Happy New Year, everybody. Here’s a quick post before I head off to enjoy the first day of 2021.
This morning, I noticed an article about the actress, Lori Loughlin, who very recently got sprung from prison after serving nearly two months for her part in in the nationwide college admissions scandal. Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, paid $500,000 to get their daughters admitted to the University of Southern California on false pretenses. They, along with actress, Felicity Huffman, and a bunch of other well-heeled parents, got busted in 2019.
Huffman chose to plead guilty and do her 11 days of time at a federal lockup in Dublin, California in October 2019. Loughlin and her husband, however, continued to fight the charges. They finally admitted to their crimes in May 2020, and settled over the summer, probably when it became clear that if they went on trial, they might have to go to prison for years. Loughlin reported to prison on October 30 and was released December 28, 2020, a couple of days shy of the two months she was supposed to serve.
Lots of people were very disappointed that she’s out of prison. I, for one, am glad the ordeal is over for her. I don’t think prison was appropriate for this crime. Our culture locks people up for everything, and we have so many citizens incarcerated for non-violent crimes. It’s turned into a for profit racket. In any case, it’s over for Lori, and now she can focus on living her life and maybe getting back to her career. She won’t repeat this crime, so I think we can all feel safe that she’s been released and she’ll put this behind her.
Anyway, as I was reading about Lori Loughlin, I noticed that the article mentioned that she’s now focused on her husband’s eventual release. Thanks to COVID-19, Giannulli can’t have visitors. But he should be getting out of the joint by April 2021.
It occurred to me that Lori and her daughters now have an idea of what military spouses go through when there’s a lengthy deployment. My husband went to Iraq for six months, starting in January 2007. I was alone for six months in a brand new house we had just moved into on Fort Belvoir. I couldn’t visit Bill, and like Lori Loughlin, we kept in contact by phone and email. An added stressor was the fact that Bill’s boss’s predecessor was killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq, just a couple of weeks before he was scheduled to come home. I knew that was highly unlikely to happen to Bill, but it was still a grim reminder that things can still go wrong, even when it seems like you’re home free.
When he was at war in Iraq, I missed Bill terribly and worried about him constantly, but the time flew by… and one thing Lori won’t have to worry about is getting a visit by two uniformed service members there to tell her her husband has been killed. I mean, it’s possible Mossimo could die in prison, but it’s highly unlikely that will happen. If it does happen, she won’t be informed in person by conspicuous bearers of bad news, although I’m sure it will be all over the news. Military spouses with deployed husbands and wives have to worry about that possibility all the time. Mossimo is also in California, rather than a far away Middle Eastern nation.
I’m sure she’ll be okay. It won’t be long until springtime is here, and she’ll have her husband home with her again. They can work on rebuilding their lives after this mess. And– perhaps an added positive. I don’t have to see the constantly recycled stock photos of Lori in her tan pantsuit or grey dress with a sweater anymore.