I physically met Vicki on a lovely August day when she and Joan joined my husband and me for lunch at Gig Harbor, WA. What began in 2006 as a "long-distance" work relationship with Joan, has quickly grew into a warm and solid friendship. Joan and I both work at Rio Salado College; me at our administrative offices in AZ and Joan as a distance instructional designer. After two years of "knowing" one another by phone and computer only, my husband and I scheduled an Alaskan cruise out of Seattle......and we "landed" in town a couple of days early with the express purpose for meeting up with Joan and Vicki. I had grown to know the sweet and loving Vicki through Joan's eyes and when we met, I knew instantly that this lovely woman was not a figment of Joan's imagination.....but that she was a sweet, lovely, interesting and engaging woman who instantly made my husband feel at ease. My husband, though a retired law enforcement agent, is a socially shy person and often feels awkward when meeting new people in a social context. Not with Vicki around! While Joan and I chatted like Magpies, Vicki had soon captivated my husband's interest! How charming she is, my husband would later remark......and when I learned a few months later that he was ill with early onset Alzheimer's Joan and I formed a "sisterhood solidarity" framed around caring for our fragile partners. When learning of Vicki's transition, I was so distraught that I forgot to frame my comments to my husband with "remember when we met Joan and Vicki before our Alaskan cruise?" Instead, I just blurted out "Joan has lost Vicki!" My husband, immediately said, "that lovely, sweet woman we had lunch with in Washington a couple of summers ago?" Well......if a man with Alzheimer's can remember a charming woman he had lunch with two years ago, then all of you who have known and loved Vicki for a lifetime can appreciate that one didn't need a lifetime to realize what a special person hasn't left, she is simply waiting for you in another time and space. Our healing thoughts go out to all who have had the remarkable pleasure of having Vicki touch their lives, even if only through Joan, or on a lovely late summer's day at Gig Harbor, WA. Diana and David Abel