Turning Personal Grief Into Public Good

You have to wonder how much tragedy one person must endure.

And then marvel at how they keep on going.

There was Collene Campbell, victims rights advocate, two-time mayor of San Juan Capistrano, testifying in Washington last week on behalf of John Ashcroft. Whatever your feelings about President Bush's embattled choice for attorney general, how could you not admire Campbell's stoic voice on behalf of victims' rights in that national forum?

Especially when it was the last place she wanted to be.

Just five days earlier, she had helped bury her 18-year-old grandson, Brian Campbell, who died from internal bleeding after a head injury. Mourning loved ones who left life early is something Collene Campbell and her husband, Gary, have had to do before.

Their 27-year-old son, Scott, was murdered in 1982. Six years later came two more family murders. Collene's only sibling, racing promoter Mickey Thompson, and his wife, Trudi, were gunned down by two hit men outside their Bradbury home.

The Campbells had to go through three grueling murder trials spread over seven years in their son's death. The Thompson murders remain under investigation.

Campbell reminded me of an incident that I'd long forgotten but has always been most vivid for her.

It took 11 months before undercover work revealed details of how Scott Campbell had been killed. That night, March 13, 1983, Collene, Gary and their daughter, Shelly, hurried to Anaheim police headquarters to find out what homicide investigators had learned. Shelly was nine months' pregnant, but wanted to be there, desperate for whatever news could be gleaned about her only sibling's death.

Waiting outside a police office, she went into labor. That night she gave birth to Brian Scott Campbell. The middle name, of course, was for her brother.

The Campbells' ordeal, tragic as it is, has taken numerous other nightmarish twists.

To his parents, Scott Campbell was the perfect son. But he had his own difficulties. With a faltering business, he turned to a drug sale to perhaps save it. He confided in a family friend, Larry Cowell, who offered to fly him to North Dakota to complete the sale. Cowell took along an acquaintance, ex-convict Donald Dimascio. The two of them killed Scott to steal his drugs, then tossed his body from the plane, 5,000 feet somewhere a few miles past Catalina Island.

A Mother Had to Help Solve Son's Murder Case