Tucson Tragedy

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