He’s Got 7 Million Ways to Tell Her ‘I Love You’

Talk about a Valentine.

When Mark Bravo set out with his wife, Rosanne, on Friday for a weekend in Las Vegas, he carried with him a love note she is not likely to forget.

This morning, the 45-year-old Diamond Bar resident will give his wife a Valentine’s card in which is tucked a copy of a $7-million check he received Friday.

The money is compensation for the three years Bravo was imprisoned by the state of California for a rape he did not commit.

“Rosanne never lost faith in her husband for the whole time,” said his attorney, Hermez Moreno. “That’s a lot of money, but she’s not even going to look at the numbers. She doesn’t really care about the money. She’s concerned about him.”

Bravo, a registered nurse who worked at Metropolitan State Hospital, was convicted in 1990 of raping a female patient.

In 1993, the Innocence Project took an interest in Bravo’s case and initiated DNA testing on the alleged victim’s panties, a sheet and a blanket, Moreno said. The victim had recanted her testimony several times after Bravo was convicted.

The DNA tests “proved, not only that the materials tested did not match [Bravo], but did not even match the alleged victim,” Moreno said.

A state appeals court awarded Bravo $5.3 million for the wrongful conviction, plus $2 million in interest, said Hallye Jordan, spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office.

The money was included in a Senate appropriations bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger several weeks ago. The check Bravo got Friday totaled $7,075,367.82.

Moreno said that, after fighting for years, it was a bit of a shock to receive the check. As he and Bravo went to the bank to deposit it, Bravo confided to his lawyer that he had not told his wife the news, because he couldn’t believe it until the check actually cleared. Instead, he made a copy and decided to give it to her during their trip to Las Vegas this weekend.

“We really didn’t expect to see a check for another four to six weeks,” Moreno said. “This has been the only thing that the state has done efficiently. In that sense, it’s been most shocking.”

Moreno said he would receive “more than 30%, but less than 50%” of the $7 million as his fee.

Bravo now works at the California Youth Authority reception center in Norwalk, next door to the hospital where he was accused of rape.

Since leaving prison in 1994, he has put himself through law school and is now pursuing a master’s degree in nursing. He and his wife, also a registered nurse, have a son in his 20s training to become a firefighter.

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Associated Press contributed to this report.