The three women worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and were in a vanpool with seven other employees heading for work over a mountain road. Some of the 10 had been riding together for nine years; an 11th member of the pool was following behind, in his own car, since he needed to go somewhere later.
The van skidded off the wet road and over a 400-ft embankment. Galloway, a business operations manager; Agey, a security administrator; and Forks, who worked in the Lab’s Human Resources department, were killed. Others had injuries ranging from minor to severe. Galloway was 49, Agey was 48, and Forks 53. They died together on December 8.
Author’s Note: Several readers sent me alerts about this crash — I worked at JPL for 10 years, and that’s where This is True got its start. I quit my Day Job at JPL in 1996 to work on True full time. During my stint there, I was the founding Vice President of the JPL Writers Club, and for awhile I drove one of the vans. One of the victims in the crash, Kerri Agey, was a Writers Club member. She was a quiet woman who sometimes had to leave the lunchtime meetings early to be back to work on time; she had a demanding job.