Just a really quick story about a pretty mundane occurrence, but one that really gave me a kick today. I was at the Apple Store in Burlingame, CA, buying a new iPhone and getting it all setup, when the tech I was talking with suddenly looked over my shoulder and said, “hey, there’s Jackie Speier.” I looked over across the store, and sure enough, my former Congresswoman was sauntering up to one of the product tables. He said something like, “I should thank her for her service, but I bet she gets a lot of that.” I said something like, “Yeah, I should too. She was a great rep!”
Then we got back to finishing up moving my data from my old phone to my new one, and I forgot about it for a moment. Maybe ten minutes later it was all set, and I took my shiny new iPhone and started to leave the store. Somehow, I caught sight of Jackie again talking with another customer and I said to myself, “I really should just let her have her private life — she doesn’t need to hear from me right now.” Then I found myself walking up to her anyway and listened while another customer finished chatting with her about some policy matter. When the customer departed I said, “Congresswoman Speier?”
She looked at me without a trace of annoyance, and said, “Yes?”
I said, “I know you’re probably busy, but I just wanted to tell you that I really appreciated your service as my representative.”
She smiled and thanked me, but I went a little further. “No, really. Anytime the topic comes up when people were talking about who their congress people were and how they were doing, I always said I had the most awesome representative in Jackie Speier.” (And I genuinely meant it.)
I then added that I particularly loved how attentive she was to her constituents, how I had attended two of her town halls and several of the digital ones she had held during the pandemic. I said she had a great knack for explaining the nuances of government and how it affected us on a local level.
I wished her well and began to walk away, feeling that I’d taken far too much of her personal time. She didn’t let me go before asking my name and where I lived, and I told her, then said goodbye and left the store.
It felt so wonderful to get a chance to tell her what I felt and I almost forgot about the joy of having the latest and greatest Apple gizmo.
If you don’t know much about Jackie Speier, look up the Jonestown massacre and read about Leo Ryan’s tragic death on the tarmac in Guyana and his young aid who took five bullets and nearly died with him, then went on to become a beloved Silicon Valley congresswoman. She fought hard against Republican madness for most of my adult life and I’m so glad to have had a chance to let her know how awesome she was.