Copyright 2006 The Hartford Courant Company
By MARY ANNE LYNCH
Hartford Courant
Tommy Cashman unloaded his women worries after a late-night card game. ``Tony, I got something to ask you?’'
“What?’' Tony said.
“Do you think Luce is going out with anyone?’' Tommy said.
“Why?’' Tony asked.
“I think I have feelings for her,’' Tommy said. Tony was speechless. He stared at Tommy. ``Tony, do me a favor. Can you find out?’'
Tony approached Lucy Baez when he saw her at work.
“Ok, what did I do now?’' Lucy said.
“I got to ask you a question. If I’m being too nosy, let me know,’' Tony said. “You’re not going to believe this. There’s a certain person who has feelings for you.’'
“Who?’' Lucy said.
“Tommy,’' Tony said.
“What? Why now? I’ve known him such a long time. Why now? I never saw that he had feelings for me,’' Lucy said.
Tommy and Lucy had worked together since 1997 when she became a dispatcher for Hartford police, fire and ambulance crews. Lucy, 30, and Tommy, 33, both had family members and in-laws who served as police officers and dispatchers.
She worked three months with Tommy on a team of eight to nine dispatchers on the midnight shift before he switched to the earlier shift.
“We work a lot of overtime,’' Tommy said. “Working there we became good friends. People used to call us husband and wife because we were always at work.’'
“I didn’t realize I had feelings for her until two years ago,’' Tommy said. “I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. I was hesitating.’' After playing cards with Lucy, Tony and friends, the 40-year-old bachelor sought Tony’s aid.
Tommy recalls the day in mid-April 2004 when he decided to make his move. “It was my day off and I called her at work, and I was going to ask her out, and she asked me to come in and work overtime,’' Tommy said. “I’m thinking, I’ll go into work overtime and I’ll talk to her there, but it was so busy I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.’' He called her on his way home and asked her out to dinner. They couldn’t get together until May 1.
At dinner Tommy told Lucy how he felt. “I was shaking,’' he said.
“I really didn’t know if I was hearing him. I couldn’t believe it,’' Lucy said. “I know he’s a great person. My main concern was our friendship. Would it suffer if we got involved and it didn’t go anywhere?
“Two days later I got a bouquet of a dozen roses at work,’' Lucy said. The unsigned card said the flowers were the ones he wanted to send for Valentine’s Day. “I knew who they were from. I could have killed him.’' Everyone wanted to know who sent them.
“It was after the third date when I told her `I love you,’'' Tony said.
“How do you know that so fast?’' Lucy said.
“I was a little afraid. I was married 15 years,’' Lucy said. She’d been divorced five years and had a son, 18, and a daughter, 12. “I was worried. I didn’t want them to go through any more trauma. It was very hard to let my true feelings come out. I was afraid of getting hurt and of my kids getting hurt.’'
“The more time we spent together, the more I knew I loved him. It’s made it so much easier for us because we were friends before,’' Lucy said, and, ``My kids love him.’'
Last July, with Tommy’s whole family at his sister’s house, he proposed to Lucy.
“My son’s going to walk me down the aisle’’ on June 10, Lucy said, and he hopes to join the Hartford police when he’s older. Lucy’s daughter will be a junior bridesmaid. “It’s a family affair but he has a very large family, 100 people. My family has about 10 people,’' Lucy says. They will be married at Tommy’s sister’s home and Shelley Shulman, a justice of the peace and cousin of in-laws, will marry them.
“Tommy’s a great person. He’s a family person. One day he’ll make somebody a great husband. Whoever catches Tommy will be lucky,’' Lucy said over the years, never imagining she’d be that woman. “He’s honest, hard-working, caring, someone that you can talk to no matter what the issue is, good or bad, without getting into an argument. The world could be falling apart around him and he’ll be calm,’' Lucy says.
Tommy respects Lucy for the high values she holds for her children. “She’s honest. She always said what she meant. She has a great spirit. She’s always giving, giving, giving. She just wants to help everyone,’' says Tommy.
“I’m here to stay. I’m not going anywhere,’' Tommy told Lucy repeatedly while dating her. Lucy is Tommy’s “One in a Million,’' treasure. She feels the same toward Tommy, and they will start their married lives with that melody as their wedding song.