Battle Fields Revisited, Battles Recalled

by Don Baumgart

                NEVADA CITY - This is the story of two women who fought the fights that were handed to them, and won.    I had coffee with Debbie Meyer at the Nevada County Fair, four years and a day after she was shot leaving the fair by a Grass Valley police officer. Meyer had turned the wrong way leaving a parking lot. After a suitable delay the officer was fired and banned from law enforcement. Meyer sued in civil court and won. Everything happens for a reason," she said. If she had to take a bullet "...to get him off the force, it was worth it."

                We talked about Kathy Strange, whose son Sam was convicted of murdering two girls in 1994. I watched Kathy's transformation during and after the trial as she changed from a frightened woman who hated the media because we were saying bad things about her son, to a stronger person who learned how to get her side of the story in print and on the air.

                District Attorney Mike Ferguson initially saw her as everything from a loose cannon who had threatened his life to a possible accomplice in the killings. t Kathy never gave up. She kept the case in the public eye until finally the local paper called a halt to the letters of complaint over Sam's conviction. Then she started an unsuccessful recall effort to remove the judge, sheriff and DA from office.

                Gradually even Ferguson came to see her for what she was -- a mother fighting for her son. That simple. The fight had a time limit because Kathy was gravely ill. Earlier this year Meyer, Kathy Strange, and Ferguson attended a fundraiser for medical expenses.

                Kathy moved away from Nevada County and remarried, but never stopped fighting to free her son.  June 14 Kathy Strange Morales died of cancer.

                The DA who had prosecuted Sam called her, "...strong, intelligent, sincere and dedicated to her son.

                "She will be missed," he told the local newspaper.

                When I said to Debbie Meyer that she had won and Kathy had lost, she corrected me.

                "We both won our battles, but hers was the bigger victory. Hers was a victory of the heart."

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(This story originally appeared in the Mountain Messenger, California’s oldest weekly newspaper.)