TUCSON, Ariz. - She loves motorcycles and yoga, and is ascomfortable in a business suit walking the halls of Congress as sheis in leather riding gear at the famed Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Sheholds a master's degree from an Ivy League university, yet can mounta tire in a flash.
Pretty and petite, sometimes soft-spoken, she will take on evenher most ardent adversaries and try talking them down with a firmhand but also a smile.
Said one friend of Gabrielle Giffords: "She really pretty muchdefies a lot of description."
She has also defied the odds in the days since a would-beassassin's bullet left her fighting for her life - and still somehowhanging on.
A week ago, few outside of Arizona or the Beltway had heard ofthe 40-year-old congresswoman who has, in tragedy, become a rallyingpoint for unity and peace over the ugliness of politics. Now anation grieves for her, a community prays for her, and friends shiftbetween laughter and tears as they share memories of the Gabby theyknew before - and anguish over her unknown tomorrow.
"I was driving back from California when I got the phone callabout what was going on. It kicked you in the stomach," said thelocal sheriff, Clarence Dupnik. "I was told she probably wasn'tgoing to survive, and then I got very angry, and I'm still angry."
Dupnik met Giffords a decade ago when she first ran for a seat inthe Arizona House of Representatives. "I thought at that time thatthis was a young lady that was going to go somewhere. I became oneof her supporters, she became one of mine," he said. "And we becamefriends."
It was like that with so many who met Giffords during her ascentfrom Tucson businesswoman to state representative and senator andthen, beginning in 2006, Congress.
Acquaintance or "colleague" were never words that seemed to fitGiffords, a politician who prefers hugs over handshakes. Even voterswho met her only a few times, if ever, came to feel as though shewere a friend.
"She's very real," special-ed teacher Denise Woods said aftervisiting a memorial outside of the congresswoman's office laden withcandles, flowers and photographs of Giffords with women in labcoats, a veteran at a motorcycle rally and standing with an elderlycouple.
"She was just a beautiful person," said Woods. "She is, not was... She is a beautiful person."
She is a local girl through and through, a third-generationTucsonan who attended public high school here. She went on to biggerthings elsewhere - a Fulbright scholarship in Mexico, graduateschool at Cornell University, a position at Price Waterhouse in NewYork City - but returned home when her father fell ill to take overthe family's chain of tire repair shops, which her grandfatherfounded in the late 1940s.
She was 26 at the time, and immersed herself in learning thebusiness, said Mark Kimble, one of Giffords' Tucson staff members.
"She didn't know anything about cars and the tire business, andshe really threw herself into it. She went out into the tire baseand learned how to mount tires, learned everything about how to workon a car. And she was very proud of that, that she knew thatbusiness from the ground up, that she wasn't just a figureheadrunning it," he said.
Later, when Kimble invited Giffords to the Indianapolis 500, shewas almost more interested in the race car tires than the raceitself.
She could be a bit of a "nerd" that way, said former Arizonastate Sen. Ken Cheuvront, who shared a house with Giffords andfellow lawmaker Linda Lopez when they served together in theLegislature.
Giffords was the policy wonk in the group, often working late toread up on favorite issues such as the environment and solar energywhile Cheuvront and Lopez gathered for fun and drinks during theirMonday "family" nights.
"She'd always be late. We'd always yell at her," said Cheuvront."It was like, `Enough already.' She just worked, worked, worked,worked."
Friends were always trying to set Giffords up on dates, but noone ever seemed quite the right fit for the sharp politician whoalso shot guns, rode horses, owned a motorcycle and fantasized aboutgoing to the big Sturgis rally in South Dakota. (When she finallydid make it there, she called Kimble and told him to go to theInternet. There was Giffords, clad in black leather, waving over aWebcam.)
Soon, Cheuvront and other friends began hearing about someone new- an astronaut named Mark Kelly, whom Giffords met in 2003 during ayoung leaders' forum in China. For a while they were just friends,exchanging e-mails and phone calls long-distance between his home inHouston and hers in Arizona. After a first "date" that seemed inevery way Giffords (she invited Kelly to join her on a tour of astate prison), the romance blossomed.
"He's a man's man," said Cheuvront, "and that's exactly what shewas looking for."
They married on a November evening in 2007 at an organicvegetable farm amid the mesquite and desert mountains of the SantaCruz Valley, south of Tucson. It was a modest ceremony, with maybe150 people in attendance, including some dignitaries - Kelly'sfellow astronauts and one of Giffords' mentors, former U.S. LaborSecretary Robert Reich.
Carol West, a former Tucson city councilwoman who once recruitedGiffords to serve on the public water board, was also there.
"I was laughing my head off when I was reading the paper aboutthis 'prestigious' wedding," she said, recalling the banquet ofsteaks, salad and baked potatoes. Most of the guests, she said, were"people like us. Ordinary people. People who meant a lot to Gabby.She wasn't into fame."
By then Giffords was in Congress, splitting her time betweenWashington, D.C. and Arizona. Kelly still lived in Houston. They saweach other whenever, and wherever, they could.
Kimble once asked his boss about that - how the couple couldendure careers that kept them apart so much. She told him they didit because both were dedicated to their jobs and to "doing things toimprove this country."
"It wasn't some speech," he added. "This was just to me."
In his only statement since Saturday's attack, Kelly said thathis wife was "doing what she loved most - hearing from herconstituents" when a gunman opened fire, wounding her, 13 others andkilling six people. "Serving southern Arizonans is her passion, andnothing makes her more proud than representing them in Congress."
Until this last election, Giffords, a three-term Democrat, hadgarnered easy victories in a congressional district that can leanconservative. She maintained that popularity by staking out centristviews on a number of issues and sometimes bucking the party line.
On illegal immigration, a huge issue in a district that stretchessouth to the Mexico border, Giffords placed a premium on increasingborder security through the deployment of National Guard troops aswell as more Border Patrol agents.
But she also was highly critical of a state law that wouldrequire police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person'simmigration status if there's reasonable suspicion the person is inthe country illegally. She supported legislation called the DREAMAct that would grant young illegal immigrants a route to legalstatus.
Giffords backed the stimulus package designed to jump-start theeconomy. She said it wasn't a perfect bill, but that standing bywasn't an option. She also voted for legislation designed to expandhealth insurance coverage, a vote that the National RepublicanCongressional Committee likened to "pulling the plug on her ownpolitical career."
In the past two years, Giffords chaired a House subcommittee onspace and aeronautics where she was a strong defender of NASA'shuman space program, saying its work helped define America in theeyes of the rest of the world.
She praised the Obama administration's budget request for NASAfor the current fiscal year because it included more funding for keyprograms, but took issue with a decision to do away with the goal ofreturning astronauts to the moon. The administration sought toreplace the effort with one that would send astronauts to anasteroid and then on to Mars. Giffords complained that thereplacement effort was poorly defined.
"It's simply unfair to ask the American people to hand overbillions of dollars for something that isn't even detailed enough toqualify for a loan from a loan shark," she said in February.
After barely holding onto her seat in last year's race against atea party-backed candidate, Giffords appeared to start the new yearout by trying to put a little distance between herself andDemocratic Party leaders.
When it came time to vote for a new House speaker, a job thatwent to Republican John Boehner, Giffords supported Rep. John Lewisover outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She also introduced a bill thatwould reduce the salary of members of Congress by 5 percent.
"Every piece of legislation she supported, it wasn't of apartisan nature; it was what she felt was in the best interest ofher constituents," said former U.S. Rep. Harry Mitchell.
In a November victory speech posted on YouTube, Giffords pointedto her own family as the source of her not-easy-to-pigeonhole views.
"It's the values that I grew up with - from very conservativegrandparents on one side and very liberal grandparents on the other,a mother and father who taught me that you've got to respect oneanother, and you work together, and you collaborate," she said.
On Jan. 5, Giffords took the oath of office for her third term inCongress. The following day when House members, many of themRepublicans, took to the floor to read the Constitution, Giffordsjoined in, reciting the First Amendment that promises all Americansthe right to free speech and to assemble "peaceably."
Some friends now see that as an ironic precursor to what happenedSaturday, when she was gunned down in front of a supermarket whiledoing just that - meeting one-on-one with constituents to allow themto have their say, for better or worse.
Kimble stood only a few feet from his friend when she was shotthrough the head. In the hours that followed, law officersapproached him - their eyes filled with tears - to express theircondolences and disbelief.
"One deputy said, 'I can't understand why anyone would want toshoot her. She was such a nice person,'" Kimble recalled. "He hadmet her at some event as a private citizen and was so moved - justby meeting her once."
"People aren't reacting here because she's a congresswoman,"added Democratic state Rep. Steve Farley of Tucson. "It's becauseshe's one of us."
As a sign hung at her district office reads, "No one here is astranger, for Gabby is Arizona's favorite daughter."
Those who knew her, and many who didn't, flock to the memorial.They bring flowers and stand in silence, some wiping tears. Driverswho pass by tap their horns. One held up a peace sign. Among thecandles and teddy bears and pictures are dozens of cards and lettersand signs, most addressed to "Gabby."
The nickname wasn't just an abbreviation of her given name butalso a nod to the congresswoman's tendency to talk and thefamiliarity so many felt with her, Kimble said.
"Everyone who meets her feels like they've known her forever, andthey are the single most important person in her life," he said.
Kimble and Giffords' other friends aren't all that surprised bythe doctors' reports these past days, that Giffords has been able toraise two fingers and even gave surgeons at University MedicalCenter a thumbs-up. Nor are they surprised that she's tried to pullout her breathing tube or that she has so far held stable, despite atrauma that can kill instantly. It's just Gabby, they said.
The tough tomboy they all know is still fighting, so very hard.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is known as a womanof many talents, who is friendly, yet firm, beloved by her friendsand respected by colleagues.
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