Fifteen hours after Janet Cutler went into labor her daughter, Sandra Octavia, was born into the world in a Scarsdale, New York area hospital; it was six forty-three AM on an overcast March 31, 1959. About a week later, both mother and child were released from the hospital and into the care of Archibald Cutler, Sandra's father, and his son Timothy, who was preparing to graduate high school and pursue a job with the flourishing Grumman Corporation in its Long Island facility. Archibald and Janet Cutler were a relatively well-to-do couple; Archibald maintained a lucrative job with Bear-Stearns while Janet intermittently sold real estate and Tupperware to suppliment Archie's significant income during dryspells.
Sandra was encouraged and nutured by both of her parents throughout her childhood in the hopes that she would become as great a success as her brother Timothy had with Grumman. Sandra had a brilliant mind and both of her parents could see it, even though she sometimes seemed to stretch the limits of social acceptability with her fascination with cars (and basically any other motor vehicles), engineering, and science in general. Sandra spent as much of her childhood helping her father work on his car as she did studying for school or even helping her mother around the house.
As Sandra grew older and her understanding of the world grew, she began on a seemingly insatiable invention spree; she would see a need around the house and, after several hours, days, weeks, or even months, Sandra would offer up a home-made contraption to help her mother or her father or her neighbors with whatever needs they might have. Many of these creations were surprisingly effective at their given tasks though very few were repairable by anyone but her.
She finished high school at the head of her class and, through a mixture of circumstances, managed to gain acceptance into M.I.T. for her undergraduate work. There she managed a double major in engineering and physical chemistry, along with a minor in materials science. This was quite a departure from her original intention to major in biology and biochemistry; in large part this change in plans was fueled by her realization that although she found biology and biochemistry interesting, her natural talents and interests lay more in areas relating to the construction and deconstruction of things, which was not unsurprising considering her childhood passion of invention.
Following college, Sandra used her parents friends and colleagues to secure a job working for a Boston-area contracting firm. There she did a great deal of secreterial work while pursuing acceptance from M.I.T.'s graduate studies program where she intended to earn her doctorate in the growing field of electromechanical engineering; she intended to create an enormous, multi-year study of the growth of the use of the transistor in numerous fields and what this continuous expansion in the uses of the transistor could foretell due to the volume of insight into its practical and esoteric applications.
As usual, her actual actions deviated from her plans. In this particular case, her doctoral thesis included her transistor study and several practical experiments and applications of the transistor, which was to plan. Her plans deviated when she inadvertantly developed a new, if impractical, method of electronic miniaturization.
Much of Sandra's work history was reflected in her duties at that contracting firm (McSurly & Brothers Inc.), which expanded rather exponentially when she discovered the mechanics' shop for the company. She assisted significantly in the shop, attributing much of her mechanical accumen to her father's guidance as a child. This was not necessarily entirely true, but it was believeable enough. Following her completion of her doctoral studies, Sandra moved on to work first for Grumman as her brother before her did. He had since moved on to Lockheed-Martin, pursuing other projects. Sandra began working in Grumman's space labs, building and researching ultra-specialized components necessary for a burgeoning classified program before Grumman's power and status in the world started to die out in the early nineties.
Following the collapse of Grumman, Sandra was shuffled along to Xerox's massive internal labs. Here she flourished, doing research and development on numerous projects that would eventually feed into several of Xerox's later innovations in document technology. Dr. Cutler moved to Lockheed-Martin after only two years of work with Xerox, preferring to get back into the swing of truly advanced technology.
It was here at Lockheed-Martin that Sandra met Dr. Kenyon Samuels, a particularly egotistical physicist of a mere twenty-eight years old compared to her thirty-seven years of age. Doctor Samuels felt that he could do better than Sandra ever could, despite being relatively inexperienced with the sorts of deadlines and necessities that the industry would demand. His rage stemmed from being put into place as Sandra's research assistant, an almost thankless job, but one whose rewards in experience and credentials were significantly more important than mere ego. Kenyon didn't see past the insult to his ego.
Over the course of the next three years, Kenyon plotted and schemed. Half way through that time he was bumped up to a head researcher himself, recognized by Sandra and everyone else as an equal in the field, but that was not good enough for Dr. Samuels. Finally he found his opportunity and, with an all too zealous glee, Kenyon started making complaints about Sandra's work. He criticized her work in peer-reviewed journals and crushed her presentations at Lockheed-Martin while also pointing out flaws in her research, research that he technically did for her, on projects that were accomplished prior to Kenyon becoming a full researcher in his own right.
Internal audits were conducted and the scientific community had a terrific laugh at Sandra's expense. Sandra, relatively naive as she was at the time, retreated from the community and life. She hid in her own little world of depression and angst, living off of her severance package from Lockheed-Martin while she tried to come to grips with what had happened. She re-examined her own work and Kenyon's work, she spent the better part of five years scouring scientific journals and her own records, as well as taking several relatively basic college courses in science to brush up on her basics to make sure that she had done what she had thought. It turns out that she had.
After she confronted Kenyon with her analysis in late 2003, Dr. Samuels disappeared. He has not been heard from since. Doctor Cutler, on the other hand, has actively returned to her work as a research scientist. She has acquired grant funding from the Johannsen Foundation as well as other notable private scientific grantors for her continued work in electromechanical engineering. Aside from her grants and research, Sandra also maintains a day job working for Wong Pharmaceuticals as a chemical engineer.
