Tucson Tragedy

This series of stories trace the stories of victims, families and survivors in the community following the January 8, 2011, shooting near Tucson that killed six and wounded 13. Originally published throughout 2011.

College students stop to hug him on campus. Children ask him for autographs in restaurants. Strangers want to shake his hand at gas stations.

Nearly everywhere he goes, people recognize Daniel Hernandez as the burly, soft-spoken intern who helped save Gabrielle Giffords' life the day the congresswoman was shot in the head in January.

That was three months ago. Since then, Hernandez, a 21-year-old University of Arizona student, has been interviewed by hundreds of journalists from all over the world. He has traveled the country to receive awards and accolades, including being an invited guest of President Barack Obama for the State of the Union address. He set up a website to handle the constant requests for interviews.

But even as he continues to accept speaking engagements and make public appearances to talk about the shooting, the typically open and outgoing Hernandez has withdrawn emotionally from those closest to him, say his family and friends. His friends and family worry that in packing his schedule so full - leaving little time for rest - Hernandez is hiding from the emotions he has kept bottled up since a gunman shot 19 people, killing six, outside a Safeway on Jan. 8.

Although Hernandez was not physically wounded, he experienced something horrific that crisp Saturday morning. The tranquil shopping center near Tucson was transformed into a scene resembling a battlefield. Thirteen wounded people were bleeding. Six people were slain. Among the dead was Christina-Taylor Green, a 9-year-old girl.

In disregard for his own safety, Hernandez rushed to Giffords' side, holding her head up so she could breathe and covering her gunshot wound with his hand. He stayed with her until help arrived and then rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital.

"I worry about him all the time," said his sister, Consuelo, 18. "Psychologically, I know he has changed. Things like that you will never forget."

Horrible trauma is very difficult for the brain to process, said Dr. Gabrielle Lawrence, a psychologist in Scottsdale. She said many people subsequently struggle with severe grief and post-traumatic stress disorder.

People, especially men, often get "really busy" to avoid thinking about what they experienced, said Lawrence, who does not know Hernandez.

While normal, she said, such behavior can be a sign that Hernandez needs help.

Hernandez said he is getting the help he needs, meeting with a grief counselor.

"I'm doing as well as can be expected," he said. "It was very difficult, as you can imagine, everything that happened on that day."
Exceptionally smart

Hernandez, the oldest of three children, grew up in a modest home in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood on the south side of Tucson. The family spoke English and Spanish at home.

His father, also named Daniel Hernandez, grew up in California and is of Mexican descent. He made a living as a construction worker and a handyman until he fell off a dumpster a year ago on a job and shattered his left ankle. He hasn't worked since.

Daniel's mother, Consuelo Hernandez, an immigrant from Nogales, Sonora, stayed home to raise the children. She is known for the beautiful cakes she bakes.

As a child, Hernandez was "superdotado," Spanish for exceptionally smart, his father said.

"He was scary when he was 5 or 6 years old," the elder Hernandez said. "The things he would come up with. He would just blow us away."

When Daniel was about 5, he decided he wanted to become a doctor, like two of his uncles in Mexico.

"We were always telling him about his uncles and how being a doctor is one of the best ways you can help people," his father said.

Hernandez graduated from Sunnyside High School in Tucson in 2008. During his junior and senior years, he participated in Health Occupations Students of America, a national program that prepares students for careers in the health-care field.

Cathy Monroe, a registered nurse who has taught at Sunnyside since 1992, remembers Hernandez as one of the brightest students she has ever had.

On his own, Hernandez learned the techniques for drawing blood and testing urine and then took top honors in statewide and national laboratory-skills tests.

In the program, Hernandez also learned first-aid skills that he put to use when Giffords was shot, applying pressure to her wound to stop the bleeding and helping her to sit upright so she wouldn't choke on the blood.

"I think the important thing, he also was talking to her," said Monroe, who spoke with Hernandez in February when he was honored by the Sunnyside Unified School District Board. "He cared about her. He was asking her: 'Can you squeeze my hand? Can you hear me?' So in a certain way, he was keeping her aware of what was going on so that he could give good information to the paramedics when they arrived."
Political-career hopes

After high school, Hernandez enrolled at UA intending to study medicine. But that summer, he volunteered for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The experience changed his life and set him on a new course, one that would lead him to Giffords' side the morning of the shooting.

"I realized I loved talking to people and learning how campaigning worked," said Hernandez, a political-science major who plans to pursue a career in public service after he graduates in 2012.

This semester, instead of attending classes, he is getting full-time credit by working as an intern in Giffords' office and for the Arizona Students' Association, a governmental organization that lobbies on behalf of students attending the state's three public universities.

And he is hoping to continue his nascent political career. He and another candidate for student-body president were disqualified in March for having an excessive number of campaigning violations. Appeals are being heard by the student government's supreme court.

Hernandez has managed several political campaigns on campus. Last year, he also ran the successful re-election campaign for state Rep. Steve Farley, a Democrat from Tucson.

Farley, whose district covers downtown Tucson and abuts the university, wanted a student to run his campaign. Someone suggested Hernandez.

Farley remembers how impressed he was with Hernandez during the job interview.

"I hired him on the spot," Farley said. "I saw in him the kind of responsibility and trustworthiness I knew was going to be very important. . . . Throughout the campaign, it became very clear his work ethic was incredible and (so was) his selflessness. You know walking door to door in Tucson in July is not an easy thing to do."

As a member of the Arizona Students' Association, Hernandez also researched, drafted and testified in support of a bill in the state Legislature aimed at getting more students to vote by requiring colleges and universities to provide more information on campus about voter registration and elections.

"A lot of people might have some trepidation," said state Rep. Matt Heinz, D-Tucson, who sponsored the measure. "He did not."

The legislation was adopted in 2010.

As he managed Farley's campaign and worked on the legislation, Hernandez also began volunteering on Giffords' re-election campaign, going door to door in Tucson to help drum up votes. In November, she narrowly won.

After that, Hernandez was hired to work as an intern in her Tucson office. On Jan. 2, the day before he started, he tweeted: "Excited for my first day at the @Rep_Giffords office tomorrow for my internship!"
'Mom, I'm all right'

On the morning of Jan. 8, a Saturday, Giffords was holding one of her frequent "Congress on Your Corner" events. It was scheduled for 10 a.m. at a Safeway in an upscale strip mall on Oracle Road.

Hernandez volunteered to help at the event, which provided a chance for the public to ask the congresswoman questions in an informal setting. Hernandez planned to meet Giffords and other staff members at the Safeway.

But first he promised to swing by his parents' house in south Tucson to pick up his younger sister, Consuelo, who wanted to tag along. Consuelo was waiting for him that morning, but he overslept and didn't show up.

A little after 10 a.m. the phone rang. Mrs. Hernandez answered. It was Daniel.

"Mom," he said. "I'm all right. Something's happened to Gabrielle. But I'm all right."

Then he hung up.

His parents didn't know what to make of the call. His father started flipping through channels on the TV. That is when they learned that Giffords had been shot at the Safeway and several other people had been wounded. But details were sketchy.

"I was clicking through every channel, back and forth, back and forth, trying to get more information," his father said.

They tried calling, but Hernandez didn't answer his cellphone.

His mother became hysterical.

"To put it mildly, she was upset. Her voice was louder. There were tears in her eyes," his father said as he recounted her panicked reaction: "You know how Daniel is. He could be shot, and he's not telling us."
Covered in blood

Hernandez made one other call that morning, reaching Farley, a close friend of Giffords, as he drove with his wife and daughters. They were on their way to an event at Kartchner Caverns when Farley took the call on the car's speaker phone.

Farley recalled saying something cheerful like: "How ya doing, Daniel? What's up?"

Hernandez cut him off. "Steve. Gabby's been shot. We need to get a hold of the family. Get to the hospital as soon as you can."

Farley learned later that Hernandez had called from the ambulance as he was holding Giffords' head.

Farley, just a few miles from home, headed directly to University Medical Center. As he pulled up, he saw Hernandez standing near the driveway of the ambulance bay, wearing a dark argyle sweater.

"He was just standing there alone, covered head to toe in blood," Farley said.

Farley walked up to Hernandez and gave him a big hug. Then Farley whispered in his ear.

"Daniel," Farley said. "You've got to take care of yourself. This is something really big."
Yet to open up

The night of the shooting, Hernandez went to his parents' house instead of his apartment near campus after spending the day at the hospital. It was about 2 in the morning when he arrived. His parents were waiting for him.

But Hernandez didn't want to talk.

"He said, 'Mom, I'm tired. I just want to go to bed,' " his father recalled.

The next morning, Hernandez didn't want to talk either.

Three months have passed, and Hernandez has yet to open up to anyone in his family. That is unusual, his parents say, because Hernandez calls home every day, sometimes several times a day, just to check in. His parents are afraid to bring it up.

"I would say mentally he has changed quite a bit," his father said one recent evening, sitting in a restaurant near downtown Tucson with his wife at his side. "No, we don't go back to that day. It didn't happen."
Downplays being a hero

The day after the shooting, newspapers and radio and television stations from all over the world were calling Hernandez for interviews. Farley's wife, Kelly Paisley, went to Hernandez's house to help him handle all of the requests. Paisley took the Hernandez family to a hotel for a week to avoid reporters knocking on their door. Just in the first week, Hernandez gave more than 260 interviews, Paisley said.

Many of the requests came from Spanish newspapers and television stations in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. In the Spanish media, Hernandez became known as "el h�roe hispano," the Hispanic hero.

But over and over, Hernandez has downplayed his own actions, shunning the label. Instead, he has turned the spotlight on the paramedics and doctors, calling them the real heroes.

In much the same way, Hernandez also downplays concerns about himself.

He said he has not experienced nightmares or insomnia, but he has noticed he wakes up tired and feels extremely exhausted.

Hernandez has many friends who offered their support after the shooting, said David Martinez III, a close friend and governmental-affairs director for the Arizona Students' Association.

He also is a "very strong person," Martinez said.

Still, Martinez said, Hernandez does not talk about the shooting.

And friends have noticed how busy Hernandez has become, though they say it's hard to tell the difference because Hernandez always has kept busy. They realize, though, that he has been through a horrible experience.

"He's coping well, but I do worry about him a lot," said Elma Delic, 21, a senior.

While visiting the Capitol in February for the ASA's annual lobby day, Hernandez ran into Tom Chabin, a Democratic state representative from Flagstaff.

Chabin, who has known Hernandez for several years, asked how he was doing.

"I'm doing fine," Hernandez said, clearly uncomfortable with the question.

Chabin looked directly into Hernandez's eyes, put his hand on his shoulder and told him he needed to take care of himself.

Chabin said later that he also worries about Hernandez.

"My concerns really weren't directed at Daniel but to a human being that witnessed and participated heroically in a very traumatic event where he saw his boss, a U.S. rep who he admires greatly, shot in the head and witnessed the death of others, including a small child," Chabin said.

Hernandez brushed aside the suggestion that he has kept himself so busy since the shooting to avoid coping with the trauma.

"It's not healthy to just ignore what happened, so I am not keeping busy to just ignore it," he said. "I'm just keeping busy for having to catch up with all I've missed."


Giffords-shooting survivor Suzi Hileman helped to heal by city

TUCSON - Suzi Hileman studies the parking lot outside the Safeway on a Wednesday afternoon, searching, thinking, waiting. She takes off her sunglasses and holds tight to the door handle, unsure what she will feel. It is the first time she has been back.

From the front passenger seat of the car, her walker folded in back, Hileman points out where she parked that January day.

This everyday spot, this grocery store, where SUVs again are jockeying for parking spaces and people again are loading bags into their cars, is where a gunman opened fire that sunny morning, killing six people and wounding 13 others. One of the wounded was U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, shot in the head while hosting one of her favorite events, a "Congress on Your Corner" meet-and-greet for her constituents.

This is where Hileman and her 9-year-old friend, Christina-Taylor Green, stood in line holding hands, so excited about meeting a real-life congresswoman.

And it is where they fell.

It is where, bleeding from three gunshot wounds, Hileman lay side by side on the asphalt with Christina-Taylor, watching helplessly as the little girl died from the bullet in her chest, her big brown eyes locked on Hileman's face.

It is hard to see it all now. The screaming and the sirens and the chaos are gone. There are no bloodstains on the pavement. It looks so ordinary.

Hileman sits back in her seat. She doesn't find anything from that day. No terror. No sadness.

"It is just a space," she says matter-of-factly.

And when a young woman strolls out through the store's automatic doors wearing black lace-up boots, a shiny flowered skirt 4 feet in diameter, and pink sunglasses with black polka dots, Hileman laughs. It is a happy sound, here in the parking lot where there was so much pain.

As Hileman heals, so does her city, though neither will ever be the same. There were funerals, and the kind of national spotlight no city wants, and a somber presidential visit. There is grieving and physical therapy and nightmares, still.

On the way out of the parking lot, Hileman spots six plain white wooden crosses pounded into the dirt across Ina Road. Six dead. Six crosses. And now the tears come.

Three months after she was shot, Hileman will take her first real steps, putting all of her weight on her reconstructed hip for the first time in her doctor's office on Monday.

Hileman, 59, hasn't taken any pain medication in a month. She's sore still, but she can stand it. And she doesn't need to be knocked out at night. She's not afraid anymore to lie awake in the dark with her thoughts.

There are many triumphs. Hileman can get out of bed now without help. She can reach her clothes, pull open the refrigerator and rinse dishes. She planted purple pansies in pots on the front porch: "I so needed to muck around in dirt." And she can focus enough now to read things longer than Dear Abby or the three-page chapters in James Patterson's books.

"Part of me goes to a quiet place when I read. In that quiet place my mind wandered, and I would find myself standing there in the parking lot at Safeway," Hileman says.

But she can't get used to the scars that crisscross her body. They are a surprise every time she undresses. Three bullets went in, one missing her heart by an inch. Only two bullets came out. Even doctors aren't sure where the third one is. A thick scar runs from below her belly button up to her chest, where they cut her open to search for the bullet and check her organs for damage. The scar on her chest is the size of a dime, and violet. There are more - on her right leg, her back and her behind. They are a constant reminder.

"Every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, there it is," Hileman says.

She has worked hard to take care of her body. Before the shooting, she was at the gym daily. Now, at least, her body is beginning to feel familiar again.

And as she heals physically, she finds herself dealing more emotionally with what happened.

"Without the pain to distract me, and without the drugs, there is so much time to think," she says.

It's true for her husband, Bill Hileman, 61, too. He came too close to losing the woman he has loved for more than 40 years, ever since he picked her up hitchhiking outside Cornell University, where they both were students. Now that she is safe and healing, he dreams that he should have been there, with his Suzi and Christina-Taylor. He imagines he would have noticed something amiss. Maybe he could have protected them both.

* * *

After the shooting, Hileman, who never even used to look both ways before she crossed the street, found herself anxious about leaving the house. Her heart would pound whenever a young man crossed the path of her wheelchair. She doesn't like being afraid. It is not very Suzi Hileman.

So when the defendant in the shooting, Jared Loughner, appeared in federal court in Tucson for the first time on March 9 to hear the 49 felony charges against him and enter a plea, Hileman was in the front row, clutching her husband's hand. She is Counts 38 and 39.

It is the People of the United States vs. Jared Loughner, and the Hilemans wanted to be there to represent the victims who could not.

Hileman began to tremble when Loughner came in, shackled and smirking. Only a small, wooden barrier separated her from the man accused of shooting her and killing her young friend. She studied his skinny neck and long sideburns. He did not look at her.

"I was in the presence of evil," Hileman says. "I was prepared to be physically afraid. I wasn't. He's a scrawny pipsqueak."

She does not fear him anymore. She will testify against him.

Hileman used to have strong feelings about the death penalty but now doesn't know what to think. She must decide, because along with other victims and their families, she has been asked by the U.S. attorney general whether to seek the death penalty in this case.

Her questions swirl: What kind of person would shoot innocent people? What kind of person kills a child? And what kind of person would she be if she wanted him dead, too?

"Is that the kind of person I want to be? Am I a person who would say someone else should die?" she asks. "It's ugly, and I don't like to have to think about it."

She does think about that day in the parking lot, however. All the time.

Some parts of it are missing, shoved out of her memory from shock, or maybe hidden by her psyche to protect her heart.

She remembers standing in line, and running, and then being on the ground, and then watching Christina-Taylor die. But she turns it over and over in her mind, and yearns to know exactly what happened. How long did it take her to run? Did she shield Christina with her arm, or with her whole body? Did she miss a safe spot, a place they could have hidden?

At the courthouse that day, Hileman asked the FBI agents if she was on the store's security surveillance videotape, the one prosecutors say caught some of the deadly shooting rampage. An agent told her no. She and Christina-Taylor are not on the tape. Security cameras captured only still photographs of the two of them afterward, side by side on the ground.

Hileman doesn't need to see those pictures. She remembers that.

* * *

At the Hilemans' home, someone presses the doorbell and it sounds funny, as though it is worn out from all the use in the last three months. This time, a neighbor is dropping off two big zip-top bags of green bean feta cheese salad and chicken breasts.

"It really does help," Hileman tells the woman as she reaches up to hug her. "We are so enveloped by the love."

Bill thanks her too. He gets recognized wherever he goes - the store, the gym. "Oh, you're the guy with the wife," people say, and they want to know how she is faring and what they can do to help. Staff from the Omni Tucson National Resort volunteered to clean their house and tidy the yard. The guy at Subway won't let Bill pay for sandwiches.

The Hilemans moved from California in July 2006, after searching two years for the perfect place to retire. They love Tucson, its landscape and its diverse mix of people. This is the house they bought to grow old in, so the passageways are wide enough for a wheelchair. And this is where they will heal.

But the shooting didn't happen just to the Hilemans, or to the other victims and their families. It shattered the entire city.

"People need to feel connected," Bill says.

And to that effect, Hileman has become a celebrity of sorts in her beloved city, where people delight in details of her steady recovery, the sight of her at her favorite restaurant, Wildflower Grill on Oracle Road, and the chance to get their arms around her. They need the hugs as much as she does.

Hileman has attended almost every walk, run, benefit concert, dedication ceremony, tree planting, memorial, and candlelight vigil since the Jan. 8 shooting. She says yes to just about every invitation to speak, paint wooden flowers with fellow woman bloggers, and listen to Bonnie Levine's kindergartners read aloud their stories about kindness.

"It's hard, because every time you go to one, it opens it up again," Hileman says.

But she goes for herself, and she goes for her city, taking the walker instead of the wheelchair even though the wheelchair would make it easier to get around: "Tucson doesn't need to see me sitting down," she says.

Hileman takes the walker to J. Gilbert Footwear, next to Wildflower Grill, where she orders new cowboy boots to replace the ones she was wearing when she was shot: "Cowboy boots are what I wear when I'm not wearing flip flops."

The FBI offered to send back Hileman's boots, but she didn't want them. Nor her wallet, or the clothes the paramedics cut off her. The only thing that she lost that day that she wants back is Christina-Taylor.

"The Band-Aids are peeling off. The wounds are healing over, but the scars will always be there," Hileman says. "It will never go away, but it can't be everything. I have to go forward."

* * *

In February, Hileman was asked to help judge a children's photography contest at Prince Elementary School. With a borrowed camera, the winner, a 9-year-old boy named Juan, shot elegantly composed pictures of his neighborhood, including his mailbox, covered with graffiti.

Juan hugged Hileman that day. And when she went back to give him a camera of his own, Juan told her, "I know I could never fill the hole in your heart. You will always have memories of Christina. But I was thinking that maybe we could do things together and put new memories next to hers."

Hileman fell in love.

As soon as she can drive, she and Juan are going to the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. His mother already said it was all right.

That same day, kindergarten teacher Bonnie Levine invited Hileman to her class across the hall, and soon, Hileman had 25 more young friends. And then the gym teacher invited Hileman to Field Day, where she was introduced as the school's "Official Adopted Grandmother."

"I was floating," Hileman says. "I have been looking for someplace little enough where I could make a difference.

"I get joy out of it."

She needed a child to love. She got an entire school.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/04/03/20110403gabrielle-giffords-suzi-hileman-survivor.html#ixzz1qdYIqWRP
 


Gabrielle Giffords' husband Mark Kelly will long for home

HOUSTON - He is bound for a place where gravity cannot contain him, but even in space, Mark Kelly will feel an inescapable pull toward home.

Gabby.

The pull brings him each morning to a room decorated with balloons and cards, desert scenes and family photos. He arrives, Starbucks cup in hand, to read the newspaper with his wife.

They begin every day this way, at the rehabilitation hospital where she is recovering from the moment that changed their world Jan. 8. The pull brings him back each night, long after dark. Another day's progress, another day closer.

In the hours between visits, there is another pull.

Kelly, a space-shuttle astronaut, races a clock that is counting down to launch day. On Friday, he and his crew will lift off aboard Endeavour for the second-to-last shuttle flight.

As they run through the training they will depend on to stay alive in space, the countdown continues.

Another day closer.

Kelly has been to space before. But the job "will be a little bit harder this time, just because I want to look out for her," Kelly said, speaking to The Arizona Republic in an exclusive interview after spending a day in training and an evening at his wife's side.

Kelly says launch mornings are tightly focused. Hurried, but precise to the second, the tension broken only by a preflight poker game. The astronauts think only about the launch.

This time, he says, will be different.

"I know I'm going to have this sense of wanting to get back, just to be with her," he said.

NASA tells the astronauts they would have been safer rushing the beaches of Normandy. Tragedy has claimed a shuttle twice in the past. The chances are one in 57 that an astronaut will die.

Kelly's wife, Arizona's Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, has outrun long odds of her own, her doctors say. She survived the bullet that traveled through her brain when she was shot outside a grocery store near Tucson.

In the days after her shooting, Kelly wondered whether he could lead the mission. He was being pulled to Gabby.

Then he watched his wife begin her recovery. Somewhere among her words, in their moments together, was a clear message for her husband, one that eased the struggle against the pull. It was the same answer astronauts wait to hear in the long buildup to a launch, after the risks and the rewards have been assessed. It was the answer, in NASA-speak, to the question "Go or no-go?"

The answer was go.

***

Morning at Giffords' hospital room brings husband Kelly, carrying a brightly colored paper cup and a copy of the New York Times.

Since she was moved to TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston in late January, she has worked on her recovery full time, while Kelly trains at Johnson Space Center nearby.

Kelly visits her about 7 a.m. for 15 minutes, maybe 30, as many as he can squeeze in before work.

He takes her drink order each night before. "It's either a non-fat latte with two raw sugars, or tea," he says. "And I always ask her if she wants a doughnut, because once she said yes."
At his usual Starbucks, workers make the order with specially decorated cups.

While he waits in line for the coffee, he scans the front page of the Times and chooses a story he can read aloud to her. He finds stories he knows she would like, the ones about Congress, the budget or people doing good things.

It was from a Times story they were reading together that Giffords first learned that six people died in the shooting that wounded her. Kelly tried to skip a couple of lines in a story, but Giffords, following along, caught him. When she realized the truth, she began to cry.

Lately, the conversation has turned to his launch. Giffords wants to go to Florida to see the liftoff, something she makes clear to him. They are awaiting her doctors' OK.

Kelly the astronaut wants her in Florida. "I wouldn't want her to be there if she wasn't ready to do this,"

Kelly said. "She's one of the biggest supporters in Congress of what we do at NASA."

But as her husband, he says, he wants the best thing for her recovery. If she weren't there, he says, "it wouldn't be the end of the world either."

***

In the hours and days after the Tucson tragedy, Kelly wasn't sure he would ever be where he is now.

He rushed to his wife's side after hearing the news: A lone gunman had opened fire at one of Giffords' trademark meet-and-greet events. Six people died, including a federal judge, a 9-year-old girl and one of Giffords' staff members. Thirteen others were wounded.

Kelly had already been preparing for his shuttle mission. It would be his fourth, his second as commander.

It carried special meaning as one of the last flights in the shuttle's often-turbulent history.

Then Giffords' chief of staff had called him with the incomprehensible news. Gabby had been shot.
In those seconds, he wondered if he had dreamed the phone call. Then, he says, he found himself wishing his wife had lost her re-election race.

The race had been close, so close the results weren't known for days. The result could have gone the other way.

"That doesn't mean that this wouldn't have happened," he said. "I mean I don't . . . you don't know this guy's motivation, but I think there's a chance it would not have happened. Probably, I think there's a good chance that if she would have lost, this would not have happened."

For days, the question hung over Tucson and then Houston: Would Kelly fly the mission or would he remain with his wife?

Television commentators, columnists and bloggers all disagreed about what was right. He has a duty to his crew, some argued. He has a duty to his wife, others said.

Kelly talked about the dilemma with Peter Rhee, the trauma surgeon at University Medical Center in Tucson, where Giffords was taken after the shooting.

"He has been working on this mission for over two years," Rhee said in an interview with The Republic.

"He had been the consummate husband and wanted to cancel that mission. He wanted to give the best opportunity for his crew to have a concentrated commander on that mission."
Rhee tried to reassure Kelly that Giffords would be fine, and he was touched by Kelly's deep concern. "I think that he is one of the nicest men I ever met," Rhee said.

Kelly talked with his twin brother, Scott, who is also an astronaut. Scott was aboard the International Space Station on the day of the shooting.

"Certainly it would be a tough decision for anyone," Scott said. "I think we just discussed the two options. In NASA-speak, the 'risk traits' of doing anything."

Given Mark's experience, Scott said, "It's something he can manage."

Kelly also talked to his wife.

"Her reaction," he says, "was just like kind of confusion that I would even consider giving up the opportunity to command this last flight of Endeavour."

At every step, he says, the answer is the same.

"I've asked a number of times, 'Are you OK with me doing this?' " he says. "She'll say, 'Yes.' "

***

At NASA in Houston, Kelly jogs down the hallway, his crew speed-walking behind him.

The flight session is at 8 a.m. For Kelly, 8 means 8, not 8:01.

"Up, up, we're late," he says, waving his arm and herding them up the stairs into the shuttle-flight simulator, where they strap into a replica of the shuttle's cockpit. The crew members wear blue rubber bracelets that read: "Peace, Love, Gabby." They don't ask how she is doing, and Kelly doesn't bring it up.

They run through every step of the mission, down to the violent shaking they feel upon ascent and even the moment that they pause to take photographs of Earth.

Before each practice launch, pilot Gregory H. "Boxy" Johnson reaches his hand behind him, palm up, and wiggles his fingers for fist bumps from mission specialists Roberto Vittori and Michael Fincke. He calls them "Ricky Bobby" and "Spanky."

Kelly sits to Johnson's left. He doesn't have a nickname.

"That's how he rolls," Johnson said.

And he doesn't fist-bump in the simulator.

"I'll probably get one out of him," Johnson said, "and I don't want to waste it."

For the simulator flights, a NASA team writes training exercises, creating unexpected events to test the crew and Mission Control.
Today, during one of their final simulations, their trainers make things fall apart.

The crew and controllers must work together to diagnose the malfunctions - failed engines, loss of communication - and preserve the mission.

Fully 15 things go wrong in the ascent - "one failure away from going hot," a crew member says.
They make it to space.

In real life, Kelly says, they'd maybe have one problem.

After the simulation, during the debriefing, they talk about risk and worth, if that flight should have been aborted "to keep us alive," Johnson said.

He questioned Mission Control: "You see what we're getting at? We want to be intact."

***

For all the emotional weight Endeavour will carry into space, its true payload is a $1.5 billion experiment that many scientists believe could help unlock the mysteries of what makes up our universe.

The alpha magnetic spectrometer will be mounted to the space station and, if all goes well, will collect data for the next decade or longer, analyzing bits of cosmic material, looking for clues about the big bang and the dark matter that makes up most of space. It has been compared in importance to the Hubble Space Telescope.

"That's unique," Kelly said. "It's the only large sensor that goes on the outside of the space station. It's more expensive than Hubble, the most expensive thing ever flown in the space shuttle."

The experiment is the work of nearly 600 scientists and researchers from 16 countries and 60 different institutions.

"We're going to be able to follow the science over the next years and next decades and see what comes out of this," he said. "Knowing that you're a part of that makes this flight compared to my other three pretty special."

The spectrometer almost didn't make a flight. After the shuttle Columbia blew up on re-entry in 2003, NASA dropped the experiment from its newly shortened schedule. But the Nobel-winning scientist behind the project lobbied Congress, and NASA finally ordered an extra flight to carry the experiment aloft.

***

Mark Kelly is playing a kind of game.

Write down a number on a piece of paper, he tells a reporter, a number between one and 57.

"I'm not going to look," he says. "Write it down. I'm looking over here. Have you written it down?"

Kelly's game is a way of illustrating the odds NASA puts on an astronaut dying - one in 57.

Kelly was accepted into the space program in 1996, 10 years after the first shuttle tragedy, when Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. He flew his first mission in 2001 and his second in 2006, before and after the Columbia disaster.

He knows the risks.

When Giffords tells him she's worried, he says, "I would tell her that there's a lot of stuff that can go wrong with the space shuttle, but there's a lot of stuff that we have control over. There are a lot of things I can do to intervene and make the situation a lot better. And then there's stuff completely out of our control."

The number is written on the piece of paper. Now, Kelly tries to guess it.

"Thirty-seven," he says, with a hint of glee.

The number on the paper is 34.

Kelly's grin broadens.

"See, I won," he says.

So what happens if the number had been 37?

"I would have said, 'I'm dead.' "

***

On the morning of the launch, Kelly will leave four handwritten letters on his desk in crew quarters.

He will write letters to each of his daughters, Claudia and Claire, a "long list of things" for his brother and a message more tender for his wife.

The letters will be delivered only if tragedy intervenes. His brother will be in charge of handing them out.

The writing is not a pleasant exercise: "I don't like to do it," Kelly said.

Like most astronaut spouses, Giffords has written her own letters to Kelly, to be read once he reaches orbit.

The last time was in 2008. For that launch, she talked about the letters in an interview with The Republic.

"I told him how much I love him and how proud I am of him," she said at the time.

She also said that on an earlier flight, she had cheated. She opened the letter he wrote her.

"I did," she said. "I will again."

***

STS-134 is Kelly's last shuttle mission, Endeavour's last and NASA's second-to-last. With American space travel in budgetary peril, Kelly can't be sure he'll return to space.

When Endeavour returns to Earth in May, Kelly will face decisions about his future. They will not be the regimented decisions of an astronaut in training. The future is not a question of go or no-go.

"I've been so focused on helping Gabby and getting ready for this flight," he said. "I know when I get back I'll take my time and figure out what's next for me."

With so much time and so many political pundits to speculate, there have been suggestions he might run for office, perhaps taking his wife's place if she chooses not to run again someday.
He spends little time with such ideas.

"Run for what?" he said. "I'm registered to vote in Texas. I have no idea what my future is going to be. I've got this flight that I've got to successfully execute, and then I'll think about what's next."

What's next is focusing on Gabby. Her future is as unwritten as his. Her doctors and her friends and associates talk about her recovery in terms of weeks, months. They refuse to commit her to any schedule that isn't of her own doing.

She could continue her recovery in Texas or in Washington or back home, where she used to wind through the Catalina foothills on her bike.

For now, they focus on the space flight ahead.

Kelly can call Giffords 38 hours into the mission, when the shuttle docks at the International Space Station and the hatch is opened. There will be a long delay on the line, but for a few minutes each day there will be each other's voice, transcending the atmosphere.

The conversations "will be different now than they were on my last flight," said Kelly, who commanded the shuttle Discovery in 2008. On "one of my last calls to her from space, she was walking from the Capitol back over to Rayburn (House Office Building) with Miles O'Brien from CNN."

Now, he will ask her "how things are going and how she's doing and what's her day like," he said.

They have a particular phone goodbye, the rote of a married couple, he says.

"But that's a secret."

***

The end of the workday brings Kelly back to the hospital room. It is past dark.

He watches for small signs of improvement, to see that something has changed, something new that

wasn't there a day earlier.

Most days, he says, he is rewarded.

If this were a previous mission, he would be talking to her about the preparations.

"I'd talk to her about all the crap I gotta deal with and all the issues I have to deal with," he says. "I'm not doing that so much anymore. I mean I could; I just don't really want to burden her with my problems. I try to focus more on what she's having to deal with."

The first time they felt a connection after the tragedy came in a different hospital room, one in Tucson, just hours after she was shot.

She found his hand with hers and reached for his wedding ring. Kelly will never forget it.

"She pulled my ring off my finger," he says, "and started flipping it from one finger to the next."

This week, the connection will come from her wedding ring.

He will carry it with him into space, just as he did the last flight, tucked into a pocket of his jumpsuit. The ring is inscribed: "You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be."

He worries about what she'll do at night while he's gone.

"It's just she'll be sad that I'm not there anymore every night," he says. "I mean, it's just that."

At night, in Houston, he simply looks forward to seeing his wife. Before he leaves for the night, he sometimes crawls into bed alongside her - close, once again, to his center of gravity.

 


Gabrielle Giffords' doctors, husband share details on her progress

HOUSTON - Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is left-handed now.

Her handwriting looks different in the letter she recently wrote to her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, than it did the last time he went into space. Giffords' mother helped her pen the traditional NASA sendoff note two weeks ago. She wrote to her "sweetie pie," and that part - those words - were the same.

Many other things are different since Giffords' brain was pierced by a bullet during the shootings near Tucson on Jan. 8. Her hair is short, maybe 2 inches long, says Pia Carusone, her chief of staff, so there are scars on her scalp that show through. Eventually, her hair will cover them. A thin scar across the top of her forehead is healing well and fading, and her face, though sometimes swollen, is otherwise the same as before, Carusone says.

Giffords speaks most often in a single word or declarative phrase: "love you," "awesome," even "get out" to doctors in her room at the end of a taxing day. She longs to leave the rehab center, repeating "I miss Tucson" and wheeling herself to the doors at the end of the hall to peer out. When that day comes, Giffords told her nurse, she plans to "walk a mountain."

Longer sentences frustrate Giffords. She must search her brain for the words she wants, which feels like trying to pull out the name of a familiar face you can't quite place, her doctors say. Once she builds the sentence in her mind, she speaks clearly and at a normal rate, and can offer as many words as she has the patience to string together. The doctor overseeing her rehabilitation places her in the top 5 percent of patients recovering from this injury.

So many people long to understand how she's doing. There have been suggestions and impressions, but mostly questions, because she has been so invisible. Only slivers have been shared: a Facebook photo of her hands here, a Twitter message there. She wants toast, or she's doing well. Headlines hang on small details.

Giffords has not spoken publicly since the shooting.

But a series of exclusive Republic interviews over the past week with those closest to her captured a more complete understanding of her condition than anyone outside her closely kept circle has seen. Her doctors, staff, husband and a nurse shared Giffords' struggles, triumphs and path forward, and details about how she looks, acts, speaks and thinks.

Early buzz about her insinuated everything from exaggerated optimism to expectations of a Senate campaign in 2012. There are rumors of a $200,000 reward should paparazzi capture a current photo, Carusone says. Staff and family have faced the difficult task of balancing intense public interest with the privacy of a woman who still is working to communicate and process complex thoughts. They think she should release her own photo, and only when she's ready.

The details of Giffords at week 15 of her recovery are a snapshot, those close to her say, and it is important to understand that this snapshot changes.

"I can't say I notice improvement every day," says Kelly, her husband, "but I can every few days."
Almost every 72 hours, she resembles more closely the woman she was before.

Her staff is pressed for definitions, schedules, firm prognoses.

"It's unfair to set expectations on her in any way," Carusone says. "We all want the best. We want her to make the best recovery. Would a triumphant return be amazing? Yes. But first of all, her close friends and family will take anything."

They remember to be grateful that she lived.

***

Gabrielle Giffords does rehabilitation with a bowling ball and a grocery cart.
At the end of week 15, she can stand on her own and walk a little but is working to improve her gait, says

Dr. Gerard Francisco, the physiatrist and chief medical officer at TIRR Memorial Hermann who works with Giffords five days a week.

Use of her right arm and leg is limited but improving, he says - a common effect of a bullet wound on the left side of the brain. She pushes a grocery cart up and down the hospital halls as therapy, focusing on using the correct muscles, says nurse Kristy Poteet, who has worked with Giffords since she arrived in Houston on Jan. 21. More therapy comes from games of bowling and indoor golf, Poteet says. Giffords used to be right-handed. Maybe she will be again. That answer, like so many others, will come long after week 15.

The change makes everything harder - writing, dressing, eating - but she tries.

The doctors want to make sure she doesn't develop bad muscular habits on her left side while compensating for her right, which could mean new problems later.

"Her left side is perfect," Carusone says. "She can do whatever you can do."

Like before, Giffords has opinions and she makes them known - which medications she'll agree to take, which University of Arizona T-shirts she'll stretch over her head for her workout sessions, and what she thinks about her options for breakfast.

"She's the boss," Kelly says.

Even in her wheelchair, Giffords has stringent posture, Carusone says: tall, tight, strong - like always.

"She shows a lot more independence right now - that's what's emerging," Dr. Francisco says, and it's an important sign. "She's her own person."

She lets everyone know when she's tired - even her husband, who called Carusone the other night to report, "Gabby just kicked me out of her room. She said, 'Go home. Love you. Bye-bye.' "
Kelly loved it. Headstrong, determined. That's the congresswoman. That's his wife.

***

Something else to know about Gabrielle Giffords: Her first word was not "toast."

When news spread that she was speaking, her staffers remarked that for a recent breakfast in Houston, Giffords had requested toast. Somehow, it was adopted as the first evidence of her speech. (She is mailed "toast" T-shirts from fans still.) Her staff and family aren't sure what the exact word was. Nurses who cared for her at University Medical Center in Tucson believe they saw her mouthing messages even then.

It seems like her first words might have been "thank you," Kelly says, or maybe not. Also, she currently prefers granola.

In the early days at TIRR, nurse Poteet says, Giffords said something else: "What is happening to me?" - a phrase she repeated over and over.

It was a good phrase, doctors told the usual crew of family, friends and staffers gathered in Giffords' room. It meant she had become aware of herself and of her limitations.

There were hopeful language signs even on the March day that Giffords learned about the people killed on Jan. 8. She had been told there were more bullets, Kelly says, but she didn't yet know that there were deaths. He was reading aloud to her from the New York Times - a story about Giffords herself. She followed with her eyes over his shoulder, noticed that he skipped a paragraph, and grabbed the paper out of his hand. He hadn't realized how well she could read.

The paragraph told of six dead, many more wounded. Kelly comforted Giffords while she cried. Her grief spread over days and weeks.

"So many people, so many people," Giffords repeated.

Her nurse Poteet would find Giffords with heavy looks on her face, repeating "no-no-no-no-no."

"She was thinking of it like she couldn't believe it," Poteet says. "She kept saying, 'I want so bad,' and she was trying to talk about it. But it was too many thoughts in one."

For that reason, Kelly hasn't told Giffords that the shooting victims included her friends and colleagues

Gabe Zimmerman and Judge John Roll, or a 9-year-old girl, and three others, the kind of older constituents she loves to help.

That news will spark a wave of complex, layered questions, and Kelly wants her to be able to process the emotions without fighting so hard for the words.

"The challenge is she knows what she wants to say, and she knows everything that's going on around her," Carusone says, but can't always express it. "It's frustrating for her. She'll sigh out of exasperation."
Her husband reminds Giffords to be easy on herself.

" 'We have all the time in the world, there's no rush,' I tell her. 'I have a lot of patience, so just take your time.' "

Her staff reminds her of how far she's come.

"We tell her, 'When you arrived here, this is what you were able to do - which is not as much as you are today," Carusone says.

Her nurse reminds her of where she has been.

"She gets up every morning, and she has her therapies, and we say, 'You didn't get to be congresswoman by lying around.' "

***

Gabrielle Giffords keeps a rock from Arizona near her hospital bed.
It reminds her of home.

To protect her privacy and security, Giffords sleeps and recuperates in an area of the hospital guarded by Capitol Police, Carusone says. Officers have been with Giffords continuously since the days after the shooting. A uniformed security guard takes visitor names in the lobby of TIRR, where there is also a traditional information desk. The guard arrived when she did.

Only selected hospital staffers work with Giffords, and they have been checking their cellphones in at the door before shifts, Carusone said. So far, their efforts to shield her from cameras and $200,000 bounties have worked, and loneliness is kept at bay because Giffords is hardly alone.

Her room is filled with family - almost always her parents, Gloria and Spencer, who have rarely left their daughter since she was shot. There is a string of visitors from Washington, D.C., and Tucson - including her friend Raoul Erickson, who covered the walls with poster-size photos of Giffords' happy moments: at her wedding, hiking the Grand Canyon, working underneath her old Chevy Corvair. Her memory clear, she still knows and loves these things, doctors say.

Piles of flowers and cards and mail stream into TIRR. The packages are checked by security before they're brought to Giffords' room, where a long row of post-office bins lines the floor. The letters make her happy, Carusone says. She has a stress squeezer in the shape of the Capitol dome, even a family of giant stuffed white tigers sent from Las Vegas by Siegfried and Roy. The pair took up the cause of brain injuries after Roy Horn was bit in the neck by a tiger in 2003, resulting in a stroke and partial paralysis.

At TIRR, rehab in one of the three workout rooms could mean therapy in the swimming pool, on a weight set, or on a machine that tracks arm movements to show patients if they're engaging the right muscles. The sound of weights clanging and rubber balls bouncing drift from the gym into the corridors. The halls are all fluorescent lighting and linoleum. In the garden out front, hot-pink roses keep company with boxwood hedges and a bronze sculpture of Prometheus Unbound. It depicts a man in triumph, freed from the chains that held him back.

Most often, Giffords works out privately, but "it's not because she wouldn't want to be with other people," says Carusone, because the Gabby she knows would for sure.

At TIRR, patients' family members linger in the gym - and they don't have to check their cameras at the door.

Kelly asked Giffords what they could all do to help her feel more like herself in rehab.

"I want to work," she said, and so her staff brings her articles and office memos about the work they are doing. That's therapy, too - it helps her reading comprehension. Coming soon, Carusone says: printouts of simple House of Representatives resolutions.

Kelly comes to TIRR in the morning with coffee and the newspaper, heads to work at NASA, and returns to Giffords at night to talk through their days. Sometimes, he takes a nap with his wife in her hospital bed.

It's a twin-size mattress, and so he holds her close.

When he comes into the room, Giffords breaks into an oversized smile, nurse Poteet says, reaching out her good arm to beckon him to her side, give him a half-hug.

Sometimes, Giffords and Kelly play Scrabble. It helps Giffords work on her spelling, even when Kelly makes up words, like o-x-e as "another spelling of 'ox'," he insisted, which made Giffords laugh.

She will miss him while he's in space, Poteet says. Kelly spent a string of days in Florida recently preparing for the launch. Poteet could see his absence on Giffords' face.

***

Gabrielle Giffords is beginning week 16, which brings her husband's shuttle launch, which brings its own set of questions.

Will she go?

Yes, Kelly says, pending doctors' OK.

Is it safe?

Yes to that, too, doctors say - even though a piece of her skull is still missing. She won't need a specially pressurized plane, and the hospital will send nurse Poteet and any other necessary staff along with her, says Dr. Dong Kim, the neurosurgeon at Memorial Hermann who oversees Giffords' care. "We're very comfortable with her traveling."

Is it wise?

She is ready, Dr. Kim says, and outings from TIRR help doctors measure patients in their real worlds. Giffords' happens to include Kennedy Space Center.

"It's an opportunity for us to find out what else we need to work on," Dr. Francisco, the physiatrist, says.

"It's not a break."

What will be hard for her?

"There will be more movement required," Dr. Francisco says, and new people for her to react to, though Kelly has asked his NASA crew to treat his wife with care. She will watch the launch from a private location - a NASA tradition for all the crew families. They are kept from the public eye in case of a public tragedy.

Does she want to go?

That answer has always been clear. "Yes," she says, anytime anyone asks her.

Giffords overheard Kelly talking about cutting her activities there short - maybe just a few hours at the traditional pre-launch beach barbecue, for example. He didn't want her to get tired.

"No," she told him. "Whole thing."

Yes to all of it.

***

Once, Gabrielle Giffords felt her doctor's bald spot.

He was lingering in her room, the way the hospital staff tends to do. She told him to get out, and they laughed together.

To tease him further, she reached up and gave his head a rub.

Injuries like Giffords' can bring depression, personality change, behavior problems, trouble relating to others. Giffords' doctors say she seems to have escaped all of those things.

At the hospital, people want to be near her - and that's something to understand about Giffords that never changed: her tendency toward joy, sensitivity for others, and her ability to make others care immediately about her. That's charisma - the intangible force that drew people to polls to vote for her, to Congress on Your Corner at Safeway to talk to her, to the hospital in Tucson to leave flowers on the lawn and pray for her.

By all accounts, that's the woman in this hospital room.

Sometimes, nurse Poteet gets nervous. She was nervous the first time she met her patient, but the worry went away "right when I saw her, right when she looked at me. She grabbed my hand and rubbed my arm."

Giffords is compassionate, Poteet says, listening to her motherhood woes.

"You see it in her eyes - the way she looks at you. She just really attentively listens."
Poteet was nervous for this interview, told Giffords what she was doing.

"Practice, practice," Giffords told her. "And then she kept telling me I was smart - 'smart, smart.'

"She's more beautiful than any of those pictures, and all the nurses have said that - that big beautiful smile that's always there."

The women understand one another, each 40.

"She can't really say much," Poteet says, but "a couple weeks ago she grabbed my hand and she looked at me and she said, 'sisters.' "

***

When Gabrielle Giffords' neurologist talks about his hope for her future, he makes a fist and thumps his heart.

"I feel it here," Dr. Kim says. "She's still got a ways to go. I think she's going to get there. I keep saying that."

He compares progress to the Giffords of week one, and even day one: bleeding on a sidewalk, in surgery at University Medical Center, where doctors weren't sure she would live. On that day, some of the public, and even her husband, heard false reports that she had already died.

"For somebody with that kind of injury, we start with, 'Are they even going to come out of the coma,' " Dr. Kim says, "much less 'what are they going to be doing later?' "

But Giffords "is maybe in the top 1 percent of patients in terms of how far she's come, and how quickly she's gotten there. I think the question, then, becomes, how far is she going to go?"
The only concrete answer: farther.

Most of the physical and speech recovery happens within nine to 12 months, Dr. Kim says, but judgment, how well a patient can think - those recoveries continue for years. Small things crop up down the road that patients need to improve.

Giffords' communications director, C.J. Karamargin, says he imagines that his tenacious boss will always be trying to get better at something.

There will be large milestones to come: "Walking independently," Dr. Kim says, "and she's pretty close to that."

He wants her to have more efficient speech.

In May, he will repair her skull with a cranial implant - computer-generated to fill in where Giffords' bone used to be. The portion removed by Tucson doctors - a piece just larger than a man's palm, Dr. Kim says - was frozen and preserved, but is partially contaminated. The bullet dragged in germs.

Kelly is lobbying Dr. Kim to do the surgery without shaving off Giffords' hair. Her 2 new inches took all 15 weeks to grow.

"There has to be a way," Kelly says.

At the hospital in Tucson, even before her eyes were open, nurses saw Giffords reach her hand up to touch her head, processing the sensation of a bare scalp where there was blond hair before.

Out-patient rehab is far off, Dr. Kim says.

After the cranioplasty, there will be therapy for reading, problem solving, and sessions on using a Blackberry.

"At some point, just living your life is rehab," Dr. Kim says.

The goal is Giffords, version Jan. 7, 2011.

"You cannot be a good rehabilitation professional if you're not optimistic," Dr. Francisco says. "Our goal is to try to bring the person back to where she was. Sometimes we're successful, many times we're not."
How far is she going to go?

"Maybe," says Carusone, "we'll know something at Christmas."

***

Some days, Gabrielle Giffords believes that she is never going to get better.

Her staffers tell her she won't talk like this forever, or walk like this forever, "and she thinks we're blowing smoke," Carusone says.

Some days, Gabrielle Giffords believes that she will recover, after all.

"When I tell her that she's not going to be in a wheelchair forever, she believes that," says Kelly, her husband. "Right now she gets up and takes a couple steps. I think she'll probably use a wheelchair for, I don't know, maybe another three months.

"She knows she's going to be a lot better."

They talk about it, he says - "how she's improving all the time.

"I talk to her about where she wants to go, but because it's difficult for her to articulate certain things, I'm not sure," Kelly says.

His own questions hang in the back of his mind: worries about weeks 17, 18, 19, 20.

"What is her recovery going to look like?" he wonders.

"Where is she going to be in a year?"

"Where is she going to be in two years?"

It looks good, he says. Promising.

"But I don't think anybody knows."

Kelly has a space trip ahead of him, but he might be more excited for the moment he returns and finds his wife.

He'll get to absorb two weeks of milestones all at once.

That's enough, for now, he says - "just to see her get better."