Dawn
Known since: 1995
Resides In: Long Beach, CA
I'd only been living back in Sacramento--at La Casa with only Tim and Rich at that point--when I got this weird idea for a bet. The three of us would each put up a personal ad, just for kicks, on AOL, and the winner would be whoever got the most responses in 30 days. This bet, by the way, turned into marriage for Rich (even though I won the bet. How does THAT work?). I was looking through personal ads to get an idea of what people were saying before I prepared my own. And I came across one that caught my eye. No photo, just words. But I really liked what she had to say, this girl. She sounded really interesting, and very much like me, and I thought she might be someone I'd like to correspond with. And that's what I told her when I wrote her, telling her right up front that I was not answering her ad for romantic reasons. There were numerous reasons for that, the first being that I was in northern Cal and she lived in Orange County, but the most important being that I was 27 and she was 19. She just sounded like someone I'd enjoy talking to and getting to know. Turns out she not only answered me, but we suddenly became unbelievably regular pen pals, writing huge e-mails almost daily. We got to know each other, shared each other's lives, talked each other through rough times. I had never had a pen pal before, really, and certainly could never have imagined one like this, one that became such a part of my daily life.
Dawn and I wrote for months, and then I happened to mention that I was going to be in San Diego for a few days in the summer, and she wanted to meet. So she drove down when I was there, meeting me at my hotel, and we had lunch at a restaurant there overlooking the harbor and met for the first time. Dawn is just simply a great person to know, sharing my outlook on many things in life, struggling with life's big decisions like me, looking for happiness and struggling to get though the tough times. She's a big fan of movies and ice skating (so movies about ice skating, I imagine, are big on her list...). We talked each other through some big moments in both of our lives, including a couple of relationships of hers. We were also still writing when, at college, she met this guy in class named Martin...the same guy who I'd end up meeting when I visited them in Santa Barbara, and the guy who's now her husband. I would say my friendship with her is hands-down the most unusual I've had, and certainly one of the most enriching. Dawn and Martin are now living happily in southern Cal, making plans for home ownership and family, and I'm sitting back and smiling at how far she's come, and how it's so great to see someone so deserving wind up with the happy ending.
Random Me and Dawn Memory: Would have to be the lunch at the Yacht Club. What a great day that was.
Dawn and husband Martin