I want to say meet me under the clock, meet me under the bridge, but for now it will have to be "meet me at The Sorrento."
In this week's column I speak of the journey as sixteen months long, but in the truth the journey to tomorrow's book launch at the Sorrento Hotel rightly started right here on this reader blog four years, and 407 posts ago.
Four years ago on Memorial Day I started writing about Ballard. Those blogs led to my column for the Ballard News-Tribune. Those columns led me to Bennett & Hastings. They led me to Robin Abel who was looking for a writer to help tell the story of what happened to her daughter Maria Federici.
We hope the book that we have written, along with the editing, graphics and production support of incredible local talents of John Linse, Jo-Ann Sire, Scott McCredie, Mary Fickes and Magnolia's Security Press, will help save lives. As a writer, I also want it to be a good read!
I'm sorry the book launch isn't in Ballard but The Sorrento offered the Penthouse Suite. So far the book is available only through the authors or at the website that will go live on June 9th, www.outofnowherethebook.com.
The event is from 3-8 p.m. Sorrento Hotel, Penthouse Suite, 900 Madison Street.
What started in Ballard has taken me to Gig Harbor, Olympia, law offices in Kirkland, Snohomish, Renton, the catacombs of Harborview and to my closest coffee shop, The Scoop on 32nd NW, for all of the caffeine needed to research and write. Now to The Sorrento so that the book can head into the world on its own, and I can return to pajamas in Ballard.
Ballard News-Tribune. June 7, 2010.
Crossing the bridge
She died on June 24, 1988, but Lucy Rush has been on my mind almost daily for the last year.
She was 40 years old when she died, married with three children between the ages of 7 and 13. She was a local celebrity, best known as "The Safeway Lady."
For the last year, I have been working on a book project that simultaneously took me away from Ballard and yet always brought me back. Back to Lucy Rush, a woman I never met, who died as the result of an accident labeled "bizarre" on the Ballard Bridge as she walked south toward her home on Queen Anne.
She died seven days before I moved to Ballard, even as we moved north over the Ballard Bridge from Queen Anne.
For 17 years before her death, Lucy Rush represented Safeway in Washington, Idaho and Alaska: in print, television and radio advertisements.
Raised in Minnesota, she'd attended Harvard University and had dreams of acting on Broadway.
She met her future husband after returning to Minnesota and moved with him to Seattle, where she was soon beloved (and recognized everywhere) as "The Safeway Lady."
One day on the Ballard Bridge, a ladder came off a local masonry's truck and hit Lucy Rush in the head. She died of her injuries a day later. Evidently the rope securing the ladder on the truck broke.
Not quite three years ago, I met and profiled here a couple who had started a publishing company in Ballard. Bennett & Hastings were publishing Ballard writer Michael Schein's book. He had found them literally around the corner after seeking out East Coast publishers.
That connection led in turn to the opportunity to co-author a book with a woman whose daughter had been also been seriously injured because of an item that became unsecured and went through the young woman's windshield. The mother was Robin Abel; the daughter Maria Federici.
Who doesn't remember the news reports and the accompanying photo of a beautiful, dark-haired young woman who was simply driving home from work when an entertainment center went through her windshield?
Subsequent to her survival, she and her mother went on to pass "Maria's Law" so that substantial injury or death resulting from an improperly secured load was classified as a crime; and injured parties were eligible for the Crime Victims Compensation.
Since the winter of 2009, I have been on a physical and mental journey as I interviewed people all over the Puget Sound region, reviewed trial transcripts and spent countless hours with Maria's mother, helping her to tell the story she has always known needed to be told.
She believes that Maria survived "injuries incompatible with life" for a reason: so that her survival could potentially save hundreds of lives all over the United States through laws and awareness of the need to "Secure Your Load."
It has been challenging to keep my focus on Ballard while immersed in accounts of other accidents due to road debris from unsecured loads from all over the state and nation.
What was essentially dismissed as a "bizarre" accident when Lucy Rush died in 1988 is actually a daily danger. The American Automobile Association published a report that attributed up to 25,000 incidents per year involving road debris, with an estimated 400 per year in just Washington.
That doesn't include all the items that become airborne every day.
On May 23, a pickaxe came out of a truck bed and somehow passed between the seats of a couple driving on I-405 the same road where the black-on-black entertainment center shattered Maria Federici's windshield and hit her in the face.
Once you become aware of the dangers of unsecured loads, you realize they are all around you. The pickup truck on its way to the transfer station, the landscape crew with unsecured trash cans, perhaps even an item impulsively plucked from the curb with its "Free" sign still flapping.
After 16 months of interviews, writing and editing, the book is done. "Out of Nowhere" by Robin Abel (and myself) will be released at a party from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on June 9 at The Sorrento Hotel.
I never planned to write a book, but Maria Federici's mom is as persuasive as her daughter is indomitable.
What began as the need to increase my income so as to make a move within Ballard became long drives to Renton and beyond. What started as a project has become a shared mission: how to increase awareness of the need to secure all loads.
Every time I turned home toward Ballard, I would think about what Maria Federici lost that night in 2004. And whenever I cross the Ballard Bridge, I think about Lucy Rush, a beautiful woman who left behind a husband, three children, mother, sisters, brother and thousands of people in the Pacific Northwest who could recognize her anywhere.
It has been an amazing journey, but I'm always glad to have crossed the bridge safely and reached my home.
That connection led in turn to the opportunity to co-author a book with a woman whose daughter had been also been seriously injured because of an item that became unsecured and went through the young woman's windshield. The mother was Robin Abel; the daughter Maria Federici.Reprinted by permission.