The clock in the kitchen read 5:05 a.m., but it was already more than 100 degrees outside—the early July sun crowding a midday sky over Orofino. “I keep the clock set to Guam time—16 hours ahead of us,” whispered Adelia Anderson (everyone calls her Sue). “It’s already tomorrow there.” WWW. B OISEWEEKLY.C O M
Maybe, just maybe, she said, Guam’s tomorrow might bring today’s truth—if not the full truth, well, maybe a piece of the truth. Anything would help. Sue and her husband, Chris Anderson, remember their first phone call to Guam: sometime in early January 2011, when they called their daughter Kelsey to see how she was settling into her new South Pacific assignment at Andersen Air Force Base. “That’s when we first set the clock to Guam time,” said Sue, cracking a halfsmile “We didn’t want to wake her up
with a phone call if she was sleeping.” Five months after her assignment began, USAF Airman First Class Kelsey Anderson was found dead by Andersen Air Force Base personnel, shot with her own service pistol while on duty as a security officer in the early morning hours of June 9, 2011. The Andersons have lost count of the phone calls they have made to Guam since Kelsey’s death. In each call—sometimes in sorrow, other times in anger—they continued to ask anyone who would listen:
“What happened at the scene of the shooting?” “Why did it take so long to send Kelsey’s body back home?” “Why didn’t all of Kelsey’s belongings return to her family?” “Why were Air Force personnel ordered not to talk to us?” “They told us she killed herself. She shot herself in the head,” said Sue, “but there was no note, nothing. And she was on duty. And get this, she was scheduled to come for a monthlong break in just a few more weeks.” Sue took a moment to compose herself but to no avail. “I’m sorry. … I should be over this now,” she said and sobbed. In a series of tear-stained interviews, Chris and Sue Anderson told the story of how their little piece of Idaho heaven— living peacefully along the Clearwater River with two great kids—has devolved into a hellish battle with the United
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