Although Giovanni had always come across to Heath as a good person, down-to-earth and without any of a Gym Leader's airs, and was famous in Viridian City for being a good man, the problem was that Heath knew very well that Giovanni was Team Rocket's leader. There was no whitewashing that fact.
So Heath felt it was entirely possible that Team Rocket wanted to cause trouble at the Fossil Revival Conference in Pewter City. He even suspected that Giovanni's gradual exposure might have had something to do with Team Rocket's activities over the following few years. That left Heath with mixed feelings. He had known Giovanni for four years, and over those four-plus years, Giovanni had struck Heath as a very simple, unassuming person. Still, Heath knew this was only Giovanni's public persona.
It was like certain celebrities in his previous life who went all out building their public personas. Once a scandal accidentally brought those personas crashing down, however, it became even harder for people to accept.
To Heath, Giovanni was someone like an idol. He had established a gentle, good-guy persona in Viridian City and hidden his true identity extremely well.
But having grown used to that gentle Giovanni, Heath really struggled to adjust to Giovanni the Team Rocket boss.
"Sister Feng, be careful when you're carrying out your missions, too," Heath said earnestly as he looked at Officer Jenny Feng. Giovanni's strength was beyond question. Across all of Kanto, anyone other than the Elite Four and the Champion would probably struggle to subdue him. Some of Kanto's Gym Leaders were Giovanni's subordinates, too, with Sabrina being one of them.
Heath even thought Blaine and Lt. Surge might be Team Rocket members, but he had absolutely no idea whether this world followed the anime's storyline or the Adventures