Julie Alban still grimaces when she passes her old bedroom.
"This is where I crawled down the hallway to call 911," she explains, pushing her wheelchair along the polished wooden floor. "I had to pull my whole body with my arms. My elbows were all bloody."
What happened that morning 20 years ago altered the course of her life and set the stage for most of what would come.
Though paralyzed from the waist down when shot by a boyfriend she had known since childhood, Alban went on to become a Long Beach prosecutor specializing in domestic abuse cases, a Republican candidate for Assembly, champion for the rights of disabled people and, most recently, mother of a 5-month-old boy. A frequent inspirational speaker, she also has become an ardent proponent of gun control.
Recently, in fact, she raised the issue in a confrontation with her father, owner of the gun that cut her down, at a gala fundraising dinner attended by celebrities and friends.
"You are a loving and devoted father," the disabled lawyer told Seymour Alban, 83, an orthopedic surgeon, former reserve police officer, prominent Republican and lifelong lover of guns. "It's ironic that the person who loves me the most could somehow be a participant in my injury."
That misfortune occurred June 8, 1988, when Julie Alban's then-boyfriend, Bradley D. Ackerman, strolled into her bedroom in her parents' Long Beach home and shot her in the back. He then turned the gun on himself, inflicting a minor wound.
The incident garnered immediate headlines because Ackerman, then 23, was the stepson of Long Beach Press-Telegram Chairman Daniel H. Ridder, who lived across the street from the Albans in one of the city's toniest neighborhoods. The two families were close friends who often shared holidays and had traveled abroad together.
During the well-publicized trial, Ackerman's lawyers maintained that, disappointed by not achieving his potential as a tennis player and depressed after losing a $30,000 bet on a baseball game, the young man had taken Valium, blacked out and mistakenly shot Alban in a botched suicide attempt.
Alban and her father painted an entirely different picture. Ackerman, they testified, was infuriated by her refusal to marry him. The defendant, a guest at the Alban house while his parents were out of town, had retrieved the gun from the trunk of Seymour Alban's car, where it had been left after the two attended a gathering of reserve sheriff's deputies that evening.
