Surrogate Miscarries The Child Of Dead Woman

Howard Garber stunned "Today" show viewers yesterday with an admission as odd as the story he'd come to tell.

He had come to New York to introduce the surrogate mother carrying the child of his dead daughter Julie - but he waited until the end of his "Today" segment to say the surrogate had miscarried.

Later, the surrogate - a 23-year-old postal worker from Riverside, Calif., named Tracy Veloff - said Garber and his wife, Jean, knew she wasn't pregnant before the trip from California to New York. A test taken by her California doctor several days ago had confirmed the miscarriage, she said.

"It was very upsetting," said Veloff. "I've become very close to the Garbers, and when you want something so much . . . I wanted to help them."

Veloff said she was unaware that the show's producers had not been told she was no longer pregnant.

"Today" show producers said later they felt duped.

"Our story was based on the fact that the surrogate was pregnant," said Erica Proto, a spokeswoman for the early-morning TV magazine. "Our producer spoke with the Garbers yesterday and was given no indication that a miscarriage had occurred.

"Only at the end of . . . (the) interview saying that medical history had occurred did Mr. Garber say, `Oh, by the way . . .' "

The Garbers, of Anaheim Hills, Calif., announced earlier this month they had learned on Thanksgiving Day that their third - and last - attempt to have their daughter's embryos implanted had succeeded, and the surrogate was pregnant.

In 1994, Julie Garber had postponed for a month radiation therapy for lymphoblastic leukemia that might save her life - but leave her sterile. In that time, she had her still-healthy ovarian eggs harvested, fertilized by an anonymous donor and frozen. Garber was sure she'd beat the cancer, much as she'd survived an earlier brain tumor, and wanted one day to have children of her own.

She died of the disease a year ago today at 28.

After her death, the Garbers hired Veloff, who has two preschool youngsters of her own, to be implanted with their daughter's embryos. Their decision brought criticism from a number of medical ethicists and a deluge of news media attention, including invitations to appear on nationally broadcast TV talk shows such as "Good Morning America" and "Today."

It was at the end of the nine-minute "Today" segment - and just after Howard Garber had engaged in a brief but heated debate with a medical ethicist who argued against bringing the embryo of a dead woman and an anonymous sperm donor to term - that he mentioned the miscarriage, taking host Katie Couric by surprise.

"It's necessary . . . that I say one thing about the situation," Garber said. "There has been a miscarriage. Tracy is no longer . . . pregnant, and that has to be said. This was a first, but, unfortunately, we have not succeeded."

The segment ended quickly.

Later, from his hotel room at the Sheraton Manhattan in New York, Garber said that if Couric was blindsided by his statement, that was fine with him. "I told them that I was going to use this opportunity to explain what was happening," Garber said. "If they didn't like the way I did it, it's too bad."

It was best that the statement be made toward the end of the interview, rather than be "anti-climactic" earlier, Garber said. And it was important to use the national program to inform others facing medically induced sterility about the opportunity to store frozen embryos.

" . . . So it surprised them," Garber said. "They are no more disappointed than we are."

Veloff said Garber had protected her identity from the news media, and she was not interviewed by "Today" show producers before her appearance with Couric.

"It's a live show and it's an unfortunate situation when we think people will be honest with us and people aren't always honest," said "Today" spokeswoman Proto. "In this case, we did a lot of research, we covered the issue comprehensively and we cannot imagine why these people did not tell us that the procedure was not a success."

Rick Violett, 49, of Yorba Linda, Calif., a longtime acquaintance of Howard Garber's, ventured a guess.

"Howard is a very passionate, energetic individual," Violett said. "If he feels strongly about an issue, he will take it to the mat. Howard is hard to control sometimes, but the bottom line is, if I needed help, I'd go to Howard. You just don't know what kind of help you'll get."