Write, revise, rewrite, rip up: “Blue Island man charged”

This sad story started as a web blurb I added to throughout the day, then rewrote for what I thought would be the paper version. It was nearly done, and it began in such a way that would be fresh for newspaper readers.

Then I got Kimika Coleman’s mother on the phone. And she said something that made me think to rip up the whole top and try something else, even though I liked what I already had.

My new editor encouraged me to give it a try.

And the graf that talks about the wooing – my second lede of the day – fell down to the nutgraf:

The last time her mother saw her, Kimika Coleman was on her cell phone.

The 18-year-old was home that night in Chicago’s South Deering neighborhood when Kimberly Coleman came in from work. Then she moved to the porch to keep chatting.

And by the time her mother thought to ask her to run to the store for milk, Kimika Coleman was gone.

Kimberly Coleman didn’t know her middle child had been talking for a few weeks to an older man she had met on a singles party line. And she couldn’t know that man had chatted up, raped and killed another 18-year-old a few weeks before, as police and prosecutors charged Wednesday. Or that he would attack and kill again, as prosecutors allege.

Sonny Pierce, 27, of Blue Island, wooed Kimika Coleman, still in high school, as he had Kiara Windom from Harvey, and took each girl to his ramshackle apartment in Blue Island in August 2009. He raped and strangled them, then dumped their bodies in an alley — Windom on the Southeast Side, Coleman in Blue Island, just hours after she had left her house, authorities said.

Pierce, 27, was charged Wednesday with murdering both women, and also Mariah Edwards, 17, of Blue Island, in July 2010.

Pierce told police he invited Edwards to his home to rape her in front of other men, and beat her with the men until she was dead, prosecutors said. He has refused to tell police where he dumped her remains, which were encased in a garbage bag, prosecutors said.

Police recovered a video Pierce made of himself having what Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez described as “violent sexual relations,” with Edwards.

“This 17-year-old girl appears to be lifeless,” Alvarez said. “We believe she was deceased when the video was taken.”

Alvarez would not comment on whether other men were involved or other suspects were being questioned.

“These young teenagers were brutalized and their lives were cut short in yet another example of hinous crimes of violence against women,” Alvarez said Wednesday at a news conference, flanked by investigators from the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force, Blue Island Police, Illinois State Police and her office’s cold case unit.

Judge Darron E. Bowden ordered Pierce held without bail Wednesday in Cook County Court in Markham, saidOrland Park Police Chief Tim McCarthy, whoheads the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force.

Pierce has been in jail since August, when he was arrested in connection with the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl he allegedly lured from outside her house and dragged her into his apartment, Alvarez said.

DNA collected after that attack linked Pierce to Windom and Coleman, McCarthy said. Cell phone records also tied Pierce to his victims, prosecutors said.

Investigators found 20 calls between Windom’s cell phone and Pierce the night before her body was found, prosecutors said.

Police asked the public to come forward with information about Pierce, his alleged crimes or other missing women from the area.

Pierce’s mother, Esther Pierce, defended her son.

“I don’t think my son’s guilty. He’s my womb child and I’m going to stand and pray for my seed,” she said from her apartment, next to his near 121st and Vincennes.

She acknowledged that her son, who has a 1-year-old daughter,had taken pictures of himself having sex with women, which she had told him he shouldn’t do because “it’s nasty.”

Regarding the video authorities say they have of Pierce having sex with a possibly lifeless body, she said it’s not known whether the woman was alive or just sleeping.

“Hear the truth, world, we’re dealing with an injustice,” she said. “Hear the truth.” Windom’s mother, Hallena Johnson, took little solace in hearing that prosecutors think they have the man who killed her daughter.

“Nothing’s going to bring my daughter back, but I wish this state still had the death penalty for that man,” Johnson said. “He took someone’s else’s life. He should have his life taken.”

Edwards lived in an apartment complex across the street from Pierce’s building, said her brother, Tony Edwards, 35, of the Roseland neighborhood.

He said his sister was an aspiring rapper.

“I miss her face, her smile, her laughter . . . the way she got on my nerves,” he said. “She didn’t deserve that no matter what she did in her life.”

Contributing: Phil Kadner, Casey Toner

’911 decoy fails, cops say’

The night was late and the lads had been out, logging some hours at the Zante’s in Orland Hills.

So when Orland Park police stopped their car about 3 a.m. Sunday morning, the backseat passenger wanted them to know why they were going home.

Stephen Fratto called 911 to report people with guns outside the bar.

But to Orland Park police it looked like something else: Distract the officer, dodge a potential DUI.

The dispatcher could hear the officer conducting a traffic stop, according to prosecutors, and thought something was up.

When more police arrived at the scene at 16100 S. 88th Avenue, they arrested Fratto, accusing him of making a fake call.

Fratto, 24, of 8829 Juniper Court in Tinley Park, is charged with false reporting of an offense, a Class 4 felony, according to Andy Conklin, a spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

Cook County Judge Noreen Daly set his bail Monday morning at $10,000 and ordered him back on April 26.

By Monday afternoon, after Fratto posted $1,000 for his release, he told the SouthtownStar it was bad timing.

His call to police was to report a gang of guys harassing his buddy’s girlfriend outside the bar, he said from his Tinley Park home.

“The part they’re leaving out is I called too late,” he said. “We saw guys, we didn’t know what they had in their hands. It’s 3 in the morning. They were flashing their hands around on the car like gang members.

“We hightailed it out of there,” he said. “I was pretty drunk.”

Fratto’s friend, and the driver, Brian Elitzer, was cited with driving under the influence. Elitzer had “a couple beers,” but said he was not drunk.

As they were leaving, a man in a car next to them hung out the window and began shouting, said Elitzer, 25, of Tinley Park.

There was more. The guy may have been flashing gang signs. And, he had something in his hands and was going to throw it at them, Elitzer said. When the light turned green, his girlfriend, seated in the passenger seat, shouted, “Go, go, go.”

And he did. “My first instinct was to get away,” Elitzer said.

Less than a minute later, Elitzer said, police stopped him for failing to use a turn signal.

The officer didn’t appear interested in what had happened just moments before in the parking lot. “He just told me to step out of the vehicle. I don’t think he believed me,” Elitzer said.

The officer wanted Elitzer to take a field sobriety test. Elitzer said he passed the first one but refused a second at another officer’s request.

Inside the car, 14 minutes after they were stopped, Fratto called 911, Cmdr. John Keating said.

Fratto told the dispatcher two men in a silver car had just flashed guns, Keating said. Police from Orland Hills and Orland Park sped out to find them but couldn’t. The dispatcher called back and this time Fratto gave a different location, Keating says.

“He was trying to draw attention away from the officers at the stop,” he said.

Elitzer wasn’t in the car but hopes that’s not the case.

“Maybe he was trying to get them to catch the other car to prove we weren’t lying,” Elitzer said. “I hope he wouldn’t.”

As published in the SouthtownStar April 5, 2010.

‘Heroic efforts not enough’

Ah, she died.

Phoenix police Sgt. Ricardo Frausto happened to be kicking around at the station when the call came in: Car accident, 153rd Street and Ninth Avenue.

He’d been to the chief’s monthly breakfast meeting, and though he wasn’t on duty Friday, he was still at the police department about 1:30 p.m.

Then the passer-by calling 911 said the words that set him off: The car is underwater.

The 33-year-old ran to his own car and tore over to the corner where the Rupari Food Services plant sits, he told reporters late Friday afternoon, shivering in a light jacket, his left hand clinging to his bandaged right one.

At the grassy corner, the chain-link fence had been smashed, its poles crumpled and lying flat. And in the retention pond, a deep murky pool, he saw a gray car submerged.

Frausto ignored the chilly drizzle. He shucked his coat and his shoes. He stripped off his clothes and threw away his gun. Frausto grabbed a baton, and in briefs and an undershirt, he dove into the water.

The Navy had taught Frausto how to swim, how to hold his breath, how to manage under the water.

So he broke the car’s back window and tried to get at the lady in the driver’s seat. A few minutes later, someone else jumped in, too. They felt the lady’s hand but couldn’t get her free. Then the divers came in their ice water suits to protect them from the 40-degree water.

“You’ve done enough,” the divers told him.

It was South Holland firefighters who ultimately pulled Helen Wallace, 87, out of the retention pond after breaking the front window of her silver Buick and cutting her seat belt, South Holland Fire Chief Don Bettenhausen said.

A Phoenix resident known to be religious, she was driving near her home in the 600 block of 153rd Street, not far from the mayor’s house, when something happened near the Phoenix-South Holland border.

Maybe her car’s hood popped up, Phoenix Police Chief Mel Davis said at the scene. Maybe something happened with her health, he guessed. No skid marks showed on the asphalt so it’s likely she didn’t hit the brakes before crashing through the fence, up the embankment and into the scummy water.

She wasn’t breathing when she was pulled out, officials said. She didn’t have a pulse. She had spent multiple minutes in the pond.

Responders performed CPR on the scene and were able to get her heart beating again.

Then they rushed her to Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey. She died Saturday afternoon at the hospital in Harvey, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Some ladies from the Daniel Chapel AME Zion Church rushed to the pond Friday and were stunned to recognize their friend’s car. They had just seen her at Wednesday morning Bible study.

They heard that a lady had been fished out and resuscitated.

“I pray it’s not her,” Dorothy Allen said.

They left before finding out for sure.

Officer Gerald Shives said he was the second officer on the scene but did not dive in.

“I could hear the lady screaming, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying,” Shives said. “I was trying to tell her to get into the back seat.’’

Frausto will be nominated for a life-saving award, Davis said.

But Frausto, still shivering, still clutching his cut-up hand, was intent on finding the name of the firefighter who jumped in right after him, and happily, finally did: Charles Smith.

By the end of the day, some 75 firefighters, divers, police and other emergency rescue workers had congregated at the rescue scene, from Hazel Crest and Oak Forest and as far away as Frankfort and Lynwood. Davis was grateful for the help, which just showed up in his town of about 2,000.

As neighbors chatted and snapped photos, officials dragged the car out of the pond, its hood popped up and its windows broken.

And they used sonar and more divers to scan the pond. Initial reports said two people had been in the car. They wanted to make sure the water at the Rupari Food Services plant, 15600 Wentworth Ave., South Holland, was clear.

Frausto spoke with Wallace’s family at the hospital but never got to meet the woman he pulled from the water. On Saturday, he still was recovering from the cuts he suffered in the water and grateful to all the authorities who came to help.

“It does feel pretty bad,” Frausto said. “It’s part of the job sometimes. I wish it had turned out better, but it didn’t.”

Contributing: Sun-Times Media, Victoria Johnson, Joe Biesk

As published in the SouthtownStar, April 3, 2011, final edition.

‘Car plunges into pond’

Story felt bigger than the news. And once he told me he jumped into the cold water in briefs and an undershirt, I decided to try the narrative. Though I need to stop relying on The Call at the start of these stories.

Phoenix police Sgt. Ricardo Frausto happened to be kicking around at the station when the call came in: Car accident, 153rd Street and Ninth Avenue.

He’d been to the chief’s monthly breakfast meeting, and though he wasn’t on duty Friday, he was still at the police department about 1:30 p.m.

Then the passer-by calling 911 said the words that set him off: The car is underwater.

The 33-year-old ran to his own car and tore over to the corner where the Rupari Food Services plant sits, he told reporters late Friday afternoon, shivering in a light jacket, his left hand clinging to his bandaged right one.

At the grassy corner, the chain-link fence had been smashed, its poles crumpled and lying flat. And in the retention pond, a deep murky pool, he saw a gray car submerged.

Frausto ignored the chilly drizzle. He shucked his coat and his shoes. He stripped off his clothes and threw away his gun. Frausto grabbed a baton, and in briefs and an undershirt, he dove into the water.

The Navy had taught Frausto how to swim, how to hold his breath, how to manage under the water.

So he broke the car’s back window and tried to get at the lady in the driver’s seat. A few minutes later, someone else jumped in, too. They felt the lady’s hand but couldn’t get her free. Then the divers came in their ice water suits to protect them from the 40-degree water.

“You’ve done enough,” the divers told him.

It was South Holland firefighters who ultimately pulled Helen Wallace, 87, out of the retention pond after breaking the front window of her silver Buick and cutting her seat belt, South Holland Fire Chief Don Bettenhausen said.

A Phoenix resident known to be religious, she was driving near her home in the 600 block of 153rd Street, not far from the mayor’s house, when something happened near the Phoenix-South Holland border.

Maybe her car’s hood popped up, Phoenix Police Chief Mel Davis said at the scene. Maybe something happened with her health, he guessed. No skid marks showed on the asphalt so it’s likely she didn’t hit the brakes before crashing through the fence, up the embankment and into the scummy water.

She wasn’t breathing when she was pulled out, officials said. She didn’t have a pulse. She had spent multiple minutes in the pond.

Responders performed CPR on the scene and were able to get her heart beating again.

Then they rushed her to Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey. She died Saturday afternoon at the hospital in Harvey, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Some ladies from the Daniel Chapel AME Zion Church rushed to the pond Friday and were stunned to recognize their friend’s car. They had just seen her at Wednesday morning Bible study.

They heard that a lady had been fished out and resuscitated.

“I pray it’s not her,” Dorothy Allen said.

They left before finding out for sure.

Officer Gerald Shives said he was the second officer on the scene but did not dive in.

“I could hear the lady screaming, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying,” Shives said. “I was trying to tell her to get into the back seat.’’

Frausto will be nominated for a life-saving award, Davis said.

But Frausto, still shivering, still clutching his cut-up hand, was intent on finding the name of the firefighter who jumped in right after him, and happily, finally did: Charles Smith.

By the end of the day, some 75 firefighters, divers, police and other emergency rescue workers had congregated at the rescue scene, from Hazel Crest and Oak Forest and as far away as Frankfort and Lynwood. Davis was grateful for the help, which just showed up in his town of about 2,000.

As neighbors chatted and snapped photos, officials dragged the car out of the pond, its hood popped up and its windows broken.

And they used sonar and more divers to scan the pond. Initial reports said two people had been in the car. They wanted to make sure the water at the Rupari Food Services plant, 15600 Wentworth Ave., South Holland, was clear.

Frausto spoke with Wallace’s family at the hospital but never got to meet the woman he pulled from the water. On Saturday, he still was recovering from the cuts he suffered in the water and grateful to all the authorities who came to help.

“It does feel pretty bad,” Frausto said. “It’s part of the job sometimes. I wish it had turned out better, but it didn’t.”

Contributing: Sun-Times Media, Victoria Johnson, Joe Biesk

As published in the SouthtownStar, April 3, 2011, early edition.

‘Blast from the past: Witnessing the first H-bomb’

Way out in the South Pacific, some 35 miles from Eniwetok Island and nearly 60 years ago, the countdown aboard the ship began.

Ten. Nine.

Rae Callicoat looked down at his boots through the dark goggles supplied to him. He couldn’t see his shoes through the black lenses.

Eight. Seven. Six.

Callicoat’s long shirt sleeves were buttoned tight, his long pants were tucked into the military-issue boots, no matter the lousy heat so close to the equator.

Five. Four.

Someone told the crew of Operation Ivy which direction to face, back toward the island.

Three. Two. One.

A sunburst erupted.

The hydrogen bomb detonated, illuminating the ship’s deck, Callicoat remembered.

“Then you heard noise,” he said.

“The next thing you saw was out there, way out there, the water coming out.

“Then you could see that cloud — up, up, up, up and getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger and bigger.

“Then you felt the ship. The captain of the ship, he hit the rudder and the engines and started to get farther away.”

Callicoat, a longtime Southlander now retired in Park Forest, witnessed the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb, called “Mike,” on Eniwetok, in November 1952.

He’s a rare bird, according to an area history professor, one of only a handful of Americans to witness a nuclear bomb.

His family recently gave him a tape recorder so he can share his life stories, starting with the big one: Witnessing the H bomb.

Operation Ivy

Callicoat landed in the South Pacific working not for the military but for Holmes & Narver, which had a contract with the Atomic Energy Commission.

He was one of four children born to farmers in southern Ohio, Lawrence County, in a house he said had no telephone or electricity until he graduated high school.

That was 1942. World War II was in full swing, but Callicoat said he couldn’t go. The draft board deemed him “4F” because of a bum ankle.

The day after Christmas, Callicoat’s father bundled him onto a Greyhound bus destined for Dayton. At one of the stops along the way, Callicoat picked up a newspaper and found an ad he wanted to pursue.

Once in Dayton, he found the Holmes & Narver office.

“I said, ‘I want one of these jobs,’ ” he said. “Two days later I was on an airplane headed for San Francisco.”

Callicoat bounced between the Pacific and the West Coast, traveling by China Clipper.

By 1952, Callicoat had the security clearance for Operation Ivy, the code name for the development of the H bomb, a bomb to eclipse the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.

The United States, history professor Peter N. Kirstein said, was ramping up its nuclear arsenal against its Cold War rival, the Soviet Union. The Soviets took just four years after the United States bombed Japan to get their own nukes.

“Once they got the A bomb in 1949, the arms race was on. So the (H-bomb) testing was an all-out effort on the part of the U.S. to be the dominant nuclear power in the world,” the St. Xavier University professor said.

Callicoat’s specific role was keeping track of scientific equipment used at the test site. In a pinch, he stepped in to man some of the controls, but most of his work dealt with records.

To test the first bomb, Callicoat said, the crew built a long wooden tunnel and put a plastic tube inside that was filled with helium.

Then they set Mike off. His blast measured 10 megatons, or 10 million tons, Kirstein said. The bomb that wiped out Nagasaki measured about 20 thousand tons.

‘Loyal service’

For his troubles, the company thanked Callicoat with a certificate for his work on the tests at the Eniwetok Proving Ground. It reads “in recognition of your loyal service as an employee of Holmes & Narver Inc.”

The U.S. government tracked Callicoat down again in 1978 to ask about his health as part of a study the Defense Nuclear Agency was conducting on possible links between low levels of radiation and disease.

Callicoat responded. His health has been good. He’s had a few minor issues that don’t seem to be related to radiation, he said.

He had moved to Chicago in 1956 and worked for the publisher Prentice Hall. He raised kids in Chicago’s South Shore community. The Callicoats also lived in Alsip and Mokena. Callicoat moved to a retirement community in 2009.

Now in his little room, with all his papers carefully filed, he’ll sit with the tape recorder.

As published in the SouthtownStar, March, 8, 2011, on page 10.

‘Cops have long wait at courthouse’

JOLIET — All morning, a buzz fills the hallway outside the six courtrooms on the Will County Courthouse’s felony floor.

Police officers gossip, defendants consult with attorneys, mothers hurry children to restrooms. Bodies keep the fourth floor’s slatted, blond-wood benches occupied.

During an ongoing fatal DUI trial against Cecil Conner Jr., two well-dressed witnesses have been near-constant fixtures in one set of seats. As other witnesses march in and out, Sgt. Gerald Ruff and Det. Peter Fajman have spent 13 — or maybe 14 or 15 — weekdays waiting. They sit in seats in the hall since witnesses can’t listen to testimony in the courtroom.

And the two Steger officers constitute a good part of the state’s case against the accused drunken driver, Cecil Conner Jr.

The pair also were needed as witnesses during the defense’s pre-trial motions, delayed first by new evidence, then for other witnesses, then snow. They were retained for the defense and then for the state’s rebuttal, all of which ended Friday afternoon. Closing arguments are scheduled for today.

They had been sitting out in the hall hoping every day was their last there.

On Friday, finally it was.

Ruff, a DARE officer by day, relied on his phone to keep him occupied. It’s hard to do so much nothing, he said.

Fajman made slow slaloms down the hall and back.

Ruff and Fajman were dressed and ready to dance. But with few exceptions during the weeklong trial, the two were more like wallflowers.

Their boredom filled the space in an otherwise empty hallway.

Ruff testified Feb. 14. He was the first responder when the Chevrolet Cavalier skidded almost sideways across a lawn along Steger Road and a tree impacting right where little Michael Langford Jr. was strapped into a booster seat.

Fajman took over the case’s investigation as a Steger detective and did the interview that led to Conner’s arrest. But as a part-time Steger Estates firefighter and EMT, he first helped a wobbly Conner into the ambulance. His main testimony came Tuesday.

By Thursday afternoon, some Steger 911 dispatchers had left the courthouse, released from their own subpoenas so they could return to work.

With them went the new blood to talk to.

The judge got back on the bench after a break and everyone scrambled to get back in where the action was — everyone but the two officers.

On his way in Thursday, the lead defense attorney hollered out the courtroom door, “I’ll call you when I need you.”

Then an hour later, he reappeared to say, “Hang in there, guys.”

Snowbaby: the slideshow

Photos by Brett Roseman.

I did the sound, all in one day, after the story was written.

Agonized over the pacing on this one: Snowbaby

How to set the scene? How to pace the drama? Pacing is most what I thought about here to nail the tension as best I could.

One day’s work, reporting and writing and editing.

The well-wishers were right. “Snow’s coming? So’s your baby,” the friends and relatives teased a very pregnant Libby Whitney.

Bet you’ll go into labor during the storm, they told her on her Facebook page.

But Libby had been though birth before with her 4-year-old, Ben.

The Whitneys wanted to be parents from the time they met, in college singing a cappella at the University of Illinois. At 31, he still leads a choir in Arlington Heights. She, 30, stays home with Ben.

She went to bed Tuesday night in her Oak Lawn home feeling just fine, and optimistic her baby would stay put as wind and snow swirled furiously outside.

Just in case, she sent Ben for a sleepover at her mother’s house. And at 10:30, Libby nodded off.

At midnight, some little pains began, minor contractions. Could it be? At 1 a.m., her husband, Ken, headed outside to shovel. Already, 4-foot drifts rested against the house and drive thanks to a wide-open park across the street. He couldn’t see the street. He couldn’t see anything.

They started praying: Please, let a snowplow come down our street.

At 2 a.m., she knew Ken couldn’t move all that snow. He didn’t even have a snowblower. She called police on the nonemergency line: “I’m very pregnant. I might be starting labor. Any chance you could plow our street?” Libby’s contractions kicked in hard. They hastened to eight minutes apart. Time to roll.

She dialed 911, then hollered out to Ken: Get in here. Don’t kill yourself shoveling. I’m going to need you tonight.

Oak Lawn paramedics got another call Wednesday night from some neighbor of the Whitneys.

Spotted: A guy shoveling his driveway. His wife’s pregnant. We think they need help.

Soon, an Oak Lawn ambulance and two fire department plow trucks appeared and two guys got out and started shoveling. Three paramedics helped Libby into the back of the ambulance, ready to birth the fourth Whitney themselves if they had to.

Don’t worry, they told her. This is no big deal.

They drove out to Kostner Avenue at 108th Place, where the Whitneys live, and beelined for the hospital. Ken rode up front.

“When we got on 95th Street, we were fishtailing in the paramedics’ truck,” he said.

“The guys were saying we never would have made it even if we did get out of our driveway. Our street was so bad we wouldn’t have made it to the cross street.”

The ambulance arrived just before 4 a.m. Their doctor arrived just in time, right before Libby was ready to push. He had shoveled out his Orland Park driveway and drove in.

Libby managed to stick to her natural birth plan. And Lucy Elizabeth was born, 9 pounds, 211/2 inches, at 6:25 a.m.

“People are calling her the blizzard baby,” Libby said.

Her blood type’s different from her mom’s, which led to some complications after she was born. She needs an IV, some light therapy and a few more days under the hospital’s watchful eye. Her parents won’t take any more pictures until her tubes are all out. Her mother will be sent home before her.

It’s a bittersweet tinge to this otherwise happy ending.

“But given the way we got in here,” Ken said, “this is nothing.”

As published in the SouthtownStar, Feb. 5, 2011

‘Christ Hospital employees won’t stop helping’

Even in a major blizzard, life inside a trauma center goes on according to plan.

As the storm descended Tuesday evening on the Southland, doctors and nurses at Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn implemented the plan: Code White.

Some slept at the hotel next door Tuesday night to keep up staffing levels. Some worked on the fly, filling in where they could. Plows stepped it up around the hospital, keeping roads clear for emergency vehicles.

But life went on in a deadly storm. And nine lives came to be.

Nine blizzard babies were born, a hospital spokesman said, between 3 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

‘I guess I can make it’

In the frigid dark at 6 a.m. Wednesday, a flock of nurses set out from the Hilton Oak Lawn for their 7 a.m. shifts at Christ Medical Center. The shuttle couldn’t get into the hotel driveway, so three of the nurses walked to Cicero Avenue and down to 95th Street, four blocks to the hospital.

“I guess I can make it,” thought Elsie Ervin. No matter her 70 years nor her replaced hip. No matter the arthritis in her knees. Her line dancing keeps her agile enough, she figured.

“Of course, that’s like walking 10 miles in the snow,” she reflected later.

Ervin signed up for her shift, knowing that younger colleagues had children at home who needed them. She planned to sleep at the Hilton Tuesday night with other staffers, knowing she wouldn’t be able to drive to and from her Calumet City home.

Besides, no one needed her at home. At the hospital, her female patients were counting on her.

But as she walked to the hospital, she faltered. The snow was very deep. The other nurses had just met Ervin minutes before, but they came to her aid. Bernadette Scott stayed with her. Another, Joyce Emerson, went ahead a little, flagged down a police vehicle, begged a ride for Ervin.

“She didn’t have any gloves and we gave her some gloves, and she had all her bags and everything and she started walking,” Scott said.

Oak Lawn police officer Benjamin Hahn agreed to give them a ride, Ervin said, “because of my being an old lady.” There was room for all in his yellow Hummer.

“Elsie could hardly get up into this Hummer. We shoved her up in there, and we got to the hospital,” Scott said.

The nurses made it to Christ half an hour early — Ervin to her floor, the other two to the special surgical-neurosurgical intensive care unit.

“It was like a blessing for the three of us to have made it,” Ervin said.

“That was more than a blessing,” Scott told her. “That was a gift.”

Talk about dedication

The call came to Shelly Churchill about 6 a.m. Wednesday. Other nurses had called in to her cardiac procedure recovery unit at Christ Medical Center, unable to get in for work, a supervisor said. Could she try, please, and fast?

Churchill, 52, took one look at the garage at her home in Chicago’s Beverly community and knew she wasn’t driving anywhere. She grabbed her husband, Tony, to accompany her on the four-mile trek to the hospital.

The couple headed straight down 91st Street on a dark and silent morning. They stuck to the street, taking the brunt of the wind on their side. Western Avenue was deserted, ghostly.

By Evergreen Park, they migrated over to 93rd Street. Debated 95th Street but feared the traffic. Then they headed south on Kostner Avenue.

“We walked in the street the whole time,” Churchill said. “Thank God, there were not a whole lot of drivers.”

She was warm enough, in proper Chicago winter gear. She does the trip often, though typically on her bicycle. She’s active, works out a ton.

And the cardiac unit needed her skills in this kind of weather. Shoveling such deep snow can be heart-attack work. And she was there for them.

‘Digging out in Oak Lawn’

“Are you done yet? When can we go out?” Kevin Mallo’s three little kids bugged all morning as he and his wife, Karrie, pushed the snow around in front of their Oak Lawn house. Snow had blanketed their block and the 7-, 5- and 3-year olds desperately wanted to play.

Karrie wielded the snowblower belonging to her next-door neighbor, stuck inside with the flu. In a neighborly pact, she cleared his walk, too.

Around 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, Kevin was cleaning up the edges with a shovel, even as snow kept falling hard, determined to stay ahead of the inches. Earlier in the morning, he’d struggled to push his front door open.

Snow on the Mallos’ side of the street, the east side, drifted as high as four feet, deeper than their kids are tall.

The 9500 block of Knox Avenue was a paradox of the storm in Oak Lawn, where snow piled feet high in spots and blocked doors, or had been blown away altogether, leaving a coating or even bare pavement.

“I don’t see 17 inches of snow,” Bill Marsh said from across the street, on the west side of Knox.

Marsh had cleared the sidewalk outside his little brick rancher with an orange shovel, the kind with the bent handle that plowed easily through four or five inches lying there.

“When a little snow falls, I got to go outside,” the retiree said. “I can’t let it beat me.”

And though he’d laid in a stash of frozen pizzas, he had ventured outside early Wednesday morning, for one thing: Alas, his SouthtownStar newspaper.

Published on www.SouthtownStar.com, Feb. 2, 2010