Ruth Galanter

Ruth Galanter (born about 1941) was an environmentalist who served on the Los Angeles, California, City Council from 1987 to 2003 and was known for supporting "slow growth" policies on the city's Westside and elsewhere. She was the victim of a knife attack by a home intruder in 1987 that left her severely wounded. She now has her own consulting business.

Galanter was born about 1941 in New York City, the only child of a teacher and an advertising salesman. She grew up in the Bronx, New York, "dreaming of becoming an artist, or maybe an investigative reporter." Ruth's father died when she was age 6. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her master's degree in planning from Yale. She moved to Los Angeles in 1970.

She was known as a "deft negotiator," working out "delicate compromises that allowed some construction by private landowners" but that saved "key ecological sites."

When she was leaving public office at the age of 62 in 2003, a Los Angeles Times reporter described her as a "contrarian councilwoman, an irascible poet who pens verses during public meetings and is known for speaking her mind. . . . her blunt style could be alienating. . . . Her sentences are often long and clause-filled, and she does not suffer fools." And she engaged in "insatiable consumption of detective novels."

On May 6, 1987, Galanter was "brutally assaulted" in her Venice home in the 2200 block of Louella Avenue by an intruder who left her in critical condition with stab wounds in her neck. The intruder entered through a screen window at the back of the house. Neighbors heard screaming and the sound of a burglar alarm that Galanter was able to trigger after the attack. "One wound severed the carotid artery that supplies blood to the left side of the brain, and the other punctured the pharynx, part of the food tube near the esophagus."

Police soon tabbed Mark Allen Olds, who lived in a rooming house across the street from Galanter, as a suspect. Police Chief Daryl Gates said Olds was "a former gang member with an extensive record of arrests, including two for a 1979 gang murder and others for drug use." At his trial Galanter testified that she had suffered "permanent damage" to her throat and was "too frightened to sleep through the night." A reporter wrote sixteen years later that the attack had left Galanter's "New York-accented voice with a slight croak."

...
Wikipedia