Jeanne Trantel's life was perfect-or so it seemed. She had it all: a loving husband who worked on Wall Street, two beautiful, healthy sons, and a dream home in the affluent Long Island community where she grew up, surrounded by friends and family. But then, with one phone call, the life she knew and loved came crashing down around her. disguised Blessings A wife's story of her Wall Street husband turned bank robber By Jeanne Callahan Trantel Jill Hofstra AuthorHouse Copyright © 2010 Jeanne Callahan Trantel All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4490-2837-4 Contents Foreword.......................................ixPreface........................................xiAcknowledgments................................xvIntroduction...................................1Just About Perfect.............................9Two Days Prior.................................25Counting My Blessings..........................33Gone Fishing...................................37The Wrong Man!.................................45In the Dark....................................51Not As It Seemed...............................61"Yes, I Did"...................................67Who Is This Man?...............................75Kindness Prevailed.............................83Left to Pick up the Pieces.....................89My Darkest Days................................99Dawn...........................................113Today's Blessings..............................121 Chapter One Just About Perfect I thought I had the perfect life. The stage was set, and it seemed as if all my dreams were coming true. I always wanted a family, could not wait to be a mother, and there I was with a loving husband, Stephen, and two beautiful, healthy sons-Stephen, who was six years old, and Ryan, who was three. After nine years of marriage, Stephen and I had finally been able to afford the house we wanted. We packed up our belongings from our house in Long Beach, New York, and moved into our dream home in Rockville Centre, New York, an upscale town on the south shore of Long Island. We had always wanted to move there, and now we finally were. It was the town where I had grown up, and most of my childhood friends still lived there. Only thirty-five minutes from New York City, many of its residents, like Stephen, worked on Wall Street. For us, it was the perfect setting to raise a family. Although Rockville Centre is a community close to the energy, opportunities, and excitement of Manhattan, it still has a small-town, friendly feel, and almost everyone knows his neighbors. Stephen also grew up in Nassau County, Long Island, only a few towns away, so we both had active lives with a lot of family and friends surrounding us. My father, who was an attorney, lived there, and Stephen's father, who was a retired police officer, lived there as well. Our backgrounds were similar, as were the values we had been brought up with. I had a happy childhood; so did Stephen. Since we both had loved living on Long Island, we were thrilled to return. Now, our dream had become a reality. Following college graduation, I traveled around Europe with friends of mine, catching another glimpse of life outside the little world of Rockville Centre where I had grown up. The streets of Amsterdam and the other European cities like Paris and London were unlike any I had seen before. They were overflowing with constant excitement. The pulse of those cities was fast, and I loved the cosmopolitan feel and being exposed to such different cultures. Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, I had always thought I was so worldly, but I started to realize that my Long Island life had also kept me quite sheltered in many ways. When I returned home from my jaunt around Europe, I was thrilled to land a job with American Airlines in their ground passenger service department at nearby JFK Airport. I readily took advantage of the company benefits and the ability the job offered for me to travel. I was twenty-four years old, single, and had the freedom to enjoy doing all the things young people do. It was fantastic, and I loved it. It was so exciting to be in the travel industry, to be around so many people all the time, to enjoy the people I was working with, and to be employed in a position that was as far as I could possibly get from a regular office job. At the same time, as much as I enjoyed touring and being exposed to the different places my job took me, I was still always happy to come back to my hometown. I was living at home with my parents, and I was quite content to be within the confines of where I grew up, especially because I was surrounded by the people I had known all my life. As I look back now, my world was small, safe, and very secure. I met my husband in 1991. One evening, my girlfriends and I had planned to meet at a bar in Long Beach, a neighboring community, for dinner. I arrived first, and as I was waiting for my friends to get there, I caught the e