The city of Los Angeles is a maze of crevices and cracks, a vast unholy experiment always on the verge of breaking apart but for the work of a few unsung guardians. In my neighborhood, one of those people is a woman by the name of Brigid.
On Thursday morning, Brigid was at Ivanhoe Elementary in Silver Lake passing the baton, giving a tour to the incoming leader of the parents group. Fifteen hours later she was still on the job, sending out pre-midnight e-mails to arrange a photo album for a departing teacher.
And Saturday morning, she was leading her team in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life, beginning a 24-hour rally to raise money and awareness for a disease that changed her life in ways she could not have imagined.
You've no doubt heard of her husband, Tom, a Los Angeles city councilman and unabashed city cheerleader who gets plenty of press. But you probably don't know Brigid LaBonge, who works just as hard. As she moves on now from one unpaid challenge to the next, I want to tell her story.
Brigid, the daughter of a postal worker, grew up in Pasadena and Altadena. She was the seventh of eight good Catholics and she hooked up with Tom, a Silver Laker who was also the seventh of eight kids.
So much for opposites attracting.
If you've got seven siblings, you probably have no choice but to learn sacrifice and service. Brigid says she never thought of herself as service-oriented, though, until she met Tom.
"I just had to roll with him," she said.
Here's how she describes a typical date back when Tom was working as a political aide:
"He'd say, 'Get in the car, but first I have to stop by . . . the fire house, the police station'. . . ."
Before running for office himself, Tom worked for several politicians, including City Council President John Ferraro and Mayor Dick Riordan. He knew Brigid was the one for him, as Brigid tells it, when they visited the messy aftermath of a Larchmont Village street fair, and she jumped onto a trash truck to help him clean the mess.
They married, they had two lovely children, and Brigid focused on her graphic design company while Tom did politics. When the kids went to Ivanhoe, Tom's old school, Brigid got involved now and again but didn't go overboard.
Everything changed, though, in February 2006. I remember running into Tom around that time. The eternal optimist was walking around the lake like a ghost, his head shaved to the bone.
