I also had help from a neighbor, a lawyer who became a good friend and spent many nights sleeping on my floor with a poker at hand. That’s how scared I was. The last straw was when I received a diamond engagement ring at work. It had been purchased at a jeweler in Madison, Wisconsin.
Finally, after years of harassment, there was enough evidence to bring a criminal case against Kargas on the grounds of “menacing by stalking,” and a temporary restraining order was signed forbidding him from having any contact with me, my parents, or the Miss America pageant. I didn’t believe a restraining order would have much effect on a mentally ill man who was so convinced that we had a relationship. Indeed, he did violate the restraining order, continuing to send me letters until his arrest.
Kargas’s trial date was set in Madison, and the prosecutor asked me to fly out and testify. Needless to say, the last thing I wanted was to be in a courtroom only a few feet away from the man who had terrorized me. I couldn’t stomach the idea that he would see me face-to-face and become more obsessed. I didn’t want him to have the power to bring me into a room with him. I hired a lawyer in Madison to submit a motion to the court approving telephone testimony, and I was relieved when it was granted. I wouldn’t have to see him.
I remember the day of my testimony as if it were yesterday. I sat in a room at the Cincinnati Police Department with Bill Fletcher, my detective on the case, who had been by my side throughout the whole ordeal. I had lived in fear for years, and I was so grateful to this man who had believed in me and helped me. I was shaking like a leaf as I listened to Kargas speak. Although he was hundreds of miles away, the sound of his voice terrified me.
I testified for the whole morning, detailing every step of the horrible journey. When I was done, somehow I managed to pull myself together and go to work at two o’clock for my full shift. It’s what I had learned in life—that strength came from perseverance and never giving up no matter what the challenge. I decided I would solve this problem too and not back down even though my life was at risk. I had to put on a game face and move on.
The sad truth of stalker cases is that even when they reach the level of the criminal court, the results are rarely satisfying. In 1995 Kargas was convicted on multiple counts of harassment and violating a restraining order, but the bulk of his sentence of three years was reduced to probation. In all he served only seventy days in prison. It seemed like weak justice to me, that a man could create such terror and upheaval in a stranger’s life and be so mildly punished. Worse still, I had to go on with my life with the haunting knowledge that he was out there in the world. I never heard from him again, but over the years, as my profile increased, I often thought about him and dreaded the day he might reappear and threaten me or my family. It was like a gnawing ache in the back of my mind—which is just one more way stalkers exert a cruel power over the people they target.
When I contemplated telling this story in the book, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stir up that old fear. I was surprised when I learned Kargas had died in 2008. I decided it was important to talk about my experience, because I knew that countless other women were enduring the same threat. Occasionally these incidents are publicized when they involve high-profile people. However, the larger crisis is experienced by millions of people who are not public figures. The National Center for Victims of Crime reports that more than six million stalking incidents were recorded in a one-year period. Although every state now has laws against stalking, there is never complete peace for those of us who have experienced it. Our criminal justice system hasn’t even begun to address this problem, and that’s why I’m telling my story, hoping to play a small part in a necessary wake-up call.
• • •
Being stalked could have put a damper on my experience in Cincinnati, but I didn’t let it. I loved working at WCPO. The first piece of advice my news director, Jim Zarchin, gave me was quite profound. He said, “I want you to do live TV like you play the violin.” When I asked what he meant, he said, “I’ve seen you play—the same passion, the feeling you have inside—that’s what I want you to do.”
I never forgot his words, and they meant a lot to me then. I was already poised to work as hard as I could, but relating my job to my violin and my passion for it gave me another way of looking at my career. I began to see that this inherent drive and spirit could shine through in whatever I was reporting. And one of the best things about WCPO was that it was a powerhouse station with a deep commitment to long-form stories and the money to spend on them. Sometimes I’d be off the streets for a month or so putting together a major report or investigative piece. One that I was especially proud of involved a group of high-risk kids and an organization that worked with them for a year to improve the trajectory of their futures. I was able to follow them through each stage of their progress, and the station led the evening news with my reports—right up to the emotional graduation of these amazing kids who now had a future they’d never expected.
When I wasn’t doing long stories, I was a nightside reporter. That’s where I really honed my skills on live TV. Broadcasts were at 5:00, 5:30, 6:00, and 11:00, and I spent my time in a live truck. When there was breaking news anywhere in Cincinnati, I went out in the truck. We had little time for editing. The mandate was, “Just get out there and tell us what happened.” In the live truck I would cut quick one-minute pieces, record my voice, edit, and feed the whole piece back to the station. Sometimes I just sent my voice tracks back and picked sound bites from people I’d interviewed, and the final piece would be edited at the station. The pressure was constant, and I found that I thrived in that environment.
I lived in a great area called Mount Adams, an enclave on a hill that overlooked the city, and began to enjoy myself, though it took a little time to get settled in. My first Christmas, soon after I arrived, was spent working. I wasn’t much of a cook, and I ate a can of beans at my apartment for Christmas dinner—a far cry from the usual festivities back home. I hadn’t realized that all the stores would be closed. It wasn’t the last holiday I worked, for sure.
Gradually I started to fit in. Many of my colleagues at the station were young and single, and we hung out together. I’d get home from work at 11:45 p.m. and then go out. Some nights I didn’t get to bed until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.
Bill Hemmer, now my colleague at Fox, was the weekend sports anchor at WCPO, and we became close friends. Bill is a couple of years older than me, and while we were at the station together he did an incredibly daring thing for a young up-and-coming newscaster. He took a leave and traveled the world for a year, not knowing for sure if he’d have a job when he got back. Fortunately, the station knew what it had in Bill. When he began sending video reports from his travels, they aired them on the evening news as an ongoing segment called “Bill’s Excellent Adventure,” which won him two Emmys. Bill’s career only got better once he returned from his travels, and soon he was snapped up by CNN and then Fox. However, what has stuck with me is that he took a risk. He didn’t know if it would hurt or help him professionally, but he felt compelled to do it. I admire that quality.
A television coach once analyzed my career and advised me, “You need to learn how to take risks.” It was the way I could set myself apart. I wasn’t exactly sure what taking risks would mean for me, but the advice caused me to reflect once again about my violin training. I was always told that many people could learn to play the notes, but what distinguished those with a true gift was the ability to stand out by risking a unique interpretation.
The same was true of TV. What fresh interpretation could I risk?
That opportunity came to me when I made my next move to WOIO CBS-19 News in Cleveland, where I became part of a great experiment—two women coanchors for the evening news broadcasts at 6:00 and 11:00. My coanchor, Denise Dufala, was a native of Cleveland, and she was popular with viewers, but the station was suffering from chronically low ratings and the female duo was an attempt to l
ift them.
I had originally been hired to do the weekend news while Denise and her male coanchor, Steve Coleman, did the evening news. But as ratings faltered, the news director, Kim Godwin, and the station higher-ups had the radical idea of pairing Denise and me in the evenings. They promoted us as “the right team at the right time.”
A plaque on my desk read, “A person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing and is nothing.” With that in mind I jumped into this new challenge wholeheartedly. Denise and I complemented each other—and it wasn’t just that she was brunette and I was blonde. Our personalities were distinct. Denise had anchoring experience. I was the new kid on the block, a few years younger and much greener. We were scrutinized to death, but Denise laughed at the idea that having women coanchors was at all risky. “The only difference between two females and a male and a female is that we have to coordinate the color of our outfits every day,” she joked. That was true—after the unfortunate night when Denise wore orange and I wore pink. We got a call from an executive at the station who complained that it looked as if a pumpkin had exploded in a raspberry field.
Chapter 7
Kindred Spirits
My career was going well, but as I approached thirty, I was worried about my personal life. As an evening newscaster I had very little opportunity to socialize, and I hadn’t dated anyone for a while. I thought I was in danger of becoming one of those newswomen I’d seen so often who were married to their jobs. Not that I faulted them if that was their choice, which it often was. But it wasn’t my choice. Feeling sorry for myself, I regularly complained to my mother that I hadn’t met the right man. She always replied, “Don’t worry, honey. He’s right around the corner.” She told me, “You just never know. He’ll come when you’re not looking.” I wasn’t sure that I believed her.
I had become good friends with my real estate agent, Patti, and her best friend was also a real estate agent who had just sold a house to a “great guy”—a former pro baseball player who was now a baseball agent. His name was Casey Close. They decided to try to fix us up, and we were both agreeable. Casey was going to call me. I said okay and put it out of my mind.
I was on the bus with the Dawgs the first time Casey called me. The Dawgs were a group of rabid Cleveland Browns fans, named for the bleacher section where they sat—the Dawg Pound. Their rowdy behavior, reportedly fueled by alcohol, included wearing dog masks, barking wildly, and throwing Milk-Bones at visiting teams.
The Browns’ owner, Art Modell, had just announced plans to relocate the team to Baltimore, and as you can imagine, the announcement was like red meat to the Dawgs. I was covering a trip to a game in Pittsburgh where they were planning a raucous protest.
When my cell phone rang, I was sitting next to Big Dawg, and the bus was rocking with the trademark Dawg chant: Woof . . . woof . . . woof.
I answered the phone, shouting to be heard above the uproar.
“Yes,” said a friendly voice. “My name is Casey Close. I’m calling you because . . .” He was drowned out by a fresh series of chants: Woof . . . woof . . . woof.
Speaking louder, Casey asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m on a bus with the Dawgs,” I shouted back. “I’m going to Pittsburgh to cover a story.”
“Cool!” Now he sounded enthusiastic. “Do you like sports?”
“I love sports,” I yelled as the bus heaved with sound and motion.
“When can you go on a date?” he yelled back.
We had our first date a couple of weeks after I returned from Pittsburgh. Casey came to pick me up at my apartment, and I can still see him standing at the security door waiting for me to buzz him in. He was very handsome—tall and athletic, with wavy dark hair—and holding a bouquet of flowers.
I knew next to nothing about him, other than that he was from Ohio and he’d played professional baseball before becoming an agent. He was understated about his achievements, but later when I looked him up I was impressed. In college at the University of Michigan, Casey was a star—in fact, he still holds the career record for home runs. In 1986 he was drafted by the New York Yankees and spent five years in their minor league farm clubs, eventually working his way up to the top tier of Triple A. He then went on to play Triple A with the Seattle Mariners for two years. Now he was a sports agent building a strong clientele.
Casey was driving a Jeep, and he took me to a nice restaurant. We immediately hit it off. It wasn’t love at first sight, but we were on the same wavelength. Casey was warm and open and hilariously funny. We were laughing so hard and talking so much that we kept forgetting to look at the menu.
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “We really should order, but you are so funny.” And then I delivered the biggest diss of his life.
I was looking at him across the table, and I suddenly said, “You remind me so much of somebody famous.” He sat back in his chair with a little smile on his face as if he knew exactly what I was going to say, because he’d heard it a million times. I later learned that people often said he resembled John F. Kennedy Jr., and he was expecting me to say just that. But what I said was, “Jim Carrey.”
The smile disappeared. His face fell. He looked shocked. I thought, “Oh, crap.” I knew I’d put my foot in it and probably ruined everything.
I excused myself and went to the ladies’ room, where I took out my cell phone and called Patti.
“I just totally screwed this thing up,” I said miserably.
“What are you talking about? Where are you?”
“In the bathroom. I just said he reminded me of the actor Jim Carrey.”
“So what?” I know she thought I was demented. I told her his reaction.
“So,” she asked, “will you mind if he doesn’t call you tomorrow?”
I hurriedly said, “No. It’s okay. No big deal.”
Was it? I didn’t know. But I liked him.
He did call me again, and I was starting to really like him. By the third date, our conversation was growing deeper. I realized that here was a guy who just might get me. Like me, he was very driven, and he admired that quality in me. We were living parallel lives. Casey had stopped playing baseball, and now he was killing himself to become a successful baseball agent, just as I was killing myself to succeed in the news business. But more than that, our childhoods had parallels. He understood what I went through as a young musician because he went through a similar experience as a baseball player. When I told him about my wrenching decision to quit the violin, he actually understood on a very personal level. He too had faced a similar wrenching decision. Playing Triple A ball was a tough environment of endless bus trips and little income. But most players start there, always with the goal of moving up to the majors. I’m sure Casey visualized himself walking out onto the field at Yankee Stadium, just as I once visualized myself playing at Carnegie Hall.
In spite of his performance as a hitter, by 1991 Casey saw that the window of opportunity for playing in the major leagues was closing and he was faced with a choice. He was twenty-six years old when he decided to quit playing—a very emotional decision for a man who had devoted so many years to the sport. Although he found a way to remain in the baseball profession as a sports agent, I identified with the struggle he went through. I had been there myself. When you are considered a prodigy, whether in sports or music or something else, your identity is shaped by that ability and your worth is measured by how well you do. Both Casey and I were driven, extremely focused people. Choosing to walk away is like falling into a canyon without a net. You have to redefine yourself. I was drawn by the fact that Casey and I had that in common. We understood each other.
I had usually dated older guys, but Casey brought out something different in me. We had similar timelines, a shared willingness to sacrifice, and the same drive. We could talk for hours about our experiences and our dreams. If there is such a thing as a soul mate, I began to see that he mi
ght be that for me.
I knew what I wanted in life, though. On our third date I said to Casey, “If you don’t want to eventually live in New York City, don’t call me back.” The underlying message was: “Don’t call me back if you don’t also want a partner with a fulfilling career.” He smiled and said that New York was his dream too.
We hadn’t been dating very long when I told Casey I was planning to join my parents in Arizona for a vacation. They had semiretired to Arizona and lived there in the winter, and my mom and dad loved to golf—a sport I didn’t love only because I never had time to practice and was worried I wasn’t that good. As a kid I told my dad I liked driving the golf cart better than playing! Casey announced that he was going to be in Arizona for spring training and would like to see me and maybe even meet my parents.
Whoa! Was I ready for that? My mom rarely liked the men I dated. I wasn’t sure I wanted to subject Casey to that scrutiny, and I was really afraid she wouldn’t like him, although if I’d been thinking straight I would have realized that of course she would, and she did. My parents loved Casey. So did my grandfather. When I first told him about Casey he asked, “Is he Swedish?” I said no. “Is he Lutheran?” No again. At last he asked, “Is he a nice guy?” I said yes. He smiled and gave me his blessing.
After visiting my parents, we drove through the desert to Sedona, where we stood at the dramatic site of the Chapel of the Holy Cross, a citadel on a hill, designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Alone there, we gazed out on the endless hills, taking in the natural beauty. It was very romantic.
Soon after the Arizona trip, we drove to Columbus, Ohio, where I was introduced to Casey’s parents. I wore my favorite outfit—a hot little leather jumper that I wore with tights, which was very stylish at the time. They told me that I was the first woman Casey had ever brought to meet them. I wasn’t sure whether to believe it, but Casey was grinning and I thought it could be true. That meant something to me.
Getting Real Page 16