Gabby

by Gabrielle Giffords

  “We’re the buck-stretchers!” she’d say in El Campo’s commercials. She wasn’t the sixty-second philosopher her grandfather Gif Giffords had been. But she was telegenic and friendly; a natural with a pretty smile. By selling tires, she’d learn how to sell herself, and eventually, how to sell the issues, ideas, and values that would define her career as a public servant.

  El Campo had about $11 million in annual sales when Gabby arrived, but the business was hemorrhaging, with significant losses every month. Her father, Spencer, was not in good health, and he was overwhelmed trying to manage twelve outlets and more than one hundred employees. He was admittedly burned out. Gabby’s first order of business was to tell Spencer that he’d need to retire. “I can’t really run the place if you’ll be looking over my shoulder,” she said.

  Spencer didn’t argue. It all felt familiar to him. When he took over the business more than three decades earlier, he had walked his father, Gif, to the door and sent him off into retirement. Spencer saw the sense in letting Gabby take the reins completely. He knew he could be ornery, difficult, and set in his ways. Gabby deserved to recast the operation as she saw fit. He was actually relieved when she asked him to step aside.

  “Here are the keys,” he told her. “It’s all yours. Go for it. Thank you and I love you.”

  Gabby took no salary. She was there on a mission. Her goal was to get the business back into the black, and to preserve the family assets.

  The business community took note of her age—just twenty-six—and her moxie. Early on, she gave an interview to the local paper, the Arizona Daily Star, about her return to Tucson and the family business. “I have a fresh eye for things, and I question why we’re doing things a certain way,” she said. “You only gain that perspective by being away from something, and then facing it head on. I have tremendous ambition, I’m enthusiastic, and I have great ideas, but I lack experience.” She admitted that some key employees had left, and that she had jettisoned certain suppliers. “They worked for my father,” she explained, “but I didn’t get the sense they were going to work for me.”

  Sometimes, Gabby talked tougher than she acted. One woman in the front office had a drug problem and was routinely hostile to Gabby. People knew she needed to be fired, but Gabby couldn’t let her go. It was partly because Gabby had a heart for working women, and partly because she would try, sometimes too hard, to see the good in people. The woman eventually quit.

  One of Gabby’s best business decisions was hiring Raoul to revamp the company’s antiquated computer system. Back then, in the pre-Internet days, all the stores’ computers were connected by phone line. It took Raoul hundreds of hours to modernize the place—he literally moved in and slept on the floor at night—and over time his friendship with Gabby grew.

  Raoul noticed that many employees took a liking to Gabby quickly, drawn in by her friendliness and openness. Others found her to be too perky, too positive, too young. They seemed disdainful of her. They didn’t know whether they should trust her, or whether her upbeat demeanor was just an act. Gabby didn’t obsess about trying to win them over. She just continued being herself, and if her sunny disposition rubbed people the wrong way, she was OK with that. She was too busy to dwell on it.

  Early in Gabby’s tenure, she wrote a thick employee manual, the first in the company’s history, so everyone would know the rules, expectations, benefits, and company philosophy. She also had children’s play tables placed in the waiting areas of all twelve El Campo stores.

  In any way she could, she tried to pay special attention to female customers. “The tire industry doesn’t treat women customers the way they treat men,” she observed. Salespeople would talk down to women or take advantage of them. At El Campo, most of Gabby’s employees were men between the ages twenty and forty. Some looked like the roughest characters from a biker movie, with lots of tattoos and facial hair. Others were traditional family men who viewed the world as a patriarchal society. Gabby worked hard to change the culture within the company, reminding her workforce to treat women and men with equal respect.

  She did a lot of reaching out to women, too. She bought a booth at the annual Tucson Business Women’s Expo, set up a giant display of chrome tire rims, and stood there handing out El Campo refrigerator magnets and pamphlets with car-care tips. “We’re locally owned and we’re woman-owned,” she’d tell passersby, conversing easily in both English and Spanish. “I just want you to know that we’re a friendly tire company.”

  Gabby enjoyed being the face of El Campo, appearing not only in the company’s television and radio commercials, but in print advertising, too. A part of her was still the kid who starred in Annie, and she liked that people did a double-take when they’d see a young woman on TV, looking so comfortable in front of a stack of tires. She felt like a groundbreaker. (Years later, after she met me, she said the commercials were too embarrassing, and she refused to track down the tapes for me to see them. I spent years begging to get a look.)

  Not surprisingly, it was hard for Gabby to find a female mentor in the tire industry. There were almost no women in the business. So she looked elsewhere for a role model and found an older woman, Dorothy Finley, owner of a local beer distributorship in Tucson. Dorothy was an Arizona icon who turned from beer to philanthropy, serving on dozens of nonprofit boards. It was Dorothy who led efforts to stop the closure of Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, saving thousands of jobs. Dorothy became Gabby’s hero and confidante. They were an unlikely match, an octogenarian and a twenty-something, yet they connected with each other effortlessly.

  Gabby knew she didn’t want to stay in the tire business forever. Sometimes she felt antsy about that and sometimes she was more patient. She was pretty grateful, though. She recognized early on that she was learning skills in management, advocacy, and marketing that would serve her well up the road, no matter where her next stop would be. Running the tire business, she saw how vital it was to look at details, to harness the power of close observation.

  At El Campo, she learned how to read a tire the way she’d eventually read legislation—with an eye toward identifying the weak spots. In a town where temperatures often topped 110 degrees in the summer, hot roads were tough on tires. It was in Arizona where the tires on Ford Explorers—the Ford Firestone ATX and the Wilderness AT—were first found to be deficient. Gabby and her employees saw how the tires repeatedly failed their customers. Eventually, the tires would be recalled nationwide.

  In her first year at El Campo, Gabby increased annual sales by $1 million, and stopped the losses. She suspected, however, that such good news could be fleeting. She saw that the tire business was consolidating in the hands of a few national retailers. Family-owned businesses like El Campo would eventually be squeezed out. So once she’d gotten the business out of the hole, she decided that the best hope for preserving the family assets was to find a buyer for the whole operation.

  She’d go to conventions of tire dealers, mingling with all the middle-aged men, trying to figure out who might be a good suitor for El Campo. She eventually set up meetings with both Goodyear and Firestone, and in July 1999, agreed to sell El Campo to Goodyear. Wisely, she sold only the business itself and not the properties where the stores were located. She figured that land values were going to keep rising in Tucson, and she was right. Her parents would be forever grateful to Gabby. They’d be able to enjoy retirement without having to worry about their finances.

  Gabby also looked after El Campo’s employees. She worked with Goodyear to make sure that her workers got to keep their jobs and retain their seniority. Some had been with the company almost four decades. Even those employees who weren’t sure what to make of Gabby during her tenure were, by the end, very appreciative of her fierce advocacy for them. “You could have just walked away,” more than a few told her, “but you didn’t. Thank you.”

  As the sale of El Campo was being finalized, Gabby attended a meeting of the Arizona Women’s Political Caucus. She went mostl
y out of curiosity. She had no firm plans to become a politician. But as she talked to the women there, she wondered if elected office might be the right next step for her. She’d been a Republican in her early twenties, but she now found herself in the camp with centrist Democrats. She felt more at ease with them, given her support of a woman’s right to choose, and her belief that health care for the poor in Arizona had to be expanded. She’d been saddened, for instance, to learn that poor women with cervical or breast cancer weren’t being insured. Democratic initiatives on these issues made more sense to her.

  And so Gabby found herself at yet another turning point in her life.

  Her move back to Tucson had reignited her heartfelt affection for her hometown. Her interactions with El Campo customers and employees had helped her understand the most pressing financial and social concerns swirling in the region. Her success running the company had emboldened her as a businesswoman and as a potential leader. She talked to her friends and family. “Look, I’m single. I have no children. Maybe now is the time I should be dedicating myself to my community.”

  After three years of focusing on tires, she widened her sights. She wrote down the issues that mattered most to her. She asked herself: If I ran for a seat in the Arizona House, what would be my platform?

  She started scribbling. She’d make education her top priority, arguing for smaller class sizes and increased pay for teachers. She’d advocate for better health-care coverage for families living in poverty. She’d work to improve the state’s mental-health system, which was in terrible shape. She’d get involved in making smart decisions about managing growth in southern Arizona. She’d help small businesses. Her list kept growing.

  She was thirty years old, full of confidence, ambition, and enthusiasm, with a résumé that seemed like a dozen young women’s résumés smashed together.

  She felt different. She was no longer Spencer’s younger kid, Gabby, back in town to sell tires.

  She was no longer that cute “buck-stretcher” girl that people saw on TV.

  She was now the candidate Gabrielle Giffords and she was ready to serve.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Big Dreams

  In the early months of Gabby’s recovery, I’d ask her, “Do you ever have dreams when you’re sleeping?”

  “No,” she’d say, shaking her head.

  One day, I pushed her a little. “Never? You never dream about anything? Your childhood, your life in Congress, the years we dated? Nothing?”

  She thought for a moment. “No,” she said. She seemed to understand my question. No was her answer.

  I wondered: Was she having dreams but not remembering them? In her head at night, was she back to being her old self, conversing effortlessly? Or was she having nightmares, reliving or reimagining the shooting and the painful aftermath?

  Her doctors said it was possible that she was having dreams she couldn’t recall. It was also possible that the damage in her brain prevented dreaming. The brain is such a mystery. It was hard for them to say for sure.

  “Well, I have dreams,” I told Gabby. “I have recurring dreams.”

  Gabby didn’t ask me, “So what do you dream about?” From the day she was shot, she had lost her ability to formulate any original questions. For those of us who love her, that was one of the most difficult aspects of her injury. She either had no urge to ask a question, or more likely, the broken pathways in her brain weren’t allowing it. It was sad for us to see this. All her life, Gabby had been a woman fueled by her curiosity. Had she lost that piece of herself, or was she just unable to tap into it? We couldn’t tell as we communicated with her, mostly in monologues. We talked. She listened.

  On that day when I told Gabby that I have recurring dreams, she looked at me intently, waiting for me to say more. And so I answered the question she didn’t ask. “I dream about you, Gabby,” I said.

  My recurring dreams were actually wonderful. In every one of them, Gabby would make an almost full and miraculous overnight recovery. The dreams were a little different each time, but the general theme was the same. I’d arrive somewhere, usually the hospital, and I’d be greeted by a nurse in the doorway of Gabby’s room. The nurse would say something like, “You’re not going to believe it. This is a really big deal! You’ve got to go in and see Gabby.”

  As I entered her room, I could immediately see that Gabby had morphed back into the person she used to be. She was almost completely lucid, talking in full sentences. “Hi, Mark. Sit down and talk to me. I’m feeling so much better today.”

  Interacting with Gabby in my dream, I could see that she still struggled with certain words, and that her right arm and leg were functional, but not yet totally back to normal. That didn’t dampen my elation. I’d think to myself, “This is completely great! She’s ninety percent there! And that’s more than enough for me. Ninety percent? Gabby, we’ll take that!”

  Each morning, when I’d wake up, I had a sense of what I’d been feeling during these dreams: relief, exhilaration, appreciation. But within seconds, of course, I was back to reality. Gabby was certainly making meaningful progress every week, working as hard as she could in therapy. But mostly, she was taking baby steps. There would be no instant miracle.

  That was not easy for me to accept, especially in the early stages of her recovery. I was demanding of doctors, always trying to determine the best treatments and the fastest paths to recovery. But eventually I adjusted to our new reality and, in the process, I learned things about myself.

  One thing I discovered was that I have the capacity to be a patient guy. I learned to give Gabby the time she needed to say something, even if it was just one word. Often, that meant there were long, empty silences. I noticed that some visitors felt they had to fill those silences by chattering. This was frustrating for Gabby, who would still be trying to express herself. And so I had to become someone who taught patience to others.

  It’s funny that patience has become a virtue of mine, because in certain ways, a large part of me is very impatient. Starting in young adulthood, I was always so achievement-oriented, climbing each step of the ladder without slowing down or stopping. Always aware of “the urgency of now,” I wanted to seize every opportunity. Maybe I was fearful that I’d lose everything I’d worked for if I allowed myself to relax.

  Gabby, on the other hand, was always pretty patient, especially in her dealings with others. She’d let constituents say whatever they needed to say without interrupting them. She was wonderful interacting with people, whether young kids or old folks in nursing homes, always listening closely as they expressed themselves.

  I also think back to the time, after my second space flight, in 2006, when Gabby and I got to have lunch with the legendary British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who is paralyzed due to a form of Lou Gehrig’s disease. It takes him an excruciatingly long time to say anything, and I pretty much gave up on conversing with him beyond a few pleasantries. But Gabby was just incredible. She intuitively knew what to do.

  After my failed attempt at interacting with Dr. Hawking, she kneeled down in front of his wheelchair and said, “Dr. Hawking, how are you today?” She then stared into his eyes and waited. As far as she was concerned there was no one else in the crowded room. She waited silently and patiently. Using a device that tracks the motion of a single facial muscle, he took at least ten minutes to compose and utter the phrase “I’m fine. How are you?” Gabby was in no rush. She could have kneeled there for an hour, waiting for his answer. I was so impressed.

  After Gabby was injured, I found myself thinking about her encounter with Dr. Hawking. In fact, that memory helped me understand how I’d need to interact with her. It’s almost like something out of The Twilight Zone: Dr. Hawking theorizes about time and space, and it was this moment in time that gave me a window into what our future would look like. It was as if Gabby was giving me a message back in 2006: “Watch me. I will be your teacher. Someday, you’ll have to be patient with me and this is how you’ll ne
ed to do it.”

  Emulating Gabby’s gift of patience went beyond giving her time to talk. I also had to force myself to dial back my expectations, and to be patiently realistic. Doctors repeatedly said she was making remarkable progress. Just living through that kind of injury was rare. Still, I had to accept the obvious. Gabby would get better, but not at the pace I yearned for in my dreams.

  I grew to accept that a lot of my efforts would seem fruitless, at least for a while. Breakthroughs would come when they came.

  On the concept of asking questions, for instance, I had to commit myself to trying, day after day, to coax a question out of her. Doctors and psychologists advised us that until Gabby was able to ask questions on her own, we needed to refrain from giving her too much information about the shooting. It might be terrifying and even debilitating if we were to load her up with the particulars of the tragedy if she had no way of asking for more details or of expressing her grief. She also might feel very guilty, holding herself responsible for the six deaths and twelve other injuries, since it was her idea to host the Congress on Your Corner event.

  If and when she was able to ask questions, we were told, she’d be better able to emotionally handle the full story of January 8. Until then, doctors instructed us to proceed gently.

  And so each day I would work with Gabby, slowly and carefully explaining to her what constituted a question.

  “Questions begin with the same words,” I said to her one day. “Who, what, when, where, why, how. Let me give you some examples. What time is it? Where is my mom? Who is coming for dinner? When did it stop raining? Now you try, Gabby. Let’s start a sentence. What . . .”