Fear Bothers Shooting Victim More Than Her Paraplegia

“I still go to bed with my heart pounding and wake up with my heart racing,” said Jennifer Smith, 32, who became a paraplegic after being shot during the last of four attempts on her life in 1980.

“I keep friends around me at all times. Living in fear is immensely more crippling than any kind of physical disability.”

Smith is not her real name. She lives in Orange County and conceals her identity because she fears that some who plotted to kill her have not been caught.

Under her new name she has achieved a degree of fame as a wheelchair athlete.

On Wednesday, a Texas judge sentenced Robert Jess Anderson, 52, to 38 years in prison and fined him $10,000 for soliciting Smith’s murder. In March, former private investigator Dudley Bell was given an identical sentence for his role in soliciting the murder.

Still pending, however, is a $220-million lawsuit against health spa owner Richard Minns, Smith’s estranged husband. The Texas lawsuit alleges that Minns and others conspired to murder Smith after she became pregnant and refused to have an abortion.

At the time of the shooting, she was a critical-care nurse at a Houston hospital, taught aerobics and attended the University of Houston.

It was in October, 1980, that she was shot in the back during the final murder attempt.

A few days before, during a hospital staff discussion of catastrophic injuries, she told colleagues that she would not want to live if she became a paraplegic.

When she arrived at the hospital after the shooting, co-workers who remembered her statement approached her.

“They said, ‘Jenny, you’re a paraplegic. What do you want us to do?’ I told them, ‘Please don’t let me die. Whatever happens to me, I want to live through this to see if I can face the challenge.’ ”

Now, Smith says: “I just want to get on with my life.”

She works as a top, unpaid assistant to Dr. Jerrold Petrofsky, the nationally known researcher at UC Irvine who uses computerized equipment to help the disabled walk.

“I still fear for my life,” said Smith, who helps run a special rehabilitation program for children as part of Petrofsky’s research. “But I feel that I’m the luckiest paraplegic alive. . . . This program is a life commitment for me. This is what I do. I live it and breathe it every day.”

Smith lived in Santa Monica and was attending UCLA when she met Minns during a Colorado ski trip in 1976.

“He swept me off my feet,” Smith said.

The couple were married during a trip to Mexico in 1979. Smith was starting her own aerobics business and was working as a critical-care nurse at Houston’s Hermann Hospital. She and Minns had planned to have a separate U.S. wedding on Minns’ birthday, but they broke up after Smith became pregnant and refused to have an abortion, she said.

After becoming paralyzed, Smith said, “I became determined to make the most out of my life that I possibly could, both physically and emotionally.”

After several failed attempts, Smith recalled, she decided the only way to succeed was to become an athlete. She entered wheelchair road races and became a superstar, winning the Detroit Free Press Marathon three years consecutively, among other victories, and competing successfully in wheelchair tennis and other sports.

Smith said much of her success was due to Petrofsky, whom she met after a long, nationwide search for someone who could help her feel better.

“I found a number of people,” she said. “Some were quacks, and some were doctors who I’m sure we’ll see great things from a few years from now. But then I found Dr. Petrofsky, and I knew I had found the right person.”

Smith moved to Dayton, Ohio, where Petrofsky had a rehabilitation research center at Wright State University. His work was featured on the television show “60 Minutes” and depicted in the movie “First Steps.”

But Smith said she missed her family, who live in Orange County.

When Petrofsky transferred his research to UC Irvine last fall, Smith said, she was more than happy to move too.

“I love this area,” she said. “My family is here. I’m staying and working in almost the exact spot I was before I moved to Ohio.”

Smith is helped financially by her family and disability benefits and receives some medical care in exchange for her volunteer work with Petrofsky.

Reluctantly, Smith had agreed to testify at the Houston trials of the men accused of attempting to kill her, but the prosecution decided that was unnecessary as the cases moved toward convictions.

Bizarre Scheme

But even hearing about the cases and reviewing some of the testimony has renewed her fears. “It’s something that is very traumatic for me,” she said. “It’s not adding to the longevity of my life.”

Of the four attempts on her life, she knows the details of only two: the shooting, and a bizarre scheme that included an electronic device designed to stall her car, so a man on a motorcycle could kill her while she was stranded on a rural road. The device activated, instead, while the car was parked outside her lawyer’s office. She had gone there to discuss her efforts to get a divorce and charges, later dismissed, that her husband had filed against her.

Still, Smith said, she has never sought counseling to cope with all that has happened to her.

“I felt so lucky to make it through this,” she said. “I felt I didn’t need any counseling. . . . Five years after my injury, I thought I had dealt with it very well.”

But about a year ago, Smith said, she began reliving events in her mind.

She doesn’t give out her phone number or her address. Until recently, she had not discussed the Houston murder attempts publicly, instead focusing all publicity on her work with Petrofsky.

The Houston events, she said, are “such an ugly story--who wants to hear about a shooting? The best story is the work we do helping people, especially children, in the research program. That’s what I hope people will be interested in.”