Laura Downey is a character who appeared in the Season Three episode of Quantum Leap titled "A Little Miracle". The part of Laura is played in the episode by Melinda McGraw.
About Laura[]
When Sam leaps into Manhattan, NY in 1962, he leaps into Reginald Pearson (Milan Nicksic), who serves as the butler /valet /driver for wealthy industrialist, investor and land developer Michael Blake (Charles Rocket), his mission, along with Capt. Laura Downey, who's a social worker with the Salvation Army, is to try to keep Blake from tearing down a Salvation Army building which houses the 5th Street City Mission, where Laura works, and which happens to be in the neighborhood which Blake grew up. Sam promises Laura, who is taken aback at Michael's coldness to the plight of the people she and rest of the workers at the mission minister to, that he will try to find a way to save the building... with her help, as he also, unbeknownst to her, a little "divine" help from Al and Ziggy.
Things look prominsing concerning Blake changing his mind about tearing down the mission building at the Christmas Eve party held at the mission, as it seems that Sam and Laura's appeal to him to rescind his plans are working, until he suddenly hardens his heart when he believes that the children at the mission were put up to trying to influence him to not tear down the mission, but, with Al and Ziggy's help in creating a "Ghost of Christmas Future" ghost to scare Michael into changing his mind about the mission when they show him going bankrupt and losing the Plaza and committing suicide in by Christmas 1975, Laura is pleasantly surprised when Michael shows up at the mission on Christmas night with the "Christmas Spirit", willing to work with her on keeping the mission open.
It turns out that the situation has a happy ending for all, as Laura and Michael fall in love, and marry six months later, in June 1963, and have three children, the Blake Plaza is still built, with the 5th Street Mission having a place housed on the first floor.