HOW WE MET

Joanne with her Dalmatian, Mally

This is a great story, one that I've been wanting to put into print for quite some time.  Now is the time!  This is the story of how Sara and I met.

Flash back to 1996.  I had been on my own for the better part of eight years.  I do not wish to imply that I was desperate, but I was interested in starting a relationship.  And accordingly, I was interested in any means by which to bring about a relationship.  Which brings me to all things digital.

About that time, the Pentium chip had been successfully rolled out, as had Windows 95, and I had morphed from someone that eschewed computers to someone with a keen interest in them.  The FAA forced me into it, by introducing a plethora of computer equipment at work.  A desktop on every desk, including mine!  And you basically had to teach yourself how to use them.  The most recent contact I had with computers was back in college, during the age of punched cards and IBM 29's.  A lot had changed since then.  But after resigning myself to the fact that no one was going to save me from these contraptions, I put my mind to learning how to work with them.  It wasn't that hard.  Pretty soon I had become conversant in Word 2.0 and our e-mail client.

Then my friend and running partner, Bob Wedemeier, decided to get a home computer.  And he thought he was pretty hot stuff with his 486.  And a new internet service provider appeared on the local landscape.  The owner of the new ISP had some sort of special deal where he would give FAA employees a break on service fees.  Not wanting Wedemeier to get too far ahead of me, and having wanted for some time to buy a home computer, I decided to take the plunge.

So over MLK Weekend in January 1996, it was off to the now-defunct Computer City and a whirl through their showroom.  I settled on an HP Pavilion 7160, a Pentium 166 with 16 megabytes of RAM and barely 2 gigabytes of storage.  At the time, it was a muscle machine!  I had almost caught up to Wedemeier with my great new computer!  It was easy to assemble and before I knew it, I had configured it with my new ISP account and was off and running on the Information Superhighway!  

And I went everywhere!  Map sites, highway sites, running sites, you name any one of my bizarre interests and I knew where to find it.  I was there!  I was in heaven!  And in my ramblings I stumbled across a start-up matchmaking service, Match.com.  Well, here was a way to perhaps further my relationship interests!  I could register as a charter member for free, prepare my bio, and throw it out for the world to see.  And so I did, under the moniker "Dave1013".

Soon thereafter I began to receive inquiries or responses from women.  Not tons of women, but some, and I quickly became pen pals with three of them.  Two were in the Seattle area and one was from Marin County.  And in the ensuing months, I met all three of them.  In person.  They were all very nice but nothing ever "clicked".  We maintained out correspondence relationships, mutually sharing life's ups and downs.

And then in June of 1996 I went to Oklahoma City on a business trip.  When I came back, I turned on the computer to check the e-mail that had amassed during my absence.  Among the messages was one from a woman who had registered with Match.com on a free 10-day trial basis.  She had come across my bio in her research activities and decided to drop me a line.  "Jo" advised me that she thought she was a little old for me, but she knew of a woman in Alaska with whom she thought I might be a good match.  She asked if she could share my information with her.  I said, sure!  What did I have to lose?

Unbeknownst to me, "Jo" and Sara were longtime friends.  They had lived together in Juneau for many years.  They both loved Dalmatians and even picked out their own from the same litter!  At the time of my entrance to the scene, Jo was living in Tennessee and Sara was living in Juneau.  Jo had lived in Juneau, in fact still owned property there.  Sara was not interested in meeting any men; she was perfectly content with her life at the time.  But Jo persisted, over Sara's strenuous objections, and got her to agree to at least write me an e-mail message from Juneau's only cyber-cafe (Sara was herself without a home computer).

So Sara wrote me a note and told me a bit about herself.  In her message she included a telephone number, which I felt obliged to call after having received her message.  We quickly became prolific telephone buddies, and it wasn't long before I decided that I would have to meet this woman!  I didn't care if she was 571 air miles away, I had to meet her!

So during the last weekend of June 1996, I flew to Juneau in the middle of a legendary Southeast Alaska rain storm, to meet Sara Plotnick.  With me I took a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and a bouquet of flowers.  I figured that pretty much covered the water front and I had a good chance of making a positive first impression!  Sara would not be able to spend a lot of time with me over the weekend because she was involved in a Women In Mining event.  Sara worked for a mining company in Juneau.  I told her I would help out if that was OK, by flipping pancakes at a breakfast on Sunday morning.  As a special added bonus, Jo happened to be visiting Juneau during the time of my visit, and I actually got to meet her and thank her for providing the opportunity for Sara and I to meet one another.

An interesting side note is that when I lived in Juneau (1983-1984), I knew of the Plotnick family.  Sara's father was a lay rabbi in town and passed away during the time I was in Juneau.  I remember reading about him in the paper.  But that is as close as I came to any of them at the time.  Some greater power must have deemed that we weren't yet ready to get together.

When I walked off the plane and met Sara, there were not only clicks, but a whole bunch of other pyrotechnics that went off.  Speaking for myself, it was love at first site!  I am sure Sara would agree!

Thus began a year-long period of commuting back and forth between Juneau and Anchorage every two to three weeks.  Sometimes I would go down there, other times Sara would come up here.  One good outcome was I made Gold MVP status with Alaska Airlines in 1997!  And then, as you read in the "Deal With Domino" story, Sara moved to Anchorage in July of 1997 and the following month we were married.

The odds we had to beat to meet each other - that is what amazes me to this day.  And it was all because of one person - Joanne Buckner.  If she had not been browsing the Match.com site, we would have never met.  I am sure of it.  Even in 1996, there were hundreds of thousands, millions, of web pages on the Internet.  How she stumbled across me out there, I will never know.  But it was a miracle, and I will always consider Joanne to be a guardian angel. 

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