A rchive Date
[ 03-07-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Is he a stalker or a fool for love?
By MICHELE MANDEL
Toronto Sun
October 15, 1998
MAPLEHURST PRISON - He's just a fool for love.
Romeo did it in Verona. Dustin Hoffman did it in The Graduate. Adam Sandler did it in The Wedding Singer. In the tradition of countless leading men, Michael Hatcher tried to make one last romantic gesture to win back his sweetheart.
Now he sits in his navy prison overalls, his face unshaven, his hair unwashed due to a lockdown at the Milton detention centre. Last week, he was just a heartsick California firefighter who wanted to give love one more chance.
Now he sits in prison in a foreign country, charged with criminal harassment.
"I'm not a stalker," the 26-year-old insists as his eyes plead through the thick glass separating us in the prison visiting room.
"I'm the most respectable guy you've ever met in your life. I'm just trying to figure out what I'm doing here."
His boss and his friends back in California are trying to do the same. "We don't feel he's a risk to anybody," fire chief Mark Meaker says from Elk Grove, Calif. "He's just a heartsick young man who's been overzealous and used bad judgment. I think this was a romantic attempt by him to see if there was any chance of a reconciliation. It's almost like a Hollywood movie, but one person's pursuit is not appropriate if it's not reciprocated, I suppose."
Hatcher got himself into trouble last weekend when his ex-girlfriend didn't appreciate the dozens of cards he had delivered to her door or the full-page ad last Sunday in the Oakville Beaver proposing marriage. Police said his appeals did not include threats or physical assault, but still amounted to criminal harassment.
The object of his affection did not return Sun phone calls.
According to Hatcher, he and Vanessa dated happily for six years but she became increasingly impatient that he hadn't proposed. Last June, she came here to visit relatives and on the phone, asked him again about their future. "I said as soon as you get out of nursing school we'll get married."
When she returned, he threw her a surprise welcome home party. Two days later, he says, she dumped him.
Over the summer, he says, they continued to see each other as friends while he hoped they would reconcile. But in August, Vanessa suddenly moved to Oakville to join her relatives and soon became engaged to another man.
"He was heartbroken," friend Tracy Ferguson recalls. "Recently he found out through mutual friends that she was getting married soon and so he tried to set up this romantic proposal, but it was totally misconstrued."
Hatcher arrived Saturday night with all his plans in place: The proposal was to appear the next day in the local paper, a banner was erected on Vanessa's lawn telling her to check the paper, a dozen red roses were delivered, and - just in case she said "yes" - he had with him a three-quarter carat marquis engagement ring set with six princess-cut diamonds for every year they were together.
"Go big or go home," he says, smiling at his extravagance. "It's a firefighter thing."
He giddily told everyone at his Oakville hotel about his proposal and waited for Vanessa to contact him if she wanted to accept. If she didn't, he would do some sightseeing and return home on last night's flight. Instead, he appears in Milton court today for a bail hearing.
"This is not the part of Canada I wanted to see," he smiles weakly. "I came up here with love in my heart, but I thoroughly expected to return with a broken heart. I just figured I'd give it one last shot. Half the people at home told me to follow her but even they said I had balls of iron and brains of rock for spending all this money on a hopeless cause. But she's worth it. Now I've spent everything I have to impress her and," he adds, looking around the grim prison visiting room, "everything I don't have to get out of here."
Before his arrest, he says, Vanessa called him to say that his appeals made her nervous, that he wasn't acting like himself - which, he admits, is true.
"When we broke up, she told me that she always gave 110% to the relationship and I didn't," he says wryly.
"So I tried to pick it up a little. She told me I wasn't spontaneous so I did something spontaneous. She told me I was cheap, so I spent a lot of money."
Instead of impressing her, it frightened her into going to the police. Now, stalking is a serious problem and we finally have the laws to deal with it, but what seems unclear here is why she feared for her safety, the key component to laying a criminal harassment charge.
Hatcher doesn't believe Vanessa ever wanted it to go this far. "She's the sweetest girl in the world," he maintains, even while he sits in prison on a charge that seems awfully unfair. A legal sledgehammer to squash this lovelorn mosquito.
Or so it seems. But then I'm just a silly romantic at heart.
Michele can be reached by e-mail at mmandel@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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