Mary-Claire King - Who Can You Trust?

 

The week of April Fool's Day of 1981 began badly. [audience laughter] That Sunday night, my husband told me he was leaving me. He had fallen in love with one of his graduate students, and they were headed back to the tropics the next day. I was completely devastated. It was totally unexpected. 33 years later, I still don't know what to say about it. I was just beside myself. He gave me a new vacuum cleaner to soften the blows. [audience laughter] 

 

It was, of course, the middle of spring, quarter at Berkeley, so the next morning, I had my class as usual. I had to either go teach it or explain why not. It's far easier to go teach it. So, I dropped off Emily, who was five and three quarters at the time at kindergarten, along with her faithful Aussie, her Australian shepherd, who went everywhere with her. 

 

Headed down to school, taught my class. I was leaving my class, must have been around 09:30, and my department chairman caught up with me and he said, “Come into my office.” I said, “Fine.” I had hoped to escape. Went into his office and he said, “I just wanted to tell you I've just learned you've been awarded tenure.” And of course, I burst into tears. [audience laughter] 

 

Now, this department chairman, bless him, was a gentleman a full generation older than me. He had three grown sons. He had no daughters. He had certainly never had a young woman assistant professor in his charge before. He took my shoulders and he stepped back and he said, “No one's ever reacted like that before.” [audience laughter] And he said, “Sit down. Sit down.” He said, “What's the matter?” And I said, “It's not the tenure. It's not the tenure. It's that my husband told me last night he was leaving me.” He looked at me and he opened the drawer of his desk, he pulls out this huge bottle of Jack Daniels, [audience laughter] pours me a half a glass of it and said, “Drink this, you'll feel better.” [audience laughter] Monday morning at Berkeley. [audience laughter] So, I did, and I did. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I made it through the day, got sober. [audience laughter] Around 03:30, I headed back up the hill to pick up Emily at the end of school. And did so. She hopped in the car and Ernie, her dog, hopped in the car and we drove the rest of the way home. Got home, walked up the stairs to the house, opened the house and it was absolute chaos. Someone had broken in. Everything was completely trashed. And in retrospect, what must have happened, my then husband had often worked at home. Whoever had been casing the neighborhood must have left our house side, because he was often there and he was unpredictably there at different times. But that day, of course, he hadn't been there and we were vulnerable and we were robbed. 

 

So, I called 911. And a young Berkeley police officer came up and went through that house. And of course, I had no idea what had been taken and what hadn't, because my husband had actually taken many, many things with him Sunday night. I wasn't sure what should still be there or not. I explained that to officer Rodriguez. And he said, “As you figure it out, make a list.” And then, he went upstairs with Emily to her room. They opened the door of her room, and 18 inches deep of just chaos. The bed had been pulled apart, curtains pulled down, drawers all dumped out. Emily, five and three quarters, looked at officer Rodriguez and said, “I can't tell if the burglars were in here or not.” [audience laughter] And officer Rodriguez, to his eternal credit, did not crack a smile. He handed her his card and said, “Young lady, if you discover that anything is missing, [audience laughter] please give me a call.” [audience laughter]  

 

So, now we're at Monday night. I was scheduled later that week to give a presentation in Washington, D.C. to the National Institutes of Health. The way this worked in those days was if you were a young professor and you were applying for the first time for a large grant, you were quite frequently asked to come back to NIH and give what was called a reverse site visit. Basically, explain what you planned to do, and then it would be decided if you were going to get what, in my case, was quite a substantial amount of money for the time over five years. It was terribly important. I had not done this before. It was brand new. It was going to be my first large grant on my own. 

 

The plan had been for Emily to stay with her dad and for my mom to come out, arriving the next day, Tuesday, and to help out. And that had seemed, of course, at the time, like a great plan. Obviously, my mom, who was living in Chicago, didn't know anything about the events of the previous 24 hours. So, I thought, I'll just wait and explain to her when she gets here. It seemed far better than calling her what by now was quite late in Chicago because of all the business with the burglary and the police and all that. 

 

So, the next day, we picked up my mom at San Francisco Airport and driving back to Berkeley, I explained to her what had happened on Sunday. She was very, very upset. She said, “I can't believe you've let this family come apart. I can't believe this child will grow up without a father,” which was never true and has never been true since. “How could you do this? How could you not put your family first?” Emily is sitting there in the car. “I just cannot imagine. I'm going to go talk to Rob.” And I said, “He's back in Costa Rica.” “This just can't be.” 

 

She became more and more agitated. By the time we got home to Berkeley, she was extremely agitated. Emily was terrified. It was clearly not going to work for her to care for Emily. And after a couple of hours, my mom said, “I'm going home. I just can't imagine that this has happened. You must stay here and take care of your child. You can't imagine, how can you even think of running off to the East Coast at a time like this?” So, to put it into context, now, 33 years later, my father had died less than a year before. And just two months after this, my mother was diagnosed with epilepsy. So, in context, it was not as irrational as it seemed at the time. But at the time, of course, it was devastating. 

 

So, I said, “Okay, you're right. You should go home, and I'll arrange for you to have a ticket to go home tomorrow. We'll take you out to the airport and I'll cancel the trip.” So, I called my mentor, who had been my postdoc advisor at UC San Francisco until just a couple of years before, and said-- He was already in Washington, D.C. by happenstance, at an oncology meeting. And I said, “I'm not going to be able to come.” I explained briefly what had happened. Of course, he knew me well, and he just listened to all this. He had grown daughters and said, “Look. Come.” And I said, “I can't.” 

 

And he said, “Bring Emily.” He said, “Emily and I know each other. I'll sit with her while you're giving your presentation.” He had grandchildren of his own. He said, “It will be fine.” I said, “She doesn't have a ticket.” He said, “As soon as we hang up the phone, I'm going to call the airline and get her a ticket. Pick up the ticket at the airport tomorrow when you take your mom back. It'll be on the same flight as yours. Everything will be fine.” And I said, “You sure?” And he said, “Yes, I have to call the airline now. Good night.” He hung up. 

 

In those days, it was very easy to rearrange tickets. [audience laughter] I arranged for my mother to have the table ticket to go back to Chicago. And if I remember correctly, her flight was, as it were, at 10 o' clock in the morning. So, we left Berkeley and plenty of time in principle to get to San Francisco Airport. And of course, it was one of those days that the Bay Bridge was just totally locked up. It was just horrible, horrible drive across. And what should have been a drive of 45 minutes, an hour and 45 minutes to get there. So, my mom's flight was about to leave in 15 minutes, and Emily's and my flight was about to leave in 45 minutes. And the line to pick up tickets, which I had mine, of course, I needed to pick up hers, was long, long, long, long, long. And of course, we had our suitcases. My mom had her suitcase and my mom was already fairly frail. 

 

So, Emily and my mother and I were standing in the line, and I said, “Mom, can you make it down to your plane on your own?” Bear in mind, there's no security in these days, but of course, they're very long corridors. And she said, “No.” So, I said to Emily, “I'm going to need to go with grandmom down to her plane.” And my mother shrieked. I'm not going to scream into the mic. She shrieked, “You can't leave that child here alone.” And fair enough. [audience laughter] This unmistakable voice above and behind me said, “Emily and I will be fine.” I turned around and I said, “Thank you.” My mother looked at me and said, “You can't leave Emily with a total stranger.” And I said, “Mom, if you can't trust Joe DiMaggio, who can you trust?” [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

Joe DiMaggio looked at me, looked at my mother, gave Emily a huge grin, put out his hand and said, “Hi, Emily, I'm Joe.” [audience laughter] Emily shook his hand and she said, “Hello, Joe, I'm Emily.” And I said, “Mom, let's go.” [audience laughter] So, we headed down the hall. I got my mother to the plane, she got on the plane, fine. I got back. It was probably 20, 25 minutes by the time I got. And by that time, Emily and Joe were all the way up at the front chatting with each other by the counter. 

 

Joe DiMaggio had wrangled Emily's ticket for her. She was holding her ticket. He was clearly waiting to get to his plane until I got back. So, I looked at him and I said, “Thank you very much.” And he said, “My pleasure.” He headed off down the hall, he turned right, he gave me this huge salute and wave and a tremendous grin and went off to his own plane. Emily and I went to Washington, D.C. The interview went fine. I got the grant, and that was the beginning of the grant that now, 33 years later, has become the story of inherited breast cancer and the beginning of the project that became BRCA1. Thanks.