Guns trigger a loving clash
By David Haldane, Los
Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 10, 2008
Julie Alban talks to her son, Joseph
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 gun control
proponent.
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.
"We picked up a stray puppy," Reva Alban, Julie's mother, remarked in an
interview during the trial, "and he turned out to be a rabid dog."
The jury convicted Ackerman of attempted first-degree murder, later reduced to
attempted second-degree murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison and was released after serving about 7½
years.
Julie Alban, meanwhile, got on with her life. She graduated from Fullerton's
Western State University College of Law, where her family established a
scholarship for students in wheelchairs. After a few years in the Long Beach
city attorney's office, she narrowly missed being elected to the Assembly in
1998.
After the election, Alban opened a law practice in Placentia and, last year,
began thinking about having a child.
"There were only two things I always wanted," she says, "a career and to have a
family. At 41 I felt that I had achieved what I wanted professionally. There
wasn't much left for me there. I just felt an inordinate desire to have the
connection" of being a parent.
She was put in touch with a married mother of four willing to give birth to the
child. Alban's egg was mixed with donor sperm and implanted into the surrogate.
The result was Joseph Abraham Alban, born Oct. 6.
"He is a true miracle," Julie Alban says. "I can't believe that my life's
journey -- so disrupted at age 22 -- has taken this turn."
As Alban settled into the routine of motherhood, however, a dark specter began
to haunt her. To help make ends meet, she had moved back to her parents' home,
the site of her maiming. There she was astonished to discover her father still
clinging to his guns.