Many years ago, my colleague Paul Rubin profiled a local pediatric cardiac surgeon for our paper, Phoenix New Times. The headline was “Prince of Hearts.”

But to me, it’s Paul who’s the prince of hearts. Maybe even the king.

You should read his article about Michael Teodori. It’s a wonderful piece of journalism, well written and the result of months (literally) of reporting. It is not a story, pardon the pun, for the faint of heart. I am, and although it’s been almost a decade since the piece was published, I can still remember standing in the doorway of Paul’s office, wincing as he tried to tell me what it was like to watch the doctor literally hold a baby’s heart in his hand.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I said, covering my ears and waving my hands to make it stop. I just couldn’t go there. I had a one-year-old and (although I didn’t know it yet) another baby on the way, and I simply couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a child with a serious medical problem, let alone one requiring open heart surgery.

Less than a year later — days after Sophie was born — I called Paul.

“Hey, you know that heart surgeon you profiled?” I asked. “I need his number.”

Paul didn’t just give me the doctor’s number. He called him personally. He assured me this particular procedure was the simplest these surgeons performed, talked me through the whole thing — several times, although I never did understand just what they did to Sophie’s heart. (Defense mechanism.) Four months later, on the day of the operation, Paul left work to come to the hospital and visit the nurses he’d gotten to know in the pediatric ICU, making sure they’d give Sophie extra-special care. He sat with us in the waiting room, and when Ray and I were able to see Sophie, he stayed behind and waited with my parents. At one point I looked up, and my dad was standing by Sophie’s bed. I was shocked; my father’s not the type to hang out near  medical tubing and bloody incisions. Paul had convinced him to come in and see her.

Nobody convinces my dad to do anything. But nobody had told Paul that.

By the time Sophie needed her second heart operation, at age 4, she and Paul were great friends. Post-surgery, she was understandably cranky, and pushed most visitors away. Not Paul. For months he told the story about how Sophie reached up from her hospital bed, grabbed his finger, and refused to let go.

Lots of people pass the Sophie Test, but few with the flying colors of this guy. When she sees him she goes nuts, and has announced on more than one occasion that she intends to marry him. (Awkward for his current wife.)

Don’t get me wrong. Paul is no saint. In the nearly 20 years we worked together, I wanted him dead on more than one occasion. He can be stubborn, and tact is not always his strong suit. I’ll never forget where I was standing the day he told me a cover story I’d just written was the worst thing he’d ever read in our paper. (An insult I’m still not quite ready to admit as true.)

But I also remember every rare, hard-earned compliment — including last week’s, when he told me how much he likes reading my blog. (It should be noted that when I started this blog, Paul cringed and made faces at the mere idea.) In the last 20 years, the guy has defended me against bullies and bitches; taught me a lot of what I know about journalism; introduced me to trusted sources; and brought me back documents from the courthouse on the hottest summer days. (And if you’ve ever been to Phoenix in July, you know that’s a big deal.)

We joked often that in all our years in the same office, we’d rarely been to lunch together; we were both too busy. But when I needed him, he was there. And he was there for Sophie.

This week, Paul cleared out his office. Even though I’m on the other side of the building, and never could hear his phone conversations or his jazz music, somehow the place feels quieter now. I walked by his mailbox and noticed there’s still a box of Thin Mints in it, a purchase he made from my girls back in January. He doesn’t eat that kind of thing — the biggest treat I’ve seen him allow himself is one Hershey’s kiss from my candy jar, almost every afternoon — but he bought a box of Girl Scout cookies every year when the girls walked around the office with their order forms.

I’d always tell him not to, offering to erase the order after Sophie had sweet talked him — she’d never know the difference. But he’d always insist, saying he wanted to do it for the girls.

He’s that kind of guy.

The second part of my series “The Lost Kids” is out this week.

The day before the story came out, a Facebook friend across the country posted a really beautiful quote from “A Prayer for Owen Meaney” by John Irving.

I found it an odd coincidence.

The story of Cynthia Clark Harvey’s struggle to get her mentally ill daughter help has haunted me for years. I finally decided this fall that I could disclose the conflict of interest that was keeping me from writing about Erica (Cynthia and I have been in writing classes and groups together) and help her mother get the message out about how dangerous wilderness-therapy camps can be.

Erica died during a hike on her very first day at one of those camps in 2002.  

When we sat down for a formal interview, Cynthia mentioned that in the months preceeding Erica’s death, she had often read to Erica at night when she couldn’t sleep. One of the books she read to her was “A Prayer for Owen Meaney.”

Here’s the quote my FB friend posted. I don’t even know the woman well enough to ask why she posted it. But I’m glad she did.

When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time – the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes – when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever – there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

I hate to admit that motherhood (particularly, mothering Sophie) has changed how I approach telling other people’s stories, but it has. I don’t know that it made this story any better from the reader’s perspective, but it cut me to the quick, telling this one.

Niki Varlotta is quite a mom. As much as I asked her about her son Alex, in the two-plus years I followed her family, she wanted to know all about Sophie, too. She didn’t have to ask — she’s just that kind of person. She wanted to know. She really cares. We talked about other stuff, too. Books, music. About our “typical” kids and how having “special” siblings — so different and yet unified by their differentness — affects them, for both good and bad.

I’ll miss her. And yet, I’m terrified she’ll call — to share the next scary chapter of her family’s story. I hope I don’t hear from Niki, save a Christmas card or a book recommendation.

That family deserves a happy ending.

It is pretty juicy, according to an LA Times blog.

I have my own thoughts about Sarah Palin, which I expressed last year (was it only a year ago?) in Phoenix New Times. My feelings haven’t changed. I don’t know if Levi Johnston’s telling the truth, but since all’s game in love and politics, the Vanity Fair piece will at least be worth a read. (Interesting that he was reportedly paid for writing it. I wonder how much is really in his own words?)

I still blame John McCain for the whole Palin thing, but that’s me.

Whether Johnston’s telling the truth or not (and my guess is that it’s shades of gray, as is much of life) I can say one thing definitively: Sarah Palin is no poster mom of a kid with Down syndrome. Not on my wall, anyway.

“And Sophie has never liked The Wiggles,” I exclaimed, at the end of a diatribe about the short shelf life of this group. More blank stares.

OK, so maybe New Times wasn’t the right venue for the piece. But hey, as you’ll learn, it wasn’t my idea….