Sgt. Larry Hollingsworth has spent much of the past three years overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of his National Guard duties. The couple--who live in Campbell--have had to build their personal lives around his short leaves.

His most recent trip home was Aug. 12, and he left Aug. 28. Because she knew he was coming home--and wanted to spend as much time with her husband as possible--Lori Hollingsworth requested unpaid time off from her position in the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety. She says her superiors supported her request because they understood the need for her to see her husband.

The city's human resources department denied her request.

City spokesman John Pilger said the city's policy is that unpaid leave is only available to an employee once all vacation time has been used. Hollingsworth had about a week and a half of vacation time coming.

But she wanted unpaid time like that the city made available during the Christmas season when City Manager Amy Chan gave employees the option of three days of unpaid leave to be with their families. In addition to giving employees valuable family time, unpaid leave like that also helped the city save money.

Lori Hollingsworth says the same logic applies to her--but on a smaller scale.

"Not that I make a large amount of money, but a thousand dollars at a time when the city is in a budget crunch would have helped," she said.

Pilger said that the savings is not comparable to the holiday break because that was a coordinated break for staff during a time when the public did not use city services heavily.

Hollingsworth said she didn't want to use her vacation time because she wanted to save it as a cushion should last minute or emergency situations draw her away from work.

In a letter to human resources, one of Hollingsworth's coworkers--who wished to remain anonymous--addressed the pros and cons of granting her leave and said there were few drawbacks.

"The only possible 'negative' that I can think of is setting a precedent to grant leave without pay for spouses of military members when they come home on leave. I don't think that would be a bad precedent, and it would only affect a handful of people," the letter said.

But with the denials, Hollingsworth had to use her 60 hours of vacation time to see her husband. She was granted some unpaid leave to cover the other days he was home, but now her vacation pool is dry.

"I didn't really have a choice, my husband's the most important thing to me," she said.

Hollingsworth said her goal now is to prevent this from happening again to her or other military families. She contacted Maria Shriver, a journalist and Governor Schwarzennegar's wife, and has talked to groups that support military families, in hopes of possibly getting new legislation written.

"I feel so strongly about this that I think if they can't make exceptions, than we need a law in place because I'm not the only one going through this."