that was more challenging than standing in front of a camera all day long. Still, I got to pose for Playboy and that was fun.
The modeling led to a stint as a “go-go girl” on one of the popular L.A. television shows of the day, The Real Don Steal Show. Don Steal was a popular disc jockey who based his show on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. At the beginning of the show, he introduced one other girl and me as “The Real Don Stealers” and we came running out in our hot pants and knee-high go-go boots looking all jazzed and excited to be there. We climbed up on raised platforms above the crowd of mostly high-schoolers and we danced for an hour and a half.
It was like jogging in high heels for an hour and a half, but it was fun. I loved to dance and, I must admit, I loved the attention. The show was filmed at the old Fox studios on Beverly Boulevard, where I met and dated a few celebrities of the time, including the handsome Max Baer, who played “Jethro” on the popular TV show, The Beverly Hillbillies.
With all the fun, there was also an undercurrent of violence. The Vietnam War still raged out of control on the TV evening news and movie heroes like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry and Al Pacino in The Godfather glorified macho, violent manhood. At the Olympic games in Munich, terrorists turned a sporting event into a bloodbath when they murdered eleven Israeli athletes.
I was aware of all those things, of course, but they seemed far away, in places that didn’t affect me. I was having the time of my life, a single girl in L.A., making money, dating successful, good-looking guys and being told all the time how beautiful I was. My life was full and busy and I was saving money to go to college. I missed my family terribly, but I was home (at my apartment) so seldom that I didn’t even own a television set.
The thing is, when you are raised surrounded by love and security, you assume that the world is a good place, full of good people. I always expected the best out of people and I had a loving nature. When I met someone, I usually liked him or her; when I loved, I loved unconditionally. It was what I had known and it was what I expected.
And then one day, my calm, happy life exploded.
Anyone who has ever experienced a tragedy knows that nothing will ever be quite the same again.
It was about six in the evening and I was in my peaceful apartment, lounging around in jeans and a T-shirt. I’d quit my job at the insurance company and had not found a new one yet, but I had plenty of money in savings and was glad to be able to relax at home for a while.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who’s there?” I called.
I heard a man’s soft-spoken voice, “Uh, hi. You don’t know me—my name is Jim Hutchinson. I live right down the hall and I’ve seen you come and go and I thought, hey, we’re neighbors, why don’t we get acquainted?”
As I said, when you’re brought up loved and safe, you expect the best in people. I didn’t know anyone named Jim Hutchinson, but I had met so many nice people in the building. Right away, I trusted him.
I opened the door to see a thin white man with a goatee.
In a heartbeat, powerful hands closed around my throat, thumbs pressing against my larynx and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door to my apartment being kicked closed.
In that one moment, my own home became a torture chamber.
The chokehold on my throat was so tight that I literally went blind. As I was shoved backward onto my sofa, I struggled to breathe.
Did you ever have a nightmare where you strive with all your might to scream, but no sound comes out and you wake up heaving and sweating, too scared to close your eyes again from fear the nightmare will return?
This was my nightmare, only there was no waking up.
He ripped at my jeans with such violence that it felt as if my leg was being torn off. The pain was so intense that, in my oxygen-deprived panic, I thought I might really lose my leg, so I twisted my body to enable the pants to come off and, in so doing, managed to free my throat just enough from his death-grip that I was able to gasp for air. I felt like I was in a swimming pool or lake, under water for far too long and, finally breaking to the surface, I gulped for life. At least I tried to, but as soon as he noticed, he squeezed more tightly again.
Air. Sweet, blessed air. How we take it for granted. How we breathe, in and out, in and out, without giving it a thought.
Air was all I could think about as I fought and pushed against his chest, his arms, his face, fighting for my life, but it was all in vain, because the harder I fought, the tighter he squeezed until finally, I blacked out.
But that was all part of the game. He’d been waiting for me to black out, so that he could loosen his grip and watch for me to regain consciousness. When I came to, I took a couple of ragged gasps for air and as I did he began to choke me again.
Again I fought. Again he squeezed the life out of me. Again I blacked out.
This time, when I came around again, I was weaker and for the first time, the clear thought came to me: He’ll never let me get out of here alive.
When you’re facing death, I learned, time doesn’t have the same properties. A second no longer feels like a second, because seconds are all you have left. So a second seems to last more like a half-hour—everything slows way, way down, as if you are moving through water or slogging through a swamp. I felt myself detach from myself and stand aside, like an observer, watching myself being strangled.
Then I blacked out a third time.
When I woke up, I actually flashed on that old cartoon image of a drowning man going under water; he puts up one finger, comes up for air, goes under again, then puts up two fingers, comes up a second time, but then, when he goes under and holds up three fingers, you know that he’s not going to come up again. I had been strangled unconscious three times and I didn’t know how long I’d been under each time, but I knew my brain had been seriously deprived of oxygen. I wondered how much brain damage I could stand before it would be better if I didn’t wake up at all.
He choked me unconscious again. This time, when I came to and saw him glaring over me with a strange smile on his face, I thought, I’m going to die! I’m not ready! I haven’t had children yet! I didn’t get to go to college! I haven’t LIVED!
And my next thought was of love, of those I loved and I only had time to think about my favorite person—my baby brother, Brent, who was about fourteen, when “Jim Hutchinson” started to kill me for real.
When the life is being choked out of you and you feel you only have seconds to live, all you have left in the world are your thoughts. In many ways, it’s like being instantly paralyzed—all you have is your intellect, your mind. You are trapped. All you have is NOW, this moment, and suddenly, everything in life becomes relative to that one fact.
There is something else both shocking and surprising. In an act of violent crime, when your life is literally held in the hands of another, you have, during those brief but seemingly endless seconds, a relationship with your attacker. And as death narrows the perimeters of your existence and you begin to detach and look at the situation from the distance of approaching annihilation, it all becomes relative.
Now, I looked straight into his face—really looked. After all, I was going to die anyway, I reasoned and I wanted to look my killer in the eye. His complexion was pasty white. He had
