or secure. Shayne Eggen was
42
FEATURE SPECIALTY REPORTING
Eggen took her medication
only sporadically, and her
behavior deteriorated.
She was committed for a week
of hospitalization after an
angry outburst. Then she was
released. Jewell could see
her niece was failing,
and she tried to have Eggen
committed again, but she
couldn’t get the bulky system
to move fast enough.
When jailers told her she couldn’t have pen-
cils because they were too sharp, she switched
to soft pastels and continued to draw and
draw and draw.
Her ancestors emigrated from Greece, Nor-
way and England, but Eggen identified with
Native Americans. She also believed that an
Indian man she’d met years before was her
boyfriend, her relatives say.
When her 2 1/2 years in prison were up,
Eggen said she wanted to go to Tama, which
has the state’s largest concentration of Native
Americans. Prison administrators gave her
$100 and a bus ticket on Aug. 6, 2000. They
“They just released her and said, ‘Toodle-
oo,’” says Wyatt, the retired police chief. “No
after-care. No nothing.”
kept at the Mitchellville women’s prison,
which often places people with psychiatric
problems in a 25-bed “special-needs” unit.
Judith Milosevich, an assistant state
ombudsman who investigates prison com-
plaints, says the system has made strides in
the past decade. Inmates routinely used to
be taken off psychiatric drugs when they
entered prison.
“That no longer happens,” Milosevich
says. Prisoners are offered more counseling
than before, she says, and they have access
to modern medicines.
Some other states have special, secure
psychiatric hospitals outside the prison
system. Some also have “mental-health
courts,” which send nonviolent criminals
to treatment instead of jail.
Many states, however, have systems like
The $100 disappeared fast, and the delu-
sional ties to the Meskwaki Indians didn’t car-
ry Eggen far in Tama. She was soon back in
Decorah.
Her aunt, who farms nearby, was thrust into
the role of Eggen’s informal guardian. Jewell
helped Eggen rent an apartment over a down-
town pharmacy and signed her up for a dis-
ability stipend.
Eggen took her medication only sporadical-
ly, and her behavior deteriorated. She was
committed for a week of hospitalization after
an angry outburst. Then she was released.
Jewell could see her niece was failing, and she
tried to have Eggen committed again, but she
couldn’t get the bulky system to move fast
enough.
Less than three months after her prison re-
lease, Eggen flew out of control. She argued
with a man in her apartment, then slashed
him with a knife. Her family says she begged
the injured man in vain not to go to the hospi-
tal, which would alert police.
After he left, she gathered her belongings
around her, sat among them and set them on
fire. She would later say she was trying to kill
herself, but lost her nerve. She ran naked into
the street as the apartment erupted in flames.
Pharmacist Stan Fullerton was having din-
ner at a nearby restaurant when someone
came in and told him his building was ablaze.
He arrived in time to see firefighters retreat
from the intense heat and smoke.
Fullerton would later speak at Eggen’s sen-
tencing hearing. He would describe the devas-
tation, and he would urge the judge to lock her
away for as long as possible.
Iowa’s, and all face similar financial
crunches.
In the Iowa prisons, money-saving meas-
ures include psychiatric visits made over
closed-circuit television.
Budget problems also have led to cuts at
the state’s mental-health institutes, which
provide relatively short-term treatment.
Waiting lists have grown as capacity has
been trimmed at the four institutes. State
leaders have proposed closing two of them.
That proposal worries retired Decorah
police Chief Ben Wyatt, who became active
in mental-health issues after his experi-
ence with Eggen. “What are we going to do
with these people?” he asks. “Put more of
them in jail — that’s what.”
DIVISION II (75,001 - 175,000)
His stomach still turns at the faint smell of
smoke in an upstairs hall of his rebuilt busi-
ness. He’ll never get the $50,000 his former
tenant is supposed to pay for uninsured dam-
age. Still, he says he’s sympathetic to Eggen
and her family.
As a pharmacist, Fullerton knows that many
people are quietly doing well with the help of
psychiatric medicines. He wishes there were a
better way to handle those who can’t make it
on their own.
“The system,” he says, “is so totally screwed
up.”
✦ He declines to speak publicly about the
Jewell remembers the feeling of dread that
came over her when she visited her niece in
jail two weeks after the fire.
Eggen had mentioned that the demons —
she described them as uncontrolled thoughts
rather than voices — told her to destroy her
eye. On this day, the area around her right eye
was swollen and red, as if she’d been picking at
it.
The aunt says she spoke to a guard as she
left the jail. Please, she said, watch her careful-
ly tonight.
Eggen managed the horrific act before the
deputies could stop her. She was taken to a
hospital, where doctors tried to save the eye
over her objections. They failed.
She later would be offered an artificial re-
placement designed to look like a real eye. She
asked for a plain, white one, her family says,
because she wanted people to know what had
happened.
✦ back into trouble that included fights with
The injury didn’t excuse Eggen from the
FEATURE SPECIALTY REPORTING
crime she’d committed. She appeared in court
in April 2001, with Schambow at her side, to
plead guilty of arson and going armed with in-
tent. The prosecutor dropped an assault
charge.
Judge James Beeghly, who had sentenced
her to prison three years earlier, oversaw the
proceedings. This time, he sentenced her to
up to 10 years. He included an unusual, two-
page set of instructions on how her mental ill-
ness was to be handled in prison, and the
arrangements that were to be made for her
care when she was eventually released.
matter, saying that if he aired his strong feel-
ings, he might be disqualified from future cas-
es involving mental illness.
County Attorney Andy Van Der Maaten,
who prosecuted Eggen both times, says he
had a duty to protect the public. He agrees that
prison isn’t an ideal place for her, but says
there is no alternative.
Van Der Maaten is one of many officials who
have felt the sting of Jewell’s anger. Still, he
praises the way she’s stuck up for her niece.
“I know she’s frustrated that we have limited
resources in Iowa for folks like Shayne,” he
says. “It’s frustrating for us, too.”
✦ least now, she says, that probably can’t hap-
People who attended the sentencing say
Eggen seemed remarkably coherent and calm.
Her aunt says doctors had put her on the latest
medications, which worked very well. She
continued to function reasonably for a year in
Mitchellville, Jewell says, but then plunged
other inmates.
By last summer, she often was being locked
alone in a room for up to 23 hours a day, Jewell
says.
She sent a hopeful postcard during a brief
respite in late November.
“Dear Aunt Patti,” she wrote, “I was in the
hole again for a couple weeks. I think I can stay
out now. In fact I know I can. I got all of the bad
out of me. I am doing well and don’t plan on
going back. . . .”
✦
She went back, of course, and this time, she
tried to get “the bad out” in the most desperate
way.
University of Iowa doctors operated on
Eggen last week to clean out the space where
her left eye used to be. She was returned to the
Oakdale prison, where she told her mother
she was trying not to cry because she was
afraid she’d damage her eye socket. Adminis-
trators told her family she would be kept in-
definitely at Oakdale psychiatric unit.
The state ombudsman’s office is looking into
the blinding, but says it hasn’t found any evi-
dence that Mitchellville staff members were at
fault.
VouVakis says her greatest fear has always
been that her daughter would kill someone. At
pen. She hopes the remaining three years of
her daughter’s sentence can be commuted.
And she hopes Eggen’s story will bring
changes to the system.
“I’m not looking to place any blame,” Vou-
Vakis says. “I’m looking to get some help —
not just for her but for all the other people in
the same situation.”
43
 HEADLINE WRITING

MARGARET McKENZIE, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

I like to insert what I guess I’d call the “double-take” into my headlines. I look for a word
that has a similar spelling (or pronunciation) but entirely different meaning from the
subject of the headline, and then bend it toward that purpose. I like to give readers a little
jolt, especially one that ends with a smile of recognition.

The Dustbuster:
Actually it is rocket science
‘Boys’: II loud, II long,
but not II bad
Bio hazard
Throughout this book about writer John O’Hara, Geoffrey Wolff commits
the biographer’s mortal sin: He keeps stepping into the picture.

44