Justice for Bonnie

The shocking true crime story of an Alaskan college student’s murder and her mother’s relentless crusade for the truth.
 
When police told Karen Foster that her eighteen-year-old daughter, Bonnie Craig, had died in a hiking accident, she knew the pieces of the investigation just didn’t add up. Bonnie would have never ditched her classes at the University of Alaska to go hiking. And she didn’t drive—so how would she have reached McHugh Creek, miles outside of Anchorage, in the first place? Armed with little more than her own conviction, Karen set out to find the truth behind her daughter’s death.
 
After a long series of false leads and dead ends, it seemed the case would forever go unsolved. Then, after twelve years of public campaigning, private despair, and increasingly tense dealings with the detectives working the case, Karen received an e-mail that would change everything: the system, at long last, had produced a match for the unknown DNA in the case—from a man in a jail all the way across the country.
 
Here is the chilling tale of a mother’s unflagging fight to track down the monster who stole her daughter’s life—and the battle to ensure that he, and others like him, would no longer be able to evade justice.
 
INCLUDES PHOTOS | Karen Foster, Bonnie’s mother, now lives in Florida. She has been featured numerous times in a range of media outlets, including an hour-long 2011 MSNBC Dateline special titled “Justice for Bonnie” as well as the 2013 episode “A Mother’s Mission” on the Investigation Discovery TV show Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall. 
 
I.J. Schecter is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning author, collaborator and ghostwriter, whose work appears in top publications throughout the world. He lives in Toronto. |

 

Acknowledgments

1

I wake up from the dream uneasy.

My boyfriend, Jim, is holding my shoulders and assuring me it was only a dream. There is no woman; no one went over the edge of our sailboat. I’m disoriented because I seldom remember my dreams, but this one was vivid. I saw a woman wearing a shorty—a wet suit with short sleeves and cut-off legs—fall over into the water off the side of our boat. I didn’t know who she was.

We’re right here, Jim’s telling me. Karen, it’s me; there’s no one else here; it was just a dream. I must have dozed off, I realize—no matter how much I’ve sailed, the sea air still gets to me.

Slowly, I cross over the hazy line into consciousness again, and Jim’s voice brings me all the way back out of the nightmare. I relax, and soon our gentle progress up the Gulf Coast of Florida lulls me back into sleep. I’m glad that I’m still tired enough from our travels to slip right back over that line, and am happy to drift away again.

—

Two days earlier, on Monday, September 26, 1994, Jim and I had boarded a red-eye flight from Anchorage, Alaska, to Tampa, Florida, Jim’s original stomping grounds, then chartered a thirty-seven-foot Island Packet sailboat out of St. Petersburg and started our way up Florida’s western lip. The announcement two months earlier that Jim’s younger brother Ken was getting married on the opposite corner of the continent had given us the perfect excuse for this trip. Jim and I had been seeing each other for less than two years but living together half that time, attempting to merge two families into one: his three kids, ranging in age from eight to thirteen, and my two youngest kids, aged twelve and thirteen, in a modest hillside home in Anchorage. Jason, my twenty-year-old son, lived in his own apartment with his girlfriend, Traci; Bonnie, my eighteen-year-old daughter, had moved out to live with my ex-husband, Gary, where she could have a room of her own. The decision crushed me, but I understood it. She was a young woman who wanted her space, something in short supply in my house. Adam, my thirteen-year-old son, and Samantha, my twelve-year-old daughter, did week-on, week-off between Gary’s place and mine.

My relationship with Jim is far from perfect, but it works well enough. We’ve gone away together a couple of times before, both times to Mexico, where he owns some property. While we’re gone, my kids stay with Gary, and his kids stay at his ex’s place.

We have a few days to enjoy St. Marks before the wedding on Saturday. On Sunday, we will sail back down the coast and then fly home to our regular lives in Anchorage, where Jim works as a firefighter and paramedic, me as a Realtor and reserve police officer, each of us navigating the strange chapter of our midforties, finding happiness in each other and trying to steer our kids along decent paths.

After two days of enjoying the calm of the boat and the freedom of the water, we neared our destination: the port town of St. Marks, population three hundred, home to the locally famous Posey’s Oyster Bar, “Home of the Topless Oyster.” It’s ironic, then, that it was on the front edge of an oyster bed where we inadvertently grounded ourselves while navigating up the channel into St. Marks. It was the middle of the night, and there wasn’t a soul around to help. Jim told me our only choice was to wait for the tide to come up. I had no better solution. With each wave, we heard the scratching of our hull against the oyster bed. We weren’t in any danger, since the water was shallow enough to stand in, should it come to that—not to mention warm, unlike the waters in Alaska—but the feeling of helplessness, and the sound of the boat being damaged, dampened the light spirit we’d shared all day. Eventually, with nothing else to do, I fell asleep.

“The stars are moving.”

Jim’s voice startled me awake. I wasn’t sure if I’d been asleep for hours or minutes.

“Huh?”

“The stars are moving. The tide’s come in!”

He was right—we were floating. Jim turned the motor on and slowly backed us into the channel. He grew up diving for bottles in the St. Marks River and zipping up and down it in power boats, but we both realized we still shouldn’t have done this after dark.

By the time we arrived at the St. Marks Marina, it was almost morning. As Jim and I settled into our berths, he told me that the spot where we were grounded was smack in the middle of Alligator Bay. I didn’t know whether he was joking, but we smiled at each other, and, soothed by the rocking of the boat against the dock, fell asleep.

—

On Wednesday morning, September 28, Ken and his bride-to-be, Valeri, drive the twenty miles from Tallahassee to St. Marks to meet us and spend the day. We lunch, walk, and shop. Jim’s father—also named Jim—and his stepmother, Mary, join us for dinner. It is my first time meeting them. As the stranger in the group, I feel a bit on the outside, but Valeri is a sweetheart, Jim Sr. and Mary are lovely, and there is lots of joking and kindness. I eat grouper for the first time. Everything is pleasant, fun, and serene.

After dinner, the six of us part ways. Jim and I drive to a historic local lighthouse, said to be the first in the New World, which sits at the mouth of the St. Marks River six miles from town. Though it’s late by the time we get back to the boat and the sun has long since set, the thick Florida humidity still hangs heavy, and the small fans on the boat provide little relief. By the time we settle into bed, Jim in the V-berth, me in the quarter berth in the back of the boat, we’re both irritable. A silly argument about nothing takes root, but we both see that each of us is reacting to the heat and the hour. We apologize, kiss, and go to sleep.

—

It’s three in the morning when I feel the boat lurch. I’m startled by the sound of footsteps—the third time in two days that I’ve been jolted out of sleep. I jump out of the narrow quarter berth and alert Jim, who scrambles to his feet.

Suddenly, there’s a knock on the companionway, the door separating the upper deck from the cabin below. I ask who’s there.

“It’s Ken.”

I slide the trio of panels up and out of their grooves. Ken is looking down at Jim and me. I wonder what he’s doing there, what could be important enough that he’d drive back to the marina at such a late hour.

The answer is obvious on his face. Ken is normally the kind of person who smiles by default. During our day together, he’d been even happier than usual, a man thrilled to have found his other half.

Now, his face has changed as completely as the difference between the sunset I’d loved the night before and the darkness that had followed it. His eyes are misting, and he has the kind of expression no one ever wants to see on someone else’s face. It is the kind of expression that says, “I’m sorry for what I’m about to tell you.”

2

Every parent knows that you live in fear from the moment your child is born. At first, you just pray they’ll keep breathing every night and wake up again in the morning. Later, you worry that they might fall in with the wrong crowd, do something dumb to fit in, get in the car with a stranger. Sometimes you let your mind go to the darkest places, maybe only as a way of being able to shove the bad thoughts aside and remind yourself it won’t happen. You live in a safe town. You’ve taught them to make good decisions. They have sensible friends. You falsely convince yourself of their immunity every way you can. The bad thoughts invade your head, you let them in temporarily, and then you violently push them out, a little less at peace than you were before.

You do it a hundred times, a thousand. Every time you hear a terrible news story, or tragedy touches an acquaintance. All the while, you watch your children grow, thankful to God or whatever you believe in, endlessly grateful at the miracle they represent. When they experience pain, you hate it, but you say the same thing every time it happens: if this is the worst, it isn’t so bad. They fall off a slide and get a scrape, then cry and hug you till it’s better. They miss the winning shot or let in the winning goal—you hurt like hell for them in the moment, but you know they’ll get over it and be stronger in the end. A girlfriend or boyfriend dumps them, and you see heartbreak in their eyes for the first time. It tears you apart, but you know they have to go through it, and you say to yourself, again, if it’s the worst thing they’ll ever experience, it’s not so bad. You count yourself lucky. You can sleep again that night.

—

“What is it?” I ask Ken.

“It’s Bonnie,” he responds, his voice cracking. “She’s . . . she was in a hiking accident.”

Everyone reacts differently to bad news—or, more specifically, to the moment before you’re about to get hit with it. Some people get mad. Others get sad or afraid. What I feel is offended and angry, because I can’t figure out why Ken would drive such a long way in the middle of the night just to tell me such a terrible lie. He’s obviously gone off the deep end. Or someone is playing a cruel joke on me, through him, and he’s been gullible enough to fall for it. It’s obviously a mistake.

The fact that he just keeps staring at me and saying “I’m sorry” is getting under my skin even more.

“Who told you that?” I demand.

Ken holds out a yellow Post-it with something scrawled on it, but I don’t take it from him. No matter what your reaction is to bad news, we all do one thing similar: we keep it at arm’s length for as long as we can. We keep it outside the realm of reality by refusing any evidence. I could keep Ken’s words at bay if they were just words. People lie all the time, for plenty of reasons. But this Post-it is something with the potential to break down my refusal to believe. I don’t want to look at it.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again, the bastard. “An Alaska State Trooper called me.” He’s still holding out the evil yellow Post-it, like something poisonous that he wants to get out of his hands. “He told me to get the message to you. This is his number.”

I don’t want to take it, but my hand reaches out. Once the Post-it is in my hands, I don’t want to look at it, either—but I look. A meaningless name and an unknown phone number.

Each of these moments happens in slow-motion. My senses are amped up, and at the same time, everything collapses inward. I feel both chilled and overheated, like a sudden wave of the flu. I feel exposed and at the same time claustrophobic. From a strange place outside of my body, I see myself shaking and my legs going at the knees.

“No, not my Bonnie. How do they know?” I hear myself say. I don’t know why I’m even implying I may actually believe Ken’s lie.

“I don’t know,” he says. “They just told me to have you call them.” I want to beat some sense into him.

Jim and I dress while Ken and Valeri wait in the cockpit above. I have no idea what I’m putting on. I’m still trying to figure out who’s behind this awful joke and why.

We climb off the boat. I’m still holding the sickening Post-it. With only a radio on the boat, we find a pay phone outside a small store near the dockmaster’s office. I try to dial the number, but I can’t hold the phone because my hand is shaking too much. Jim dials instead and reaches a switchboard operator. He gives her the number on the Post-it and the name of the trooper, then hands me the phone, rubbing my back.

“I’m sorry; I don’t recognize that name,” she says. I repeat the request, more insistently, and her tone stiffens. She asks me for my patience, reminds me it’s eleven P.M. in Anchorage, and suggests I call back in the morning.

“I’ve just been told my daughter died in a hiking accident,” I tell her. There is a pause.

“One moment, please,” she says. I wait on the other end of the line, as if this situation was no different from a regular conversation on a regular day. When you’re suddenly faced with information that throws your entire world out of whack, it’s the most mundane acts, like a phone call, that seem the most bizarre. The news that my daughter is no longer alive doesn’t match up with the need to be put on hold. None of it fits.

Finally, a different voice comes on the line. “Hello, this is Sergeant Mike Marrs of the Alaska State Troopers. Is this Karen Campbell, Bonnie Craig’s mom?” Although we divorced two years ago, I still use Gary’s last name, while Bonnie has my first husband’s name.

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs. Campbell. Bonnie’s body was found out at McHugh Creek. She fell off a cliff, Mrs. Campbell. She’s dead. I’m very sorry.”

—

If everyone acts differently in the way they brace for bad news, the same is true of how we react when it’s no longer possible to deny. In my case, as I speak to a trooper telling me that my eighteen-year-old daughter is dead, I snap into detective mode.

Outside of my day job selling real estate, I’ve spent the previous two and a half years as an unpaid volunteer undercover reserve officer with the Anchorage Police Department. I’ve gone through the police academy and earned the right to pick assignments. I’ve worked drug raids and undercover buys. I regularly choose the toughest shifts in the worst areas. I’ve been an adrenaline junkie since I was cut out of my mother’s womb, and it’s never gone away. My parents sent the police to look for me five or six times when I was a kid because I was out wandering, looking for something to give me a rush. I spent time as a news reporter, getting a thrill out of being in front of the camera, and I still wanted that thrill.

The Anchorage Police Department and the Alaska State Troopers share mutual contempt; each agrees that the other doesn’t know its ass from its elbow. My instinct is already to ask for the case to be handed over to the APD. I know the homicide guys there, and they’re good. I could get things done.

I’ve helped collar some bad people. Not the kind who give up grudges easily. My mind threatens to go to a very bad place, but I refuse it because there’s no point in allowing myself to consider that possibility at the moment. I’m in the first mental stage of doing what I’ve become so used to doing: trying to solve a puzzle.

“Who was she with?” I ask.

“No one, Mrs. Campbell. She was out there alone.”

Sergeant Marrs’s voice is flat and serious. I wonder, how many other calls like this has he made before? He must have talked down a dozen mothers like me, a hundred. He has his script and his instructions to stay composed and not let the shocked person on the other end let him get worked up, which would only be counterproductive. I’ve never done one of these calls myself, nor a live visit to deliver the news. Either would be a nightmare.

“How did she get there?” I can feel my voice coming back into my body. I’m used to this kind of exchange. “She doesn’t drive, so how?” I’m happy to start poking holes in the story. I wonder how long it will take to show that they have the wrong person, that it isn’t Bonnie at all. McHugh Creek is ten miles from her bus route, for God’s sake.

“We don’t know, ma’am.”

“What time did you find her?” I wish I had a notepad.

“About two-thirty this afternoon,” says Sergeant Marrs.

“No,” I say, trying not to scream at this fool. “She would have been in class. She’d never miss. How did you identify her?”

“She didn’t have a wallet or any ID on her,” he says. “Her name was on her class ring, and we pulled up her state ID. We identified her from that picture.”

A class ring could easily get switched. He sounds harebrained.

“Has Gary or anyone identified her?” Gary may not be Bonnie’s biological father, but he’s the dad who raised her.

“No—we were going to wait for you.”

Another hole in the story. No one who really knows Bonnie has even seen the body of this poor girl, whoever she is. What an incredible mix-up. I consider calling Bonnie’s boyfriend, Cameron, who will no doubt know where she is. Even though he left Anchorage a few months earlier to study architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, the two of them still talk or e-mail multiple times per day.

Sergeant Marrs is asking me to calm down. I don’t know why he’s saying this, since I feel very focused. But the part of me that’s still on the outside looking in can hear me cry and scream.

“Could she have been raped?” I don’t know why I ask this question. I’m mad at myself for saying these words, and I want to take them back.

“No, Mrs. Campbell. All her clothes were on. Nothing was ripped or torn. All her buttons were done up, as was her zipper.”

“That doesn’t mean someone wasn’t raped!” Sergeant Marrs’s refusal to be logical is making it hard for me to concentrate. “I work with the Anchorage Police Department. I was just involved in a big drug bust before I left.”

“Ma’am? I’m sorry?”

“I work with the police department. We just did a big bust. Maybe they thought it was me? Bonnie looks just like me.”

“No, Mrs. Campbell. She died from a fall off a cliff. Up at McHugh Creek, as I said. It was over thirty feet, ma’am. I’m very sorry.”

I want to climb through the phone and throttle him until he stops saying Bonnie is dead. It sounds asinine. I want to talk to someone who knows what they’re doing. “If it’s Bonnie, it’s not a hiking accident. It’s got to be murder!”

“No, ma’am. It was a hiking accident. If it were an act of retribution, they would have used guns. Or there would have been duct tape, something binding her. We know how those kinds of acts are carried out and what they look like. This wasn’t murder, or rape, Mrs. Campbell. I’m afraid it was just a tragic accident. She fell from a great height.”

The detective inside me is still pressing forward. If they don’t think it was murder, they won’t have investigated it as a crime scene. They’ll have investigated it as an accident, which means next to no investigation at all.

“Did the troopers at the scene collect evidence?”

“There was no evidence to collect, ma’am. As I said, we ID’d her from her class ring. There’s nothing else to look for, I’m afraid.”

First Ken drives over in the middle of the night to give me this awful story about Bonnie being dead. Then I’m forced to talk to an inept switchboard operator who could only complain about how late it was in Alaska. Now this trooper doesn’t seem to know which end is up, telling me that the person they’d found was wearing Bonnie’s class ring and that she’d mysteriously fallen off a thirty-foot cliff at McHugh Creek. A stumble and thirty-foot plunge, just like that—no explanation? The poor girl, whoever she is. It’s like a conspiracy of incompetence.

“I’m in Florida,” I say. “I’ll be on the next plane back.”

—

I hear myself on the phone with my ex-husband Gary, telling him that none of it is making any sense. I hear him agreeing with me that whatever happened couldn’t have been an accident.

I’d been mad at Gary already, and that anger now multiplies. Late last week, I had called his place, where Adam and Samantha would be staying while Jim and I were gone, only to find out from Bonnie that Gary had taken a sudden business trip to New Orleans and wouldn’t be back for a week. I was furious. He and I had a clear agreement never to be out of state at the same time. Gary had known about my vacation with Jim for Ken’s wedding weeks in advance, yet his trip now meant he’d still be away when we left for Florida.

Bonnie, confident and proud in her ability to handle babysitting her younger brother and sister by herself for a few days, had defended Gary, not wanting me to get into a fight with him over it. “It’s all right, Mom,” she’d said. “Don’t worry. Come on, I’m eighteen.” I’d felt my temperature rising as I’d agreed she was perfectly capable, but that that wasn’t the point. The point was that it wasn’t appropriate for her to be asked to look after her brother and sister when their father was supposed to be there. When he’d agreed to be there.

“Everything’s fine, Mom,” Bonnie had said. “Don’t worry. I love you. Just enjoy your vacation. I’ll be fine.” Now people are telling me these are the last words I will ever hear her say.

As I think these thoughts, I slip out of my comfort zone as a detective and back to being just a mother, and it’s nearly intolerable. Part of me is threatening to fly away, but I try to stay anchored to Gary’s voice so I can take in everything he’s telling me. The divorce hasn’t made our relationship any easier. He’s more annoyed with every child-support check he has to write, and I’m annoyed that it bothers him, since it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what he makes. We see each other at the hockey arena for Adam’s games, and he barely acknowledges my presence. By association, he doesn’t like Jim, and the feeling is mutual. But we know we have to put our differences aside now. What’s more important is the exchange of information.

Gary tells me that a pair of Alaska State Troopers had knocked on his door around ten that evening. He and the kids had already been wondering why Bonnie wasn’t home. Seeing the troopers’ serious faces, Gary feared the worst. Samantha had heard Bonnie leave early in the morning for her 7:00 A.M. English class. But she hadn’t come home and hadn’t called. As Gary tells me the story, I take cold comfort in hearing that he and the kids were together.

I hear myself tell Gary that I need to call my parents. I see my hand place the phone back in its cradle and then pick it up again to dial the number for St. Catharines, Ontario, a little town of parks, gardens, and trails along the Niagara River, a stone’s throw from the world’s longest peaceful border. I feel no peace inside me. I feel a knife sinking into my soul.

The words coming out are vague as I tell my parents that people are trying to convince me their granddaughter is dead. I think I can hear the cries of denial coming from my parents on the other end. “I’ll call you when I get to Anchorage,” I hear myself say. I hang up the phone again. I feel like I just want to keep making phone calls. I need information.

—

We are back at the boat and I am watching myself stuff clothes into a duffel bag. Jim is trying to console me, but he is not packing a bag of his own. I feel confused at the thought that he is planning to stick me on a plane back to Alaska alone. I see myself ask him. He has arranged to get me on the next flight out, he says. It is not an answer.

We all pile into Ken’s truck on the way to the Tallahassee Airport. It is the early hours of the morning. Jim is beside me, holding my hand. There are intentionally few streetlamps in this part of Florida, so it is very dark. I see that I am still holding the Post-in in my free hand. I am still irritated at Ken. I am still aggravated with the useless dispatcher. I am irate with Jim. I am furious at the trooper for trying to tell me Bonnie slipped off the edge of a cliff, fell thirty feet, and will never breathe again.

At the airport, a few red-eye customers mill about, and a handful of weary-looking staff manage the desks. Jim is speaking with a ticket agent. I am at a pay phone, making another call. I hear the voice of my friend Cara, saying, “Please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” I’ve called her out of desperation. Cara is a local news reporter. She is connected. She’ll know what’s happening.

My body starts to shake again, and then my knees go. I’m in a heap on the floor, screaming into the receiver. “Cara, please pick up!” I am shouting in the middle of the nearly empty airport. “Cara, the Alaska State Troopers are telling me Bonnie is dead! They’re telling me they found her out at McHugh Creek. Oh, my God, Cara, please pick up. Please check it out. Find out if it’s really Bonnie, please, I need your help. Please!”

I hear myself tell Cara a version of the same message I’d given the trooper. “I’m in Florida. I’ll be back later today.” Then I am pulling myself up and making another call—to another friend, Michelle. She will know what’s going on.

Again the phone rings and rings; then I hear Michelle saying, “Hi, I can’t come to the phone right now . . .” and I buckle a second time. As I gaze at the ticket counter, I see Jim look my way. He watches me there on the floor, under the pay phone, the handle dangling from its cord above my face. I see him turn back toward the agent and ask for a second ticket.

—

I am in a dark airplane in the early-morning hours with only the soft drone of the engines invading my thoughts. Beside me, Jim’s head rests against his shoulder, a small blanket bunched against the side of his head. He has tried to stay awake for my sake, but the fatigue has overcome him. Maybe a dozen other people occupy the plane, most asleep.

I see myself sobbing, shaking my head, rubbing my hands together. I feel paralyzed by remoteness from the truth. Mostly I rock slowly in my seat, up and down, wondering what in heaven’s name is going on and when I will wake up from what must be a nightmare.

Part of me insists that when we arrive at the airport, Bonnie will be there, ashamed that she’s caused us to return for a silly mistake. She’ll tell us how it happened, it will all sound logical, and despite the inconvenience of coming home, we’ll have a laugh about it, because it will have been a result of something out of her control. She’ll still feel guilty about it, because that’s the kind of kid she is. I’ll tell her again and again that she did nothing wrong; it’s just the cost of a plane ticket, inconsequential as long as she’s okay. Mix-ups happen, nothing to get upset about. She’ll give me one of her great hugs and it will be done.

My mind goes back over certain moments again and again, unable to let go of the possibility that my police work may have drawn the wrong kind of vengeance from the wrong kind of people. I see myself a few years earlier, a wet-behind-the-ears reporter for KIMO 13 News, an ABC affiliate, covering the police and courts, compelled by that world, listening to the police scanner out of fascination even when there was no story to follow. In the newsroom, they teased me about my obsession with the scanner and my desire to be first on the scene for the next big story. One of my colleagues asked me if I turned the scanner off during sex.

I think back to a couple of years earlier, to my first pivotal conversation with Captain Tom Walker of the Anchorage Police Department, who told me the department was in need of female officers and that I’d make a great candidate. I recall telling Gary that same evening that I wanted to do it. I’d already taken the criminal justice and EMT courses; I knew my stuff and could hit the ground running. He agreed I should go for it; but, in retrospect, I wondered if it was because he was confident I wouldn’t make it.

When I joined the police academy, Gary realized I could handle it, and as I neared graduation, he told me he didn’t want a gun in the house and wasn’t comfortable looking across the bed at a trained killer. He said he’d rather see me come home in a body bag than find out I’d killed someone. I asked if he’d really rather see the mother of his children dead than learn that she’d offed some scumbag, and he said yes—that he couldn’t live with the idea of my having killed another human being. Our marriage, already shaky by that point, couldn’t survive the situation.

The day of my graduation from the academy, in September 1992, Gary told the kids we were getting a divorce. Jason was eighteen, Bonnie sixteen, Adam eleven, Samantha ten. “Mom, you gotta do what’s important to you,” Adam told me, his preteen wisdom and selflessness warming me.

I joined the Patrol Unit for that first exciting shift, twelve hours’ worth, driving through the worst neighborhoods in town. Given the choice of shifts, I chose Friday and Saturday nights, when the real action happened. I was chomping at the bit to get out there. With few women in the department, I was often called to the