Detective Mollie Granger was always proud of her working-class childhood in Santa Monica. She watched her parents, James and Linda, work hard to provide for their family. Her father was an auto mechanic, and Mollie joked in high school that he worked at one time or another for every dealership on Santa Monica Boulevard. Her mother was an office manager and worked for twenty-five years in the same insurance agency.

Despite their modest means, Santa Monica housing was still affordable when Mollie was young, and she was thrilled to move from their apartment when her parents purchased a small home on 24^th and Idaho.

Mollie believed in a strong work ethic and the value of honesty and integrity. She attended St. Monica Catholic High School, where she was a good but not great student. After graduating, she attended Santa Monica College for two years and then transferred to UCLA. Two years later, after graduating with a degree in Criminal Justice, she joined the Santa Monica Police Department.

She immediately sensed she had the talent to do well and threw herself into her new career with great energy. At her annual performance reviews, she was always pleased to be recognized as hard-working, having sharp instincts, and being inquisitive. She was embarrassed – but still complimented – when one colleague joked that her pupils were shaped like question marks because her eyes always “looked like they wanted to know more.” But she was confused by frequently hearing from colleagues that she was too serious and appeared to deliberately hold back smiles. She quickly earned recognition and was promoted to detective after six years.

Mollie met Gwen Seward some three years ago at a dinner party at the Westwood home of a common friend, Alan Banks, and they had been together ever since. Mollie knew it wasn’t a planned introduction on Alan’s part. That would have been a long shot: Mollie, a white police detective, and Gwen, an African-American attorney focused on civil rights.

But Mollie sensed, five minutes after she and Gwen introduced themselves to each other, that – despite their different backgrounds – something special was quickly developing.