Slaying Shatters ‘Fairy Tale’ Marriage

At first, Pamela Champion didn’t worry when her husband, Mick, was late and didn’t call.

“He was going out to play darts with a new team. I guessed they went out for a beer afterward,” she said.

Even when she saw the television news account of a man shot dead downtown and a description of the car her husband drove, it didn’t occur to her that her Mick was involved.

“I didn’t know it was him, but I knew the car,” she said, her face clamped tight with grief Tuesday evening. “I knew. . . .”

A call from police shattered the precious world she and her husband of four years had carefully forged for themselves. Michael Champion, 28, was shot in the head and killed Monday night after a convict escaped from a prisoners van a few blocks away.

“I can’t believe that he’s not here. I keep thinking he’ll come back, but I know he’s not. I feel so empty,” said Pamela Champion, an Escondido native. “I wish I could have held him, could have seen him again. I wonder what was going through his head when it happened. It must have been terrible for him.”

The couple met at a Point Loma nightclub about seven years ago. She hadn’t wanted to go out that particular evening but a friend had insisted. Later, she learned that Michael, too, had been pressed to go to the club.

“We knew we were meant to be together,” she said.

Pamela Ross had instantly liked Michael. He was warm and generous. And they shared a powerful common interest: Irish culture.

Looking through their wedding album Tuesday evening, Pamela Champion sobbed and remembered how happy she and Michael, who wore kilts for the occasion, were that day. The bagpipes that filled their wedding day with music will be played again Friday at his wake.

The couple had talked of having children, but they so savored their time together that they had decided to postpone parenthood, she said. They had taken up Celtic folk dancing. And they had begun tracing their genealogies. Mick Champion--a Kansas City, Kan., native--had traced back three generations before his death.

As Pamela Champion spoke about her husband, who worked at a Del Mar car stereo company, she was seated on her bed at her Hillcrest home. She was startled each time the phone rang, with calls from Mick’s relatives and friends. Each time she tried to talk on the phone, she began crying.

It seemed that she and Mick had so much left, so much they had hoped to do remains untouched. Mick had recently bought special pencils and pens to draw the intricate lines of Celtic folk art. An electronics wizard, he was forever tinkering with their stereo system to make the sound just right.

“He treated me so special, he would buy me gifts for no occasion,” said Pamela Champion, a travel agent. “He always said he was lucky to have me, and I was lucky to have him.”

In fact, his last gift to her was an anniversary present. He gave her a ring symbolizing love, faithfulness and friendship.

During his four years in the Navy, Mick Champion had been transferred to San Diego, after spending years at sea as a radioman. He had enjoyed the thrills of traveling.

But when he met Pamela, he was ready to settle down. For Christmas three years ago, he wrote to his wife:

“You are the happy ending to a fairy tale come true for me, and our love will endure beyond the bonds of time and history.

“It makes me sad to think of all the people who never find their soulmate, but it also makes me overjoyed to realize how lucky I was to have found mine. . . . Be mine forever. Michael.”