Why Tragedy Hasn’t Driven Couple From L.A.

Of all the couples who’ve ever spoken about leaving Los Angeles for the promise of a better, safer life elsewhere, the Hackmeyers seemed excellent candidates to actually do it.

For one thing, their roots are back East. Paul is from Boston and Nancy is from Philadelphia. Plus, their work is portable and highly compensated. He’s an ob-gyn, she’s a lawyer. And, considering the way L.A. has treated them, they would have better motives than most.

It wasn’t the Northridge earthquake, though the quake knocked the Hackmeyers and their three kids out of their Sherman Oaks home. Nature’s power paled in comparison to man’s capacity for evil.

It happened one year ago last Monday. Shortly after midnight, Dr. Paul Hackmeyer had just arrived home from delivering a baby. He was locking the driveway gate as two shadowy forms approached, apparently bent on robbery. They shot him three times, the final bullet ripping through his liver and lungs, narrowly missing his heart.

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One year later, Paul Hackmeyer, 42, marked the anniversary by opening a bottle of champagne. “My wife thought I was sick,” he says with an easy laugh.

He was sitting behind the glass-top table that serves as his desk. This was Tuesday, and through the window the sky shone blue with white puffs, cleansed by overnight rain and a brisk wind. Like a pond, the table reflected the doctor against the sky.

We first met when Dr. Hackmeyer was early in his recovery. We sat amid his back-yard bonsai collection. In his office, too, the motif was Japanese--save for the gaudy bouquet of balloons in the corner, a gift from a patient.

“I delivered four babies for her, and she sent this to me yesterday.” Anchoring the balloons were a plastic heart filled with candy and a card that said, “Celebrate life.” And that sentiment, he says, was why he urged Nancy to join him in the champagne toast.

“There’s something nice about survivorship,” he says.

It’s nice, he explains, to know that when something goes wrong, life can be much, much worse. And the experience has taught him much about people.

Patients have confided their own horrors. One was raped, others mugged. One woman had been wounded in a drive-by shooting. “We compared notes.” Women, seeing that his health is good, ask how his wife and kids are doing. “And all the men, they want to see the scars. It’s hysterical.”

Dr. Hackmeyer also learned more about himself.

Initially, there was a heightened sense of fear. Although police, who have made no arrests in the case, believed him to be a random target, he initially donned a bulletproof vest and sometimes carried the Ruger .357 bought years before for home protection. Today, less fearful, he seldom feels so inclined.

A more permanent effect is an enriched appreciation of life’s fragility that has made him want to live it to its fullest. For him, this doesn’t mean the adrenaline rush of, say, sky-diving. It means a deeper dedication to the fundamentals: family, friends, work.

Like the other day, when he was at the hospital and remembered a friend back in Boston was expecting him to call. It was late and he was tired. Before the shooting, he says, he would have put it off. Now it’s different. He hiked back to his office to make the call.

“The ‘should haves’ just don’t work as excuses anymore,” he explains.

And at home, he tries to spend more time with his son, Jonathan, almost 3, and daughters Casey, 7, and Brenna, 9. Now that Brenna’s taken up softball, they’ve played a lot of catch in the front yard where he was nearly killed.

There’s another addition at home too--a watchdog named Storm. He’s a mastiff, just 8 months old but already 120 pounds. Fully grown, he’ll weigh about 180.

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A move back East, closer to family, has long been a tentative “should” on the Hackmeyer family agenda. A few months after the shooting, they scouted Bucks County, Pa., for precisely that reason. They priced everything from real estate to groceries. It was certainly doable, and in some ways desirable. But in the final analysis, the Hackmeyers decided to remain in Los Angeles.

Funny how things work out. The shooting may be one of reasons they stayed.

There was, Dr. Hackmeyer recalls, an initial burst of anger, a resentful defiance of the idea that random violence could chase them from their home. Much more important, there was the support from friends, colleagues and patients that showed the Hackmeyers how deep their roots are here. Finally, there was the sad knowledge that few places are free of such danger.

“This was an irrational event,” the doctor explains. “I don’t want to make an irrational decision to compound the problem.”

And so they stay. With a little luck, quake repairs will get done in time for them to return home to Sherman Oaks by Thanksgiving.