By Tim Eberly
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Pat Cocciolone is putting her story on paper. “It’s not going to be another one of those ‘cop’ books: ‘This is how I got hurt,’” said Cocciolone, who’s 49.
Her book, which she’s been working on for the past year, will document the 1997 shooting that forced Cocciolone to retire from the Atlanta Police Department and killed her partner, John “Rick” Sowa. It also will detail her recovery from the brain damage that stole her ability to read, write, walk and talk.
More than a decade after the shooting, her struggle is not over. She sees a brain-injury specialist and a mental health therapist every week — one helps her with her speech and other functions and the other helps her with the psychological baggage that comes with surviving a police shooting.
It took Cocciolone, who lives in Gwinnett County, almost three years to relearn some of life’s most basic skills.
Many of her sentences come out clear and without hesitation, but at times she struggles to find the right word. On a recent morning, Cocciolone sat next to her friend, Linda Pitsoulis, in a Denny’s restaurant near her Lilburn-area home, eating pancakes and trying to describe how her pain has worsened over the years.
“It’s … it’s … I can’t think of the word. Arth-, arth-,” she said.
“Arthritis,” Pitsoulis said.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Cocciolone also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, which has manifested itself in nightmares. “I’ll wake up, I’m always screaming and sweating,” she said.
In them, Cocciolone is in a shootout with the man who critically wounded her, Gregory Paul Lawler. But the bullets she’s firing at him don’t find their mark.
“I can’t shoot him. I can’t kill him,” Cocciolone said.
The nightmares temporarily worsened a year or so ago when Cocciolone saw Lawler in person. She attended court hearings when he unsuccessfully tried to appeal his death sentence.
“I couldn’t believe how close he was,” she said. “I could have stood up and hit him with my cane.”
Cocciolone still wears her hair short. Some gray has crept into the hair that was once jet black.
One other thing hasn’t changed: She still carries a gun.
Despite how the shooting changed her life, Cocciolone misses police work.
“The people I met. Every day was something different,” she said. “It was so much fun.”
But she has moved on. Cocciolone, who lives off her police pension and worker’s compensation benefits, is in the process of moving in with her partner, Connie Pruitt.
The couple dated for about a year in the early 1990s, until Cocciolone, who is openly gay, broke up with her. They reunited six years ago.
“I asked her for another chance,” Cocciolone said. “She’s wonderful. She’s like my angel.”
For someone with brain damage, though, moving one’s belongings is a slow process.
“I can only do a little at a time, because I can only do so much,” Cocciolone said. “It’s a little over … over …”
“Overwhelming,” Pitsoulis said.
“Thank you.”
Copyright 2009 Atlanta Journal-Constitution