Sometimes I can't help but get pissed off.

I have had plenty of times in my life that I have lost out on things because I didn't work hard enough, or I had a bad attitude, or I didn't take the right approach to something. But there was one time in my life that I was doing something very well -- something I honestly believe I should still be doing -- and I had it taken away from me through the stupidity and short-sightedness of my employer.

[caption id="attachment_878" align="alignleft" width="244" caption="In the beginning -- 1996"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/20110222_1.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-878" title="20110222_1" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/20110222_1-e1298511502809-244x300.jpg" alt="" width="244" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

In 1996, a wonderful editor named Steve Trosley -- one of the best people I worked for in 28 years -- gave me the opportunity to be a three-times-weekly columnist, writing about whatever caught my fancy.

This was the first one, and it was an award winner.

***

<em>There’s nothing more chilling than a knock on your door in the middle of the night. It’s a hollow sound, something that grabs you way down deep, and when that almost primeval noise awakens you from sleep, when a glance at the bedside clock tells you it’s 3 a.m., you know nothing good is happening.</em>

<em>The only question you ask yourself is how bad it’s going to be, especially if you’re the wife of a police officer and your husband is out on patrol.</em>

<em>When Nancy Hernandez heard the knock, early in the morning of Nov.  13, 1995, at first she thought she had imagined it.</em>

<em>“You don’t constantly worry that something’s going to happen,” she said. “But it’s always in the back of your mind that something could happen. So you prepare yourself as much as you can, but as time goes on and things don’t happen, you get more comfortable.”</em>

<em>Nancy had been married to Ed Hernandez for four years, about the same length of time he had been an officer with the Ontario Police Department, when the knock came.</em>

<em> “I heard it and I said, ‘Oh, it couldn’t have been,’” she said. “I lay down to go back to sleep and I really didn’t think anything of it. Then I heard it again.”</em>

<em> Then she knew it was real. She pulled on her bathrobe and went to the kitchen of her Chino Hills home. A quick glance out the window showed her husband’s best friend in the department standing there.</em>

<em> All of a sudden, every impossible worry, every unreasonable fear was this close to being a reality. “I opened the door and said, ‘Something happened. Didn’t it?’” she said.</em>

<em> Yes, something had happened.</em>

<em> Officer Hernandez had been wounded in a shootout at the Ontario Black Angus. He was alive, but his left tibia had been shattered. The worst had been avoided. Still, when doctors start throwing around words like “shattered” to describe weight-bearing bones in the lower leg, the situation is anything but rosy.</em>

<em> Since that morning nearly six months ago, Ed and Nancy Hernandez have been through a lot, both good and bad. They’ve learned a lot about themselves and about the meaning of heroism.</em>

<em> This column and the one that will follow on Tuesday are about their heroism and how it exemplifies what people call the California Dream. Someone once said the only difference between the California Dream and the American Dream was 350 cloudless days a year. In these days of gridlock and crime, downsizing and overcrowding, it sounds a lot like an idyllic picture of a time long past.</em>

<em> Remove immigration as a factor and more people move out of California each year than arrive here from other states. With better than one-eighth of the population of the United States living within our borders, we’re no longer the paradise of which the Beach Boys sang in those halcyon days when the surf was always up, our neighborhoods were full of Marcia Bradys and Beaver Cleavers and Ontario was a long, long way from Los Angeles.</em>

<em> Times may change, but people rarely do. Ed and Nancy Hernandez are children of California, he a descendant of the old </em><em><strong>Californios</strong> who settled the state and she a pretty blonde who a generation earlier might have been an inspiration for the song that wished they all could be California girls.</em>

<em> She always wanted to be a teacher. He grew up wanting to be a cop.</em>

<em> They dated through high school, and after both completed their degrees at Cal State Fullerton and started their careers, they were married.</em>

<em> Ed became an Ontario police officer, and for his first four years on the force, nothing much happened. One time he found himself looking down the barrel of a loaded shotgun, but nothing much came of it.</em>

<em> Nancy started to relax and sleep better at night, the uneasiness and fear slipping into the back of her mind. They had a baby girl, and their lives were shaping up nicely.</em>

<em> Till Nov. 13, 1995.</em>

<em> Till the middle of the night and the knock on the door.</em>

<em> </em><em>***</em>

I wrote columns for nearly five years. I won awards every year, I had a strong following among our readers and I made it into the 2001 edition of "Who's Who in America."

But our newspaper was sold to new ownership and we got a new editor who didn't like the idea of a column that essentially just told stories about people and their lives. Almost exactly 10 years ago, he decided I wasn't going to be writing my column anymore.

When he got complaints from readers, he lied and told them it had been my decision to give up the column, that I had been tired of writing it. I needed to keep my job -- even if it was just a job as a reporter then -- so I couldn't fight back with the truth.

I stayed at the paper nearly seven more years, before I was shown the door by an even more short-sighted boss. But as much as it hurt to lose my job, all it had been since losing the column was a job. I had five years of joy, which is more than most people get, but sometimes it hurts more to lose something wonderful than to never experience it at all.

There was one weird sort of irony in it all. While it was a Steve gave me the column in 1996, it was another Steve who took it away in 2001 and still another who fired me in 2008.

I think it was payback for not being nice to my younger brother Steve when we were both kids.

It's funny, though.

I miss the work. I miss the connections with people, and the opportunity I had to make a difference in their lives. You can't really do anything like that when you're writing for your own website, and most of the other writing I do is political. I honestly thought the job I had was one I could do into my 70s; I certainly didn't think I would have only five years.

I don't really feel sorry for myself.

Mostly, I feel like it was a shame I wound up working for idiots.