First impressions

I arrived in Seattle in January 1990. Fresh off a Greyhound bus from Connecticut, I moved into a condo with a friend and set about trying to find a job and build a life for myself here, even though I fully intended to return to school in Portland in the fall.

I got a brochure for Seattle Rape Relief in early February, and started training for a volunteer role as a counselor/advocate a couple of weeks later. SRR had a well-respected 80-hour training program, Tuesday and Thursday evenings and every other Saturday for several weeks.

I lived in Northgate. The SRR office was on Jackson, in the International District. Getting to the 6:00 training sessions by bus was relatively easy, because buses ran frequently in the early evening. I could catch a bus downtown and transfer there. Getting home was going to be trickier; by 9:00, buses ran less frequently and the transfer time would be much longer.

The first night of training, one of the trainers announced that I'd bussed there from Northgate and could use a ride home. One person volunteered immediately. She had bright orange hair, a huge grin, and a fanny pack. I have the sense that she was bouncing. And she may have been; I think she might have jumped up to offer the ride.

Twenty-two years ago this month, I carpooled home from Seattle Rape Relief trainings with Sandy. I quickly learned that Sandy was separated from her husband, had been born in Seattle but had only just returned in January, and was living temporarily with friends. As I continued to ride home with her the next eight weeks, we talked about politics, about the training we were going through, about relationships, about life. I remember sitting in the cab of John's truck (her car must have been in the shop) in the parking lot of my condo building. She wanted to play a song for me before I got out of the truck: it was Bonnie Raitt's Nobody's Girl. Tears came to her eyes as she listened, and I enjoyed hearing her voice when she began to sing along.

This is what Sandy looked like when I first met her,
though I'm not sure when this picture was taken.

I was 21; she was 29. I was still learning my way around leftist politics, and had only just joined the Red & Black Books Collective. I remember the time she mentioned that Mother Jones magazine was too conservative. I was in awe of her.

One night, someone else in the training had invited Sandy to stop at a bar afterwards to hang out. Sandy told the other person that she was my ride, and she had to check with me; we all went together. I remember thinking at the time that Sandy hadn't made a commitment to me; I was responsible for finding my own way home, and if she wanted to make plans with other people, she had every right to do so. But I appreciated her loyalty. Many years later, I found out it was more than that.

We kept in touch after training ended, but we didn't see each other nearly as frequently. I know that she called to check in with me the night I had my first hotline shift. We drove to Portland together in May; I was heading to campus to visit friends and she was headed to Vancouver to attend counseling with Greg.

I believe this photos was taken at Pride
in 1990, the day I saw her in the parade.

I talked to Sandy on the phone a few times, and at Pride in 1990, I saw her on the back of the truck singing with the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus. She urged me to join them, but I've always been self-conscious singing, so I just waved them on.

I was very involved with Seattle Rape Relief for a year and a half or so, but Sandy's involvement tapered off pretty quickly. The politics were right for her, but she wasn't cut out for counseling. So I didn't see her at the various committee meetings and volunteer meetings I attended. She invited me to dinner at an Iraqi restaurant with a group of friends shortly before we began bombing Iraq. She was already dating Rachel then. I don't know who else was there, quite possibly people I know well now.

And then we just weren't in touch. I ran into her and Rachel at an Alice B. theater production in early 1993, and they gave my housemate and me a ride home. During that short car ride, I told her I'd just started working at Aldus and I learned that she knew one of my co-workers, Tina, quite well. As she dropped us off, she asked for my phone number. I gave it to her and said, are you going to call? She said, sure. I said, Really? She laughed and said no. We were both context-dependent friends, and knew it was unlikely we'd talk randomly. Honestly, though, there were many times that I'd have called her if I'd known how to get in touch. She had emphasized that she was living with friends temporarily, so I didn't even think to try the number I had from 1990. I had no idea that she'd still be living with those friends until the day she moved in with me in 1997.

We got to know each other again in 1995, and the rest is common knowledge. After we got together, I learned that she'd been interested in me back in 1990, and I'd been clueless about it. I never did understand it. I was so young and unsophisticated; I have no idea what she was attracted to. But I like to go back through my memories and search for clues of her interest.

In late 1995, she told me about something that had happened a few years before, and I asked why she hadn't called me. She said very matter-of-factly, "You were dead to me then." I don't remember the context, what it was I thought she ought to have shared with me. But I latched onto the phrase "dead to me" and never let her forget that.

I may have been dead to her for a few years there, but she was never dead to me. I always knew that Sandy Hereld was in the world, somewhere, and that it was a better world because of her. And now, when she actually is dead, she still isn't dead to me!