A few years ago I was sitting at my desk at The Washington Times when the phone rang. The number on the phone was not immediately identifiable, which as any staffer at The Times could tell you was not always a good thing. I had received my fair share of what I termed an “All Caps” caller.

They are the type who used an abundance of exclamation points, lacked an intimate relationship with proper punctuation when expressing their point of view. They probably had sent more than one letter using letters clipped from ads from the newspaper and magazines. And they also believed The X-Files was a documentary series.

But it was my lucky day. The voice on the end of the line asked if he were speaking with Jennifer Hickey and I confirmed he was. He asked if I was the daughter of Mike Hickey. I again confirmed I was.

“You may not remember me, but I saw you on O’Reilly last night and knew from your face and last name that you had to be Mike’s daughter,” he proceeded to tell me.

A chill went down my spine and throughout my body. It was not an uneasy chill, but a sensation of elation. The blood was racing to every point in my body like a young girl running into the arms of her father – with reckless abandon.

The man was Mort Libby. He had worked with my dad at Cato-Johnson, the ad firm that brought our family from London to Cincinnati. I had so many questions, but they were held hostage by my inability to verbally express them. That in itself was an odd occasion. He told me I had handled myself with Bill O’Reilly and that Dad would be proud. There are many things I have forgotten in the years since, but those are ones that will stay with me.

And they are words in stark contrast to those uttered by another work partner of my dad’s.

“What the Hell do you want from me? You want the money?” snapped one William S. Altieri of Menlo Park, California.

He is not Bill, or William. He will always be William S. Altieri of Menlo Park, California because that is the name and location I typed in to any number of search engines over the years. And I am talking in the days before Google. Some years ago my mom told me the story of one of my dad’s colleagues who had gone to him several months before his death to ask for money. More accurately, he had gone to him after his stroke to ask for money, which my father gave him.

Mom learned of the loan from Dad’s secretary after his death and he said he would repay the loan with interest. Years went by and we moved from Cincinnati back to London and William S. Altieri disappeared. Disappeared with the loan unpaid.

When I heard this story I was not pissed, rather I was astonished that someone could ask for money from a terminally ill man with a wife and two children. I wanted to know how someone could be so callous and amoral. So, the quest was started. Every time I went someplace I checked the phone book for a William S. Altieri. Every once in a while I would pick a random city, call 411 and ask for a listing. Year after year after year.

And one day I found William S. Altieri in Menlo Park, California. Perhaps with a little divine intervention, my discovery came shortly before I was headed to San Francisco to visit my brother. Long story short, Tom, my mom and I piled into the car one afternoon and drove to Menlo Park for call on Mr. William S. Altieri. We went to his apartment complex and knocked on his door, but there was no answer. We waited a bit and then got back into the car.

Upon returning to DC, I called every day. And then one day he answered the phone. I told him who I was and why I was calling.

“What the Hell do you want from me? You want the money?” he asked. No, I told him. What I want is an explanation and an apology.

He let me know in no uncertain, but in very indelicate, terms that he would not. He told me if I wanted money I was not going to get it. It was clear he was the one who “did not get it.”

I would like to think his tone was the result of a lifetime of guilt. But it probably was more of a consequence of his being a real and true “insert expletive here.”

At the end of both calls I hung up with a sense of satisfaction. Mr. Libby had left me with a wonderful gift of the notion my father would have been proud of his daughter. And I like to think Dad would have been equally proud of me for making sure that William S. Altieri of Menlo Park, California did not have the last word.