WASHINGTON (AP) — Calista Anderson was at a sleepover when the email from a friend arrived. She was 12 years old and had just experienced the worst moment of her life: Her mother had been killed while working overseas. The email offered a further jolt.

It linked to a news article revealing that, contrary to what she had been told, her mother hadn’t worked for the State Department. She was a CIA officer.

“I called my dad and I was like, ‘Come get me from the sleepover. We need to talk,’” she said.

Losing a parent is painful for any child. But for children of CIA officers killed in the line of duty, the pain can be compounded by stunning revelations about who their parents were and how they had died. Sometimes the children don’t find out what happened.

Now 24, Anderson works at a foundation supporting families like hers. The CIA Officers Memorial Foundation provides college tuition and other expenses to children and spouses of fallen officers. Unsurprisingly, much of the charitable work to support those families goes on in private.

The leaders want to change that by holding gatherings for the children of fallen officers and gradually telling more of their stories publicly.

“The people we support need to stay in the shadows, but the foundation doesn’t need to be,” said John Edwards, a retired CIA senior executive who became the foundation’s president last year.

There are nearly 70 children of officers who receive college tuition and other expenses from the foundation. And the foundation’s work won’t end anytime soon, with 80 more children expected to receive scholarships.

Two decades after Sept. 11, intelligence agencies are shifting resources toward Russia and China, and focusing on advanced technologies. But while U.S. forces are no longer involved in Afghanistan, officers from the CIA and other intelligence agencies continue to work in combat zones and so-called “denied areas” where Americans aren’t welcome.

“I’d love for us to be out of business,” Edwards said. “The nature of the work says that probably won’t be the case.”

It’s not known how many intelligence officers died in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are 139 stars on the CIA’s memorial wall honoring officers who died over the agency’s 75-year history. Fifty-two of the stars have been added since Sept. 11. Not all of those officers have been named publicly.

Intelligence agencies and the military provide death benefits to the families of personnel killed on duty, but those payments don’t typically cover every cost, particularly the cost of college.

One regular event is the concert known as “Spookstock,” which jointly benefits the CIA foundation and Special Operations Warrior Foundation. It’s typically staged in an undisclosed location outside of Washington and draws the families of fallen officers, senior intelligence officers and families, and corporate sponsors and supporters.

Edwards said he wanted to maintain the foundation’s core mission of funding scholarships and expand its offerings for families. The foundation has started a daycare program and added career services to connect scholarship recipients with corporate executives.

But he also wanted to have a more public role and to promote relationships among a group that people connected to the foundation often call “the kids” — the children of slain officers who have received scholarships, some now in their 30s.

“You get these kids together who had similar life circumstances and traumatic situations that they’ve been through, it’s an instant bond,” Edwards said. “The more that we can engage these students, the better.”

Anderson has “instant credibility,” he said, as someone well-known both among recipients and current and former intelligence officials.

As a child, Anderson lived in England for four years with her father, two younger brothers and her mother, Jennifer Matthews. Unbeknownst to her children, Matthews had a senior position in the CIA’s London station. Shortly after they moved back to Virginia, Matthews went to Afghanistan for what her children thought was a diplomatic assignment.

Matthews was instead chief of base in Khost, part of the CIA’s counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan.

The CIA was working to assess the reliability of a Jordanian doctor believed to have information on the whereabouts of al-Qaida’s then-No. 2 official, Ayman al-Zawahri. The Jordanian, Humam al-Balawi, was brought to the Khost base in December 2009 for what officials hoped would be a critical meeting, according to results of agency reviews released the following year by then-Director Leon Panetta.

Instead, shortly after he entered the compound, al-Balawi set off a deadly explosion. He killed five CIA employees, two agency security contractors, a Jordanian intelligence officer and the Afghan driver who had brought him to Khost.

The attack threw an international spotlight almost immediately onto Anderson, her father and her two brothers as they grieved and tried to understand what happened.

Her father explained what he knew about her mother’s work, and friends of her mother working at the CIA filled in more gaps over the coming years. Old co-workers also told stories about her mother’s love of pedicures and a glass of champagne.

As she grew older, Anderson stopped reading about her mother on the internet and avoided portrayals of her in pop culture. She has not watched “Zero Dark Thirty,” the film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden that fictionalizes part of her mother’s time at Khost and her earlier work in a CIA cell hunting for bin Laden before and after Sept. 11.

Whether the CIA could have prevented the Khost bombing remains a point of contention within the intelligence community and Matthews’ family. Some former officers have blamed Matthews.

Internal agency reviews concluded that critical warnings were not shared widely enough and that it was unclear who was in charge of the operation. The CIA did not fire or discipline any personnel, Panetta said in 2010, but tightened security procedures and established new groups to better train officers in combat zones and spot double agents.

After a CIA team in late July killed al-Zawahri in a drone strike, several of Matthews’ former colleagues said they thought of her.

“She was passionately committed to bringing down (al-Qaida), and if she were here today, no one would be more proud of that achievement than her,” said former CIA Director Gina Haspel, a close colleague of Matthews, in a recent speech at a foundation event.

Anderson graduated from the University of Richmond and then got a master’s in art history — a degree that she jokes left her with no choice but to take the foundation’s job offer as events coordinator.

She helped with the latest edition of “Spookstock” and recently organized a golf outing for current scholarship recipients during their Thanksgiving break.

At events like those and in conversations with other children of fallen officers, she often brings up her own memories of her mother and experiences after her mother’s death. The feelings of grief and shock sometimes come back.

“There are moments where it can be extremely emotionally difficult; it can be extremely tiring. I can feel very empty,” she said. “But in so many ways, I’m really grateful for those moments, because they really remind me about why we do what we do.”

CARTHAGE, N.C. (AP) — Multiple power substations in a North Carolina county were vandalized in what appeared to be a criminal act, leaving tens of thousands of people without electricity, a sheriff said.

The mass power outage across Moore County that began just after 7 p.m. Saturday “is being investigated as a criminal occurrence,” Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said in a Facebook post. More than 40,000 electric customers in the county remained without power on Sunday morning, according to poweroutage.us.

“As utility companies began responding to the different substations, evidence was discovered that indicated that intentional vandalism had occurred at multiple sites,” the sheriff said.

Moore County deputies and other law enforcement responded and were providing security at the affected sites, the sheriff’s office said.

Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said the company experienced “multiple equipment failures” at substations and the power company was “investigating signs of potential vandalism related to the outages.”

Duke Energy said power was expected to be restored by Sunday evening.

The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines reported that one of its journalists saw a gate to one of the substations had been damaged and was lying in an access road.

“A pole holding up the gate had clearly been snapped off where it meets the ground. The substation’s infrastructure was heavily damaged,” the newspaper reported.

The newspaper reported that Moore County Regional Hospital was operating on generator power.

Southern Pines Fire and Rescue reported the town’s water and sewer services are also operating on backup generators. Authorities in the area asked people to stay off the roads if possible or proceed with caution because traffic lights were out of service.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said in a message posted to Twitter that the state was providing resources to investigators and power crews.

“I have spoken with Duke Energy and state law enforcement officials about the power outages in Moore County. They are investigating and working to return electricity to those impacted,” he said.

The county of approximately 100,000 people lies about an hour’s drive southwest of Raleigh and is known for golf resorts in Pinehurst and other communities.

ATLANTA (AP) — The extended Senate campaign in Georgia gives Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker a second chance to persuade voters to send them to Washington. But without party control of Congress at stake and absent other candidates on the ticket, the runoff looks different from the November general election.

The results of the AP VoteCast survey illustrate some of the challenges each candidate faces on Tuesday. Walker will need to turn out a GOP base that wasn’t enamored with him to start with, and do it without the more popular Gov. Brian Kemp on the ballot. Warnock must get his coalition of some lower-propensity voting groups to turn out.

And both candidates have to motivate voters despite a predetermined balance of power in Washington.

The wide-ranging VoteCast survey of more than 3,200 midterm voters in the state provides a detailed look at the Warnock and Walker coalitions and the attitudes that defined their choices this year. The data reveals advantages — and disadvantages — for both candidates in the runoff.

WHAT’S AT STAKE?

Fifty-four percent of Georgia midterm voters said they considered party control of the Senate to be the primary factor in their vote in the general election. But that’s no longer at stake.

Democrats flipped a Republican-held Senate seat in Pennsylvania to maintain their thin advantage in the chamber without relying on the outcome in Georgia.

In the general, many supporters of both candidates were motivated by party control, and they’ll need to be persuaded to vote a second time around when it doesn’t hang in the balance.

It’s a challenge for Walker in particular, whose supporters were slightly more likely than Warnock’s to say control of the Senate was their chief consideration, 57% vs. 52%. A Walker victory in the Senate would keep the 50-50 status quo, but Democrats maintain control with Vice President Kamala Harris ’ tie-breaking vote.

REPUBLICAN SUPPORT

Walker benefits from Georgia’s Republican-leaning tendencies, but Kemp didn’t carry Walker when they were both at the top of the ticket four weeks ago. In fact, Walker’s vote tallies fell more than 200,000 short of his fellow Republican’s, which might suggest he has a harder time getting Republicans out for him without Kemp on the ballot.

While 7 in 10 Kemp voters said they enthusiastically backed the governor, only about half of Walker’s voters said they were enthusiastically supporting Walker. Among Walker supporters, about 4 in 10 said they backed him with reservations and about 1 in 10 said they were simply opposing the other candidates.

“I’ve got some reservations, I’m not 100% Walker, but he is a hell of lot better than what we’ve got up there now with Warnock in there,” said Donny Richardson, a retired Marine who voted for Walker last week in Marietta. “Things need to change.”

Warnock has more work to do in a state that resoundingly reelected Kemp over two-time Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams and elected exclusively Republican statewide constitutional officers.

That’s especially true when Warnock may have been helped by Republicans who decided not to support Walker but showed up in the general to vote for other Republicans, including their governor. Fifteen percent of moderate and liberal Republicans backed Warnock. Eleven percent of Kemp voters supported Warnock or another candidate, including Libertarian Chase Oliver, compared with just 3% of Abrams voters bucking Warnock.

CONSTITUENCIES

Warnock and Walker both amassed familiar Democratic and Republican constituencies in last month’s election. But there were signs that Walker did worse than his fellow Republican Kemp among groups that were core to the governor’s success, including white voters and voters in small towns and rural areas. College-educated men and women without a college degree were evenly divided in the Senate race, but both groups went decisively for Kemp in the governor’s race.

And most white Protestant voters backed the Republican candidate in both races, but Kemp won them by a wider margin than Walker did.

Warnock won majorities of young voters, Black voters, women, college graduates and suburbanites. Warnock also picked up about two-thirds of ideologically moderate voters.

CHARACTER AND INTEGRITY

The final stretch of campaign featured harsh insults from each candidate on his competitor’s character and integrity. Voters in the general were more skeptical about Walker than Warnock, though neither candidate earned glowing marks.

Fifty-six percent of Georgia voters said the incumbent senator “has the right experience to serve effectively” in the job, compared with just 39% saying that of Walker, a 60-year-old political novice.

“I think Herschel Walker is incompetent and Raphael Warnock has more experience, and I think he’ll get the job done,” said Lolita Baylor, an executive assistant at JCPenney who lives in Morrow. She voted for Warnock.

Voters also were more likely to think Warnock has strong moral values compared with Walker, 53% vs. 43%.

Those critiques of Walker didn’t keep some voters from backing him the first time around, though it might eat into his support in a runoff. About a third of his own supporters said he didn’t have the right experience and about a quarter said he lacks strong moral values.

TRUMP LINGERS

Walker’s endorsement from former President Donald Trump helped him earn the party’s nomination, but that may have stunted his success among the state’s general electorate.

Biden’s razor-thin 2020 win in the state led Trump to falsely claim the results were rigged and to suggest Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” the votes needed to hand Trump a victory. Georgia’s voters reelected Kemp and Raffensperger despite Trump’s attempts to promote other candidates.

While Walker overwhelmingly won midterm “MAGA” voters — those who say they support the “Make America Great Again” movement — 43% of voters last month said Walker supports Trump too much. Fewer said Kemp or Raffensperger supports Trump too much, though somewhat more said they support Trump too little.

“He’s not a politician,” said Kat Shreve of Walker. The nonprofit manager in Marietta backed Warnock. Walker’s “a puppet of the Trump administration,” she said.

Sixteen percent of Republican voters who don’t identify as MAGA supporters backed Warnock in the general.

Even if Trump is not the draw he once was, opposition to his rival might be enough for Walker to convince voters to get back to the ballot box.

Overall, only about half of Walker voters said their vote was meant to signify support for Trump, but far more — about three-quarters — said their vote was in opposition to President Joe Biden. Walker has stressed Warnock’s ties to the president throughout the campaign.

“Let’s just say he’s much better than the Biden guy. Warnock has been. ‘Yes sir, Mr. Biden,’” said Jim Howle, a retired voter for Walker. Warnock’s “not representing the people.”

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Fingerhut reported from Washington.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://www.ap.org/votecast.

FILE – This undated photo provided by the Tarrant County, Texas, Jail shows Aaron Dean. The former Forth Worth police officer is set to go on trial Monday, Dec. 5, 2022, for shooting Atatiana Jefferson, a Black woman, through a rear window of her home while responding to a call about an open front door in 2019. (Tarrant County Jail via AP, File)

FILE – This undated photo provided by the Tarrant County, Texas, Jail shows Aaron Dean. The former Forth Worth police officer is set to go on trial Monday, Dec. 5, 2022, for shooting Atatiana Jefferson, a Black woman, through a rear window of her home while responding to a call about an open front door in 2019. (Tarrant County Jail via AP, File)

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A white former police officer is set to go on trial Monday for fatally shooting a Black woman through a rear window of her Texas home while responding to a call about an open front door in a case that has faced years of delays.

Fort Worth Officer Aaron Dean quit and was charged with murder two days after killing 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson in October 2019. Jefferson had been playing video games with her then-8-year-old nephew, who later told authorities his aunt pulled out a gun after hearing suspicious noises behind the house. Body-camera footage showed Dean didn’t identify himself as police.

At the time, the case was unusual for the relative speed with which, amid public outrage, the Fort Worth Police Department released the body-camera video and arrested Dean. Since then, his case has been repeatedly postponed amid lawyerly wrangling, the terminal illness of his lead attorney and the COVID-19 pandemic.

By contrast, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin went on trial and was convicted of murdering George Floyd more than 1 1/2 years ago. Yet Floyd was killed some seven months after Jefferson, in a case that sparked global protests over racial injustice.

Dean, who has pleaded not guilty, has been free on $200,000 bond. Now 38, he is charged with killing Jefferson on Oct. 12, 2019, after a neighbor called a non-emergency police line to report that the front door to Jefferson’s home was open.

Bodycam video showed Dean approaching the door of the home where Jefferson was caring for her nephew. He then walked around the side of the house, pushed through a gate into the fenced-off backyard and fired through the glass a split-second after shouting at Jefferson, who was inside, to show her hands.

Dean was not heard identifying himself as police on the video and it’s unclear whether he knew Jefferson was armed. That question and the potential testimony of another officer who was there that night are likely to be key points at trial.

Jefferson was considering a career in medicine and moved into her mother’s home months before the shooting there to help as the older woman’s health declined.

Her killing shattered trust police had been trying to build with communities of color in Fort Worth, a city of 935,000 about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Dallas that has long had complaints of racially unequal policing and excessive force.

The shooting drew swift rebuke from the city’s then-police chief and Republican mayor, who at the time called the circumstances “truly unthinkable” and said Jefferson having a gun was “irrelevant.”

Dean’s legal team used those comments in unsuccessful attempts to move the case from Fort Worth, claiming media attention and statements from public officials would bias the jury pool.

As jury selection was set to start last week, Dean’s defense attorney, Jim Lane, died. After years of delays, District Judge George Gallagher moved forward anyway and, following days of questioning potential jurors, a panel of 12 jurors and two alternates was selected Friday. Eight were men, six women and none of them appeared to be Black.

The opening day of Dean’s trial is set to end early so participants can attend Lane’s funeral.

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Follow AP’s complete coverage of the killing of Atatiana Jefferson: https://apnews.com/hub/atatiana-jefferson

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Furious about oil companies’ supersized profits after a summer of record-high gas prices, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday will formally start his campaign to punish big producers by asking the Legislature to fine them and give the money back to drivers.

State lawmakers will briefly return to the state Capitol on Monday to swear in new members and elect leaders for the 2023 legislative session. But this year, Newsom also has called lawmakers into a special session for the purpose of approving a penalty for oil companies when their profits pass a certain threshold.

It’s bound to be a popular proposal with voters, who have been paying more than $6 per gallon of gasoline for much of the year. But the big question is how the measure will be received by California lawmakers, especially since the oil industry is one of the state’s top lobbyists and campaign donors.

Adding to the uncertainty is an unusually high number of new members who will take seats in the Legislature for the first time. More than a quarter of the Legislature’s 120 members could be new, depending on the outcome of a few close races where county officials are still counting votes.

“It’s kind of like the first day of school and you get this big ethics test about a job that you’ve never had,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group that has partnered with the Newsom administration to back the gas proposal.

Among the state Senate’s new members is Angelique Ashby, a Democrat who narrowly won her seat following an intense campaign. The oil industry spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on radio and TV ads supporting Ashby’s campaign, a trend noticed by critics who tried to use it against her.

In an interview, Ashby said she hasn’t been approached lobbyists or others from the oil industry asking how she would vote on a potential penalty for oil companies. She noted the oil industry spent the money as “independent expenditures,” meaning she had no control over that spending during the campaign.

“Campaigns are not legislation, and the campaign slogans and strategies of my opponent are a thing of the past,” said Ashby, whose district includes Sacramento. “I’m fixated on the people of Senate District 8 and I will make my decision based on what is in their best interest.”

As of Sunday night, Newsom had not yet revealed his legislation and legislative leaders said they likely won’t begin deliberations on any proposal until January.

But the battle has already begun. Last week, the California Energy Commission held a public hearing about why the state’s gas prices are so high. California prices spiked over the summer, but so did the rest of the country — mostly in response to a crude oil price surge after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

California’s prices spiked again in October, even while the price of crude oil dropped. In the first week of October, the average price of a gallon of gas in California was $2.61 higher than the national average — the biggest gap ever. Since then, oil companies reported billions of dollars in profits.

Regulators had hoped to question the state’s five big oil refineries: Marathon, Valero, Phillips 66, PBF Energy and Chevron. But no company officials attended the hearing, with most saying that sharing information could violate anti-trust laws.

Newsom sought to shame those companies publicly, posting a video to his Twitter account of their empty seats during Thursday’s hearing.

“Big oil is ripping Californians off, and the deafening silence from the industry (at the public hearing) is the latest proof that a price gouging penalty is needed to hold them accountable for profiteering at the expense of California families,” Newsom said in a news release announcing the special session.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, said the oil industry is volatile, pointing to billions of dollars in losses during the pandemic when demand for gasoline dropped sharply as many people worked from home and canceled travel plans.

During Thursday’s hearing, she blamed the state’s taxes and regulations for driving up gas prices.

“The governor and the Legislature should focus efforts on removing policy hurdles being imposed on the energy industry so we can focus on providing affordable, reliable and lower carbon energy to all Californians,” Reheis-Boyd said.

Severin Borenstein, a University of California-Berkeley professor, said the problem isn’t at the oil refinery level, but at the retail level where gasoline is sold to drivers.

California’s gasoline market is dominated by name-brand gasoline, which is more expensive, and the state’s gas prices have been consistently higher than the rest of the country since 2015, Borenstein said.

“We just don’t have the competition and discipline from those off-brand stations,” he said.