Maybe we had just finished an assignment together. But Tammy Abbott, who worked as a photographer at the Glendale News-Press toward the tail end of my stint at the newspaper, and I had decided to stop at a Coffee Bean to enjoy a quiet moment before going back to the newsroom. That was when she told me she was fighting cancer, and even though she was so exhausted from the job and so stressed out from the constant berating she was getting from our managing editor at the time, she was grateful for her job. Not only did the job give her much-needed health care benefits, she was able to do something she loved — photography.
I’ve kept in touch with most of my News-Press cohorts, through Facebook, and have managed to have lunch with one or two and even attend the wedding of another. But it grieves me to say that since I left the News-Press, I haven’t seen Tammy. I did keep up with her and news of her health thanks to another former coworker, Jacqui Brown. Jacqui posted this message early Sunday morning: