By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — If you still think of a political figure's wife as someone whose identity is so wrapped up in his success that her persona becomes an extension of his, you haven't met Rana Sampson, San Diego's First Lady. She is, as the saying goes, "her own woman."  Not only has she kept her family name, she has her own successful career, her own political opinions and her own religion, Judaism.  And San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders says appreciatively that  he learns from her every minute.

At the end of my scheduled half-hour meeting with San Diego's First Couple at the mayor's office,  Sampson told me a story that made me understand why she so readily granted an interview with a Jewish news outlet.

"Before I was born, my Grandma Sylvia, my mom's mom, had Parkinson's Disease. She developed it when my mom was a very young girl.  My grandfather took my mom out of school when she was 11 or 12 to help care for my mom, and a police officer came to the home and said 'your daughter has to go to school.'  My grandfather worked full time and he said, 'well, I have a sick wife at home, and I have to have my daughter take care of her' because my grandmother was severely incapacitated.  And the officer said, 'no, she has to go to school.'

"So my grandfather wrote into the Jewish Daily Forward, and it was like a Dear Abby column that you could write about your tsuris, and so he wrote in and said 'I don't know what to do.'  He was a relatively new immigrant to the United States, and he didn't understand the customs and ways and obligation that children had to go to school.  He was trying to balance the needs of his wife, my grandmother, who needed home care.  He was a presser in a garment factory; it was not like he could afford someone to come in and take care of her." 

The Yiddish-language newspaper's advice column, A Bintele Brief, started by the newspaper's founder, Abraham Cahan, although intended to help immigrants adjust to America, had a readership that went well beyond the first generation community in New York City. One reader was an anonymous philanthropist who saw the grandfather's letter.

"The philanthropist paid for my grandmother to go into a chronic care facility in Brooklyn, and the agreement was that as long as my grandfather used a certain percentage of his salary, this philanthropist would cover the rest of the costs," Sampson related.  "It was only by writing to the Jewish newspaper that he was able to—my grandmother ended up living into her late 60s in that same facility, so for over 40 years she lived in that facility, and it was all because of that Jewish newspaper."

Mayor Sanders picked up the narrative:  "It is interesting: her mother went on to become a school teacher and she never would have had that opportunity."

"Her mind was brilliant, she excelled at school," agreed Sampson. "For my mom to be taken out of school to do this—you can imagine how difficult that was." 

I also imagined that if Rana Sampson's mother had not gone to school, she might not have grown up to be the woman she was and the whole chain of circumstances that led to Sampson and Sanders being married on Oct 22, 1993, by a federal judge in New York might never occurred.  Who knows if Rana and her two sisters, Elissa and Michelle,  ever would have been born?

The Sampson-Sanders wedding—her first, his second—was made even more memorable by the fact that U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy, who at the time was presiding over a case stemming from the first World Trade Center bombing, had been receiving death threats.  "He had to wear a bullet proof vest when he married us," Sampson recalled. Following the service, "we took him out for dim sum—him and the federal marshals who were his bodyguards and surrounded him."

Sampson, a police officer  from 1982 to 1988, had gotten to know Duffy on those occasions she had testified in his court.  Obtaining her undergraduate degree from Columbia University and a law degree from Harvard University, she would became a White House Fellow  and a National Institute of Justice Fellow who focused her research on matters that could help police personnel prevent and solve crimes.  Over her career, she authored such publications as "Drug Dealing in Privately Owned Apartment Complexes," "Acquaintance Rape of College Students," "False Burglar Alarms," "Bullying in Schools," "Misuse and Abuse of 911," and "Tackling Crime and Other Public Safety Problems."

Sampson and Sanders were married two years before Sanders, who had worked his way up the ranks, was named San Diego's Chief of Police. Sampson subsequently took a position as director of public safety at the University of San Diego before eventually opening a consulting business that has her lecturing to police personnel across the United States and around the world.  Sanders went on to become chief executive officer of the United Way in San Diego prior to his election as mayor in December 2005.

One of Sampson's first "jobs" in San Diego was to get to know Sanders' two daughters by his first marriage, Lisa and Jamie.  The daughters celebrate Christmas with Sanders, but also celebrate Chanukah and Passover with their step-mom, and have so incorporated those holidays into their lives that they often refer to themselves as "half-Jewish"  This is a sweet compliment to Sampson given the fact that the daughters, in Sampson's words, have a close relationship with their "wonderful mom."

Back in the "getting to know you" stage of their relationship,  Sampson laid out a breakfast of lox, bagel and cream cheese for Sanders and the girls, who were then of elementary school age.  She recalled telling them that "this is very typical Sunday food for Jews," but Lisa and Jamie just stared nervously at the lox.  "Girls, are you going to try it?" Sampson recalled asking, and seeing their reticence, inquired: "What's the matter, girls?

One answered hesitantly, "You eat flamingos?" 

"Their only experience with something pink was at the San Diego Zoo," Sampson laughed.

Sanders had been active in the National Conference of Christians and Jews (later renamed the National Conference for Community and Justice), where he got to know Rabbi Martin Lawson of Temple Emanu-El and later Rabbi Jonathan Stein, then of Congregation Beth Israel.  (Today, Stein  is with Temple Shaaray Tefila of New York and is scheduled in September to receive a humanitarian-of-the-year award from the World Union for Progressive Judaism.).  Another close friend of Sanders' was Morris Casuto, San Diego regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

So, with a Jewish wife and having as friends several members of San Diego's Jewish leadership, Sanders may have thought that he was ready to attend a nephew's bar mitzvah in New York City. He described the occasion as "the longest bar mitzvah in the world," prompting Sampson to begin laughing at the memory.

"Her brother-in-law (Jonathan Boyarin, today head of Jewish studies at the University of Kansas) is a religious scholar and her nephew is extremely bright.  He is off the charts.  I think he had a 1600 SAT and he is a chess champion for his age group, so he decided that he wanted a four-hour bar mitzvah, and it was an Orthodox synagogue.  She didn't tell me anything."

"I didn't tell him that women would have to sit separately," Sampson interjected.

"So this is in New York, so I get there and Rana basically turns me over to a group of men in their prayer shawls and yarmulkes, who take me to a seat, and I didn't realize it would all be in Hebrew," Sanders recounted.  "I am sitting with a group of men—and obviously this was their synagogue, they have got their names on their places, their book holders and all of that, and they are chatting away the whole time, and I am having a pretty hard time understanding this whole ceremony.   I look back and Rana is having a great time with her sister from Israel (Michelle)—just chatting—and after the ceremony, I said, 'Do people pay attention?" and she said, 'to the parts that are important to them...'

"This was very New York," Sampson said.

But don't get the idea that Sanders was sitting there, trapped in non-comprehension the whole time.  "I did something very special for him," Sampson explained. "Yes," said Sanders, "she had wrapped a Tom Clancy novel in a brown paper bag."  "A brown paper cover—like you have at school—to cover your books," Sampson elaborated..

The back-and-forth between husband and wife also extends to issues of politics. They have their agreements and disagreements. Notably, Sampson disagreed with her husband's position on the Mount Soledad Cross controversy.  Sanders said he and Sampson years ago, long before he had become mayor, had agreed to disagree on this particular issue.  Ironically, the discussion took place before the U.S. Senate voted in favor of a bill nationalizing the Mount Soledad War Memorial in an effort to bring the site with its centerpiece Christian cross under federal jurisdiction.

"One of the reasons that I love the United States is that there's respect for all religions, and the separation of state and church is something I feel very comfortable with," said Sampson.".. I just happen to be on the opposite side of this issue with Jerry."

The mayor responded, "I certainly respect her point of view on that, and I wish there were a more fitting way to have the memorial, but this is really an issue of someone (Plaintiff Philip Paulson) who doesn't want any type of religious symbolism so it is not as easy as adding symbolism, it is really about taking it off.  You know, I see it as a war memorial, but we have had long discussions on this, believe me, and I respect her position."

One issue on which Sanders is greatly affected by Sampson is Israel as he alluded to at a July 23 rally sponsored by the United Jewish Federation to show support for the Jewish State in its war against Hezbollah.

"I think the issue is really peace for everybody, and, as I said that day at the event, it is extremists that are trying to take that away from us, and that is just unfair," the mayor said. "Every time we get to close, then one of the extremes will act up."  He added that he was impressed with an analysis he recently heard on National Public Radio that often actions are initiated against Israel, not so much out of direct concern with Israel but as a way of jockeying for influence in the Arab world.

Sampson spent two months visiting her sister at Kibbutz Ketura, about 25 miles north of Eilat, as Michelle continued a battle against Stage Four cancer.  "She is still alive and it is a year and a half later.  She is going to celebrate her 50th birthday," she said.

Sanders noted that his sister-in-law plans to come to New York for her birthday and "I am taking one of my daughters."

With two persons with such policing expertise seated on a couch across from me, I couldn't help but ask what advice they had for Jewish and Islamic institutions in the wake of the shootings at the Jewish Federation in Seattle by a Muslim who said he was angry about Israel.

Sampson suggested that religious institutions should "review their security practices and make sure that they are up to snuff.  One of the things that the San Diego Police Department does is help with security audits and does assessments.  People call the crime prevention unit in the San Diego Police Department and ask for feedback on the precautions that are in place and whether they are sufficient for the kinds of risks that may be prevalent, particularly at this time."

The mayor said that San Diego police have designated liaison officers with various religious institutions.  He counseled continued vigilance.  "Any graffiti should be immediately reported to the police department no matter how minor it may seem because frequently someone who is building up to some kind of desecration or something else  will experiment first and build up the courage. The sooner they report that type of thing to the police department the sooner the police department can get on it.  People in the neighborhood frequently know who is doing that kind of stuff, so maintaining that kind of contact all the time is critical."

The previous time I had seen Rana Sampson and Mayor Jerry Sanders together at a Jewish event was on Sunday, April 9, at a groundbreaking ceremony for Congregation Beth El's new sanctuary.  The mayor said he keeps a kippah from that occasion in his office, so as I was leaving, I asked San Diego's First Couple if they'd take a picture with her placing it on his head.  They readily agreed.