Jeffrey King lived for his orange and white weekends, but five minutes of football shook his faith in the team he loved.
by Andrew Reilly

The wind howls as the November cold attacks the souls hearty enough to make the trek here. Scores of men and women have arrived for their weekly ritual of self-sacrifice, gathered on another Sunday at the Cubby Bear to give what they can for the cause they so passionately believe in: the Cleveland Browns.

Clad in their tribe’s traditional orange and brown, they’ve spent the past week girding for battle. Their jerseys are their armor, their dog masks and hardhats their helmets.

From television sets blaring along the eastern and western walls, the Sunday sports pundits hold court while the crowd sneers at their so-called wisdom. The air reeks of last night’s stale cigarette smoke and this morning’s brunch buffet as the patrons steel themselves with platters of scrambled eggs and tumblers of Bloody Marys.

They each have different ways of pledging their allegiance but all came here to the Cubby Bear sports bar in Chicago for the same reason: In just a few hours, the Browns will take the field against the Cincinnati Bengals, and no one here has any intention of missing a second.

Especially the man at the center of the room. On the surface, he doesn’t look like anything more than a casual fan. Sure, he wears his trademark white Bernie Kosar jersey, its brown numerals the inspiration for the “19″ nickname given to him years ago by the folks in this room. But he bears no tattoos of the team logo, wears no giant foam fingers reading “We’re #1.” By appearances, he’s just another guy wearing Browns gear in a room full of guys wearing Browns gear.

In street clothes, his athletic build and nondescript fashion sense better reflect the weightlifting and running regimen that dominates his weeknights than the liquor and chicken wings that dominate his Sundays. Still, he woke early today and got to the bar as soon as he could. “Beer and Browns,” he tells those around him, “no better way to spend a day.”

Certainly not for him. For here is a man who knows the Browns’ history better than most people know their own. He knows the going rate of Browns memorabilia, like the 1995 Michael Dean Perry figurine atop his television. Or the framed aerial photograph of Cleveland Municipal Stadium that hangs on his living room wall. He can instantly recall where he was when someone was signed, drafted, injured, released or traded. He can go on at length about the civic betterment brought about by not selling the naming rights to Browns Stadium or how engineers turned 5,000 cubic yards’ worth of the old Cleveland Stadium into an artificial reef in Lake Erie, and can just as easily talk about fond boyhood memories of game day in Cleveland.

“There’s nothing like it,” he says with a smile. “You walk up that ramp and step out into the stands, and all you can see is orange and brown. Little kids holding signs, people who’ve been tailgating since 5 in the morning, everyone in the place screaming for the Brownies to come out and tear it up. You see the guys in the Dawg Pound getting the crowd worked up. It’s like a church, but better.”

His name is Jeffrey Dennis Timothy King – Jeff to his family, Dennis to some friends, Denny to others, The Browns Guy to his co-workers. And today he is more excited to watch football than he has been since he first started watching it thirty-one years ago as a newborn cradled in his mother’s arms or held upright in his father’s lap; more than when he went to his first Browns playoff game in 1994. He’s more excited than when the Browns returned to the league in 1999. Today, he’s certain, is going to be a good day.

It is an optimism based on little more than his own enduring faith, a sucker’s belief as trusting as Charlie Brown running to kick the ball one more time before Lucy’s inevitable betrayal.

Case in point: One week earlier, the Browns were hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Steelers were playing terribly. It was a cold and rainy afternoon at Cleveland Browns Stadium, and with five minutes left in the game the Browns were up 20-10. It wasn’t the Super Bowl – there would be no Super Bowl this year for Cleveland Browns fans – but victory over the Steelers . . . that was almost as good.

“We had it,” King says. “I mean, we were going to win. No question, lock it up, put it down. Goodnight Pittspuke.”

Pittspuke. The enemy. The evil team in black and gold. Everything the Browns have always wanted to be: winners. Since 1950, the year the Browns entered the National Football League, these two teams have fought for supremacy in the American rust belt, and since then it’s usually been the Steelers atop the pile. Separated by a mere 134 miles, the two cities are remarkably similar in their histories and demographics. The fates of their football teams, however, could not be more different. The Steelers have won both times the two met in the playoffs and, more painfully for Browns fans, Pittsburgh’s five Super Bowl victories are five more than Cleveland’s.

“I’m not sure rivalry’s the right word any more,” The Browns Guy says with a laugh. “More like hate and…”

He pauses. His voice turns bitter. “Hate and envy. They’ve won. We haven’t.”

Growing up in Cleveland you learn to live with defeat. You spend your life surrounded by factories closing and people moving away. You learn your city’s population has been shrinking for the past seventy years, thanks in no small part to the mass exodus to the suburbs in the 1950s, the city’s race riots in the 1960s, and Mayor Dennis Kucinich defaulting on Cleveland’s debts in 1978. You read in the newspaper that your city has the highest poverty rate in America. You endure countless jokes from out-of-towners about how Lake Erie caught on fire, then suffer the embarrassment of having to explain that it wasn’t the lake but the Cuyahoga River. As if that’s somehow better. And if that’s not enough, your favorite teams, well, suck.

But you love them. More than anything. Companies come and go, but the team remains. Everything else may vanish, but the game is still on.

It’s no overstatement. Browns Backers Worldwide, Cleveland’s official football fan organization, boasts more than 48,000 active members – more than the New York Yankees, more than Manchester United, more than any other team in the world – with chapters established as far away as Branimirova, Croatia and Misawa, Japan. That the team has such a less-than-storied tradition speaks to the loyalty the team inspires.

“It’s the sports version of staying in an abusive relationship,” King says. “They knock us down more and we love them more.”

For people in most cities, the game ends and life goes on. For Browns fans and for people from Cleveland (which, the Browns Guy says, are one and the same), autumn Sundays run much deeper than that.

The problem, as King will readily tell you, is that one important being who is clearly not a fan. God, he will tell you, hates Cleveland sports.

To hear his version of it, there is no other possible explanation for the city’s long, sordid history of failures and near misses. Other teams get up and get better. Other fans are given something to cheer about. In Cleveland, you know better than to get your hopes up. When their teams take the field, it’s not a matter of hoping for victory; it’s a matter of hoping the natural order of the universe will somehow reverse itself.

Cleveland fans don’t romanticize this the way some other fanbases do. In Boston, they reveled in the Curse of the Bambino. Novelists and sportswriters around the country penned big wet kisses to Fenway Park. On the North Side of Chicago, Cubs fans will point with a defiant pride to the Curse of the Billy Goat, use it as a way to make losing lovable and to justify filling postcard-perfect Wrigley Field no matter how bad the team. But those cities have also experienced dynasties. From the Boston Bruins’ two Stanley Cups in the 1970s, to the Celtics’ three NBA championships in the 1980s, to the Chicago Bulls’ six NBA titles in the 1990s, to the New England Patriots’ three Super Bowl victories in this decade alone. A championship pennant now flaps over Fenway Park.

Yet somehow people still lavish sympathy on those cities and those “poor folks” who love those poor teams. Cleveland enjoys no such loving pity. The Cleveland fan is left to suffer in silence, penance for the sin of being born in a city whose history has earned it billing as “the mistake on the lake.”

No one pens poems about Jacobs Field and no one ever dreamed up a curse on which to blame the disappointments. God hates Cleveland sports, as The Browns Guy says, and history is all the evidence any Cleveland fan needs to prove it.

Ask and they shall tell you: About The Drive, where the Browns were five minutes away from going to the 1987 Super Bowl before the Denver Broncos pulled a “miraculous” come-from-behind victory.

About The Fumble, where this time those same Browns were one minute and two yards away from sending the 1988 AFC Championship game into overtime and watched it tumble away when Cleveland running back Ernest Byner fumbled, punching another Super Bowl ticket for the Broncos.

They’ll tell you about former Browns owner Art Modell shutting down the team in 1995, setting up shop in Baltimore, and giving that city a Super Bowl champion after only five years.

And they’re just getting started.

They’ll tell you how the Cavs have never won the NBA Championship. How twenty-eight other teams have won a World Series since the Indians did it last in 1948; about Super Joe’s bad back, John Smiley breaking his arm in the bullpen, or Jack McDowell’s elbow giving out once the Indians got ahold of him. Mark Price’s ACL. Red Right 88. Keith Foulke. Atlanta 1995. Ray Chapman. Kellen Winslow II. The Shot. Game 7 at the Palace.

And they’ll defy you to claim sports disasters of this magnitude happen this regularly to other cities. In the eye of the Clevelander.

And yet … for a few glorious hours that Sunday at the Cubby Bear, when the Browns had their foot on the Steelers’ neck, none of that mattered to King. Browns 20, Steelers 10. Five minutes to go. Start celebrating, he thought. He saw the happy looks and the high-fives, felt the warm feeling of good will spread through the room. People smiled, laughed. Chants erupted. One side of the room: “Here we go Brownies, here we go”; the other side responding: “Woof! Woof!” They knew they were going to win. Nothing, not even God Himself could ruin this one.

Well, it might not have been God — who knows? But something told the Browns defense to suddenly quit. Something lifted the Steelers and carried them 79 yards down the field. Something put that ball in Willie Parker’s hands and shoved him into the end zone.

Browns 20, Steelers 17.

Okay, King thought. No big deal. Four minutes left. Just run the clock and keep the damn ball and we’ve got this. He looked around. Doubt darkened faces that shined with delight only moments earlier. They had seen this movie before.

“Don’t worry,” he said, trying to rally them, “not even we can blow this one.”

Browns ball. Quarterback Charlie Frye is sacked. A short pass. An incompletion. A decent punt return. Suddenly, the Steelers’ had the ball again. Seventy-seven yards to the end zone. Three minutes to go.

King fell silent. Other fans held their head in their hands. A few prayed. Please God spare us thy divine wrath just this once.

Incomplete. Relief. Short pass. Incomplete. yes! Long pass. Oh God. Short pass. Oh please. Run. Pass. Pass. Run. Touchdown.

Twenty-seven seconds on the clock.

Browns 20, Steelers 24.

Un-friggin believable.

But fate wasn’t done twisting the knife. A few short passes put the Browns 22 yards away from a miracle victory of their own. Three seconds left. Charlie Frye took the snap, ran back, threw left to Braylon Edwards . . . and . . .

Game over.

Browns lose.

Browns lose.

The Browns Guy stood numbly, looking helplessly at the other fans. Tears filled the eyes of some. Others simply stood up and walked out. More than a few headed straight to the bar downstairs.

How? Why? Against this team, in this game?

The Browns Guy sat down without saying a word. His friends left him alone to contemplate the agony of what had happened. The Browns had blown it in the worst way possible. To the goddamned Steelers.

King had always defended his team, no matter how painful the loss. And he had always come back for more. Charlie Brown. But this time, this was it. No more. “I couldn’t stand the thought that this was what the rest of my life was going to be like if I stuck with this team,” he says.

He half-watched the rest of the afternoon’s games, then decided it was time to go. Enough was enough. As dusk gathered, he bid goodbye to a few friends. He decided to walk home. His mind flashed to the pictures and souvenirs there, the books and T-shirts and all the other reminders of a life spent devoted to heartbreak. No reason to hurry back to that, he thought.

Walking down Clark Street, he saw a young man with his arm around a young woman. Both wore Cleveland Browns sweatshirts. Both had obviously been crying. King and the couple stopped, exchanged a knowing glance, and kept moving.

Any other day running across a Browns fan and he would have stopped and chatted. But not after that. What was there to say? ‘Wow, we sure fucked it up today.’ No thanks,” King says.

When he reached his apartment, King did not turn on the TV. He did not call any of his friends or his family. He made himself dinner, then sat alone in the quiet of his apartment. The questions continued to torment him. How could this be? How did the Browns manage to lose a game that even the Browns couldn’t lose? Why did it have to be against Pittsburgh? Does anything good ever happen?

And the big one: now what? “It was just like ‘is there any point in this? What am I getting out of this any more?’ You root, you cheer, you believe and you spend your life just wanting to see this team win and instead all you get is people crying in the streets!”

He went to bed early that night, too weary to do much of anything else.The next morning, he called his boss.

“I’m not coming in today,” he said. “Personal reasons.” He turned over and went back to sleep, wrapped tightly in the bedding he had received for his last birthday – brown, orange and white.

That day he watched old NFL Films videos about the Browns. He flipped through books about the teams and players he grew up loving. He read the flaming posts on Browns message boards.

“I’m burning my jerseys,” one person wrote, words that resonated. He himself had thought about torching his beloved Bernie Kosar jersey.

He tried to find something positive in all of this. He wanted to think that it would get better, that this was just an isolated incident. But then he thought back to those previous disasters and realized it was pointless. No good could come from sticking with this team, he thought. They were going to keep letting him down and only a sucker would keep going back for more. Charlie Brown. He was done.

Wednesday morning, he called in sick again as he sank into another day of wallowing in grief and pain. Friends and relatives kept calling and e-mailing. He ignored them.

And suddenly, like a bolt of orange and brown lightning, the answer hit him.

“I started thinking about everyone who wanted to talk. They wanted to talk about what happened and make sure [I was] okay,” King says. “I mean, I’m sitting in my apartment hurting so bad over this, but guess what? So is everyone else. It’s not just me. Everyone felt that game. Everyone hurt from it.” Like any great loss in life, he says, you get through with the support of your loved ones, of your family and of your friends. Like the ones he’d been ignoring, forgetting he was not alone in his misery.

The family and friends that were looking for him were the same family and friends he had spent his entire Browns-backing life with. Family members he had little else in common with but blood and football. Friends he would go on vacations with to watch their favorite team hit the field. The people he had built a life with based around the one passion at the center.

The Browns were the link between King and his loved ones, and suddenly he understood that it wasn’t about the game (well, maybe just a little) but about what the game brought to those watching. Joy. Heartbreak. Bonding. Shared good times and cherished memories. The Browns were his connection to the people and the city he had once called home.

“My mom and dad, my grandpa and grandma, my uncles and aunts,” he adds later, “all Browns fans all the way. Everyone in town is.”

He went into his kitchen, sat down at his computer, and started getting back to those e-mails. No, he hadn’t disappeared. No, he hadn’t done something unspeakable. No, he hadn’t given up on the Browns.

Later that evening he called his father in Ohio. “I’m fine dad,” King recalls telling him. Then “Dad, how are you doing?” They talked into the night about the team, about the game, about the hated Steelers. By the time he hung up the phone, it all made sense to him. Don’t worry about the game; worry about everyone watching it with you. He wondered why it took him so long to realize this.

And no, he didn’t believe in the team anymore, at least not this year, not when they had just fallen into a distant last place with five games left. But that didn’t matter because yes, he would be at the Cubby Bear next Sunday. Big game against the Bengals. The Battle of Ohio, they called it. He wouldn’t miss it for the world.

“Besides,” he says, “what was I going to do? Root for the Dolphins?”

And, true to his word, he got here bright and early today, back in his trusty Bernie Kosar jersey and already making bold statements as to what would happen on the field this afternoon.

“We’re gonna win,” he announces brazenly at kickoff. As the afternoon progresses, he and the Browns Backers watch as the Bengals hand their beloved team a brutal 30-0 loss, but this time King knows he’ll be okay. No need to cry, he tells everyone. We’ll get ‘em next time.

And eventually, he still insists, they will. Until then, it’s a matter not of looking back but instead looking forward. To next week. To next year. To the next time one fan’s faith in their favorite team is finally rewarded.

How Annette Prince and her “army” of volunteers made Chicago skies safer for their avian friends. by Jason Porterfield

The city and its suburbs appear suddenly on the continent below, the homes and buildings and skyscrapers stark and looming after hundreds of miles of farmland and prairie. The flock that soars above this new and alien landscape has seen similar sights: the buildings and roads of Dallas, Little Rock and St. Louis. But nothing has been this vast.

Wing-to-wing, they draft on their leaders. The tired and weak move back to let the stronger fliers break the wind resistance. The wind acts in peculiar ways. Gusts off of Lake Michigan turn into updrafts and eddies as they encounter downtown walls and cornices, at times turning their airways into roaring, swirling currents.

Still, it is a good place to land in the spring. There are parks to rest in and fresh pools of water to drink. The older flock members guide the younger ones to the lakeshore and the wooded riverbanks. There they alight, roosting in the trees lining the city’s boulevards, casually befouling the salt-caked cars parked beneath. They visit backyard feeders stocked with seed for the spring migration season. They sing their songs deep into the night.

But, there is trouble here, too. Alley cats watch some of those feeders. Poisons mingle with edible refuse in city alleyways. Predatory birds—from owls and crows to peregrine falcons—swoop on smaller species. The weather shifts unpredictably well into April and May.

And high above the city sidewalks, one yellow-bellied sapsucker—a type of migratory woodpecker—encounters the most dangerous element of all.

Riding the city breezes, it winds its way towards an apparent patch of greenery, a planter situated beside a second-story window in a building near the intersection of Washington and Dearborn. It doesn’t realize that guarding the seeming resting spot is a plate of clear window glass, as hard and unforgiving as any alley cat. The sapsucker swoops, diving toward the inviting spot. It sails down, in full glide, almost there until it raps the glass and falls to the sidewalk.

Kevin Carroll works in an office near the crash site, near the downtown Hyatt Regency Hotel. He is also part of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, a sprawling, citywide network of office workers, birdwatchers, commuters, and animal lovers who take the time to rescue injured birds.

Just after dawn, Carroll stands on the street corner, holding a rustling paper bag out to Annette Prince, the group’s director. Tall and long-armed, he shivers slightly in the early morning breeze. The bag rustles. The paper bags, lined with tissue paper, are standard equipment for the bird monitors. This one is for the sapsucker.

“It might have a hurt wing,” Carroll says.

“I can’t tell about the wing,” answers Prince. “It might just have a concussion. The beak and eyes look all right, though. We’ll put a label on the bag before we send it to Willowbrook.” Willowbrook Wildlife Center, where her group takes many of the injured birds that they find. Carroll thanks her for stopping by for the bird before running back to his office building, late for a meeting.

Spring migration begins in mid-March and can last through May. During migration seasons, the Bird Collision Monitors start their days just before sunrise. Members arrive in the Loop before 6:00 a.m. to catch the previous night’s casualties. Four or five will work the Loop until mid-morning, when Prince figures most of the migrating birds would have settled into a safe place for the day. Today, Prince is “morning captain” of the West Loop Team. Her friend and another longtime member, Suzanne Turner, heads the East Loop Team.

At Washington and Dearborn, Prince takes the bagged bird in hand. A small woman with long brown hair and bright green eyes behind thick glasses, she snaps on a pair of latex gloves and opens the bag. Cupping her hands, she lifts the sapsucker clear of the opening and peers at it. Redheaded with speckled feathers on its back and a yellow-white breast, the bird sits quietly for Prince’s examination.

Birds fly around solid objects all the time. Trees look like trees, rocky cliffs resemble nothing more than rocky cliffs, and a windowless barn wall looks like something in between. But Chicago moved beyond barns long ago.

The steel and concrete skyscrapers of the Loop dwarf neighborhood two-flats and tower over the South Side’s shuttered factories. Their glass facades gleam throughout the day, and glow by night. Looking out over Lake Michigan, a person can see the city lights from Indiana, and even distinguish individual buildings by their illuminated outlines. The Hancock Building. The Sears Tower. The city’s wealth on display like a crystal chandelier.

To the migrating flocks of birds – estimated at 8 million in number – that pass through the city every spring and fall, they mean temptation, confusion, and death.

No instinct tells them how to deal with towering skyscrapers and their befuddling windows. Birds do not recognize window glass as a barrier. Drawn by reflective glass and the illusion of open space beyond, they crash into buildings. Or illuminated windows attract them during the night or early morning. The result is the same. They strike the glass and drop to the sidewalk, stunned, injured, or dead.

Prince knows some veterinary science, learned through a lifetime of working with wildlife. She could easily earn the license needed to administer anti-concussion shots to the birds she rescues, or get the permit that would let her take birds into her possession overnight. Prince prefers to leave the medical science aspect of animal rescue to others. For her, the weight of saving birds from the city’s sidewalks is enough.

Prince coordinates the movements of an ever-widening group of volunteers. She estimates their number to be around 80. She calls them her “army.”

People answer the group’s hotline, serve as drivers, hand out fliers, keep statistics, and walk the streets looking for stricken birds. This is the immediate circle. Among her group’s people, Prince also counts the doormen, sidewalk sweepers, custodians, newspaper vendors, and anonymous pedestrians who use the hotline when they find injured birds.

Robbie Hunsinger founded the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors in 2003, after observing birds crashing into windows and getting killed or injured. Tall and unassuming, Hunsinger is in many ways the opposite of Prince, who virtually pulses with energy. A Georgia native who studied classical oboe at the Cleveland Conservatory and occasionally played as a substitute with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, she ran CBCM from its inception until 2005. Though she remains committed to the group and occasionally works as a rescuer, Hunsinger felt the group’s growth demanded too much of her time. Prince is her hand-chosen successor.

Chicago Bird Collision Monitors came about though Hunsinger’s response to one deadly autumn morning. Her friend Ken Wysocki spent hours birdwatching in the South Loop. He began noticing increasing numbers of dead birds on the sidewalk. Wysocki correlated the increased death toll with the migratory calendar and found that the number of deaths increased as the peak migratory season approached.

Wysocki concentrated his birdwatching hours to early mornings and late evenings, discovering to his horror that birds were crashing into lit windows, battering themselves to death. Wysocki recruited Hunsinger, whom he knew from the Chicago Audobon Society, to help him collect data. They went out every morning to observe the collisions. They compiled statistics on the number of deaths, the species involved, and the location. On September 10, 2002, they found more than 80 dead birds within the single square mile that makes up the Chicago Loop.

Hunsinger took action that afternoon. She began calling building managers, asking them to turn their lights off at night. Most of the ones she reached listened, agreeing to keep their buildings dark. When Hunsinger and Wysocki made their usual circuit the next morning, they failed to find a single dead bird.

For the next few months, Hunsinger made the morning trip around downtown a vigil. She kept detailed notes on the dead birds she found, statistics that Annette Prince continues to keep. As she worked, she began talking to people she encountered. No one wanted to see a dead or hurt bird on the sidewalk, it seemed. Many people expressed support for her cause. Other bird watchers started going out with Hunsinger in the mornings. When Hunsinger first started rescuing birds, the only rehabilitation center she knew of was Fellow Mortals Rehabilitation, hours away in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. She began making contacts with more local rehabilitation centers soon after she found herself driving to Wisconsin several times a week.

In Spring 2003, Hunsinger formally founded Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. The group is an all-volunteer organization. No one draws a paycheck, there are no dues, and people are free to commit as much or as little time as they like. Some may volunteer for a couple hours every day. Others spend only one morning a month monitoring.

Before Hunsinger formed the group, the sapsucker likely would have been doomed. Predators, such as cats, rats, raccoons, and other birds pose the greatest threat to injured birds. Birds died from injuries or from shock. Cold or rain killed them, or they were inadvertently crushed by cars, bicycles, or careless pedestrians.

Ornithologists say that collisions are the second most deadly hazard facing migrating birds, behind only predation. The numbers are difficult to pin down, however, and could range anywhere from 97 million to 900 million birds killed annually from colliding with windows in the U.S. alone.

The numbers come through Prince’s science advisor Dr. Daniel Klem, Jr., a biology professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Klem is an expert on bird collisions. He devised the means of calculating the statistics, taking observations from bird watching groups dating back to the 1970s and basing his calculations on population numbers. Klem started working with the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors in 2004.

Annette Prince had been volunteering at the Flint Creek Rehabilitation Center when she found out about Chicago Bird Collision Monitors through one of Hunsinger’s outreach programs. She joined the group following a 2004 presentation Hunsinger gave for the Chicago Audobon Society.

Prince, a Cleveland native, grew up watching her backyard feeder in a city that she calls “notoriously inhospitable” to wildlife. She escaped Cleveland’s struggling economy thirty years ago, moving to Chicago right out of high school and falling into volunteer work with the Brookfield Zoo. Work in the zoo’s birdhouse awakened her passion for birding and led to her involvement with the Audobon Society.

With the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, Prince found an outlet for her energy and organizational skills. She walked the Loop, drove birds to rehabilitation centers, answered the group’s phone, and helped Hunsinger with her lectures. In 2005, Hunsinger asked her to take over as the group’s director.

Carrying the bagged sapsucker in one hand and her net—about the size of a whisk broom—in the other, Prince sets of for Federal Plaza, meeting up with Janet Pellegrini under Alexander Calder’s massive reddish-orange “Flamingo” sculpture. A woman who has spent the last 15 years working for the EPA, Pelligrini devotes her early mornings to scouting for injured birds.

Pelligrini has not picked up any birds this morning, though she has “chased a few doorstoppers.” The Bird Collision Monitors develop an eye for anything small and even vaguely bird-shaped. They willingly confess to chasing down candy wrappers in their search for birds.

“Yesterday, though, we had a sapsucker inside the Dirksen building. It must have gotten in through the revolving doors. I went in and then had to track it down. The speckled floor really almost matches their back feathers, but I found it and netted it,” Pelligrini says, proudly brandishing her net. Prince shows her the sapsucker, captured barehanded by Carroll.

“We don’t really advise that people catch them that way. The volunteers use whatever level of protection they’re most comfortable with. I always wear latex gloves and wash my hands afterwards. If it’s a raptor, I put these on,” Prince says, holding up a pair of gray leather gardening gloves.

Working at Hunsinger’s side, Prince was part of the group when Chicago became the first city in the U.S. to go dark for the 2003 spring migration. The darkening of the city took about six months, as Hunsinger maneuvered the miniature bureaucracies that govern every high rise. Custodians, doormen, and clerks willingly flipped switches, but she sometimes had trouble finding someone with the authority to order all of a building’s lights off.

Hunsinger’s long-awaited triumph came in late 2002, when she finally contacted Jim Baroni, manager of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower at Randolph and Columbus. Baroni agreed to turn out the lights in his building’s soaring atrium, the last of the danger spots Hunsinger had designated for darkness.

When the 2003 spring migration came, the group had convinced building managers throughout the Loop to participate in a blackout. Buildings 40 stories or higher turned off their external display lights—except those intended to warn low-flying aircraft—and dimmed interior lights. Some closed shades to avoid attracting migrating birds to the glass.

According to Prince, hundreds of birds used to die this way. Today, the Loop stays dark for the spring and fall migrations. Any manager who forgets to put out the lights receives a call from Prince, whose monitors keep an eye on the skyline.

Prince delights in marshalling her volunteers to action and likens herself to a general, constantly maneuvering against an enemy that threatens to engulf her and her allies. She knows their schedules, as well as their specific strengths.

Jim Tibensky’s schedule doesn’t permit much volunteering. Much of his time is taken up by his work as an attorney or kayaking. Prince refers to him as CBCM’s “aquatic unit” due to his skill at maneuvering a boat. Prince also cites her “bicycle cavalry” and “alpine unit” as instrumental in some of the group’s unusual rescues.

“We have volunteers go out all the time on bikes. They have to have racks and baskets, though, because you can’t hold more than a couple bagged birds and steer at the same time,” she says.

The “alpine unit” consists of any members willing to climb out of windows and onto upper-story atriums. The atriums—windowed, recessed spaces set into the upper floors of high-rise buildings that are designed to let natural sunlight into inner corridors—don’t pose a direct obstructive danger to the birds. They don’t crash into them. Instead, they may see plants set out on the balcony-like atrium floors and fly down. They aren’t harmed, but the atrium shafts don’t give them enough room to take off and fly away.

Prince herself is the group’s principal driver. She spends most mornings behind the wheel of her van, circling a block while her monitors check it for birds. When one of her monitors catches a bird, she drives around to pick it up. She keeps an eye out for injured birds even when driving, explaining this “cab driver mentality” as she executes a flawless three-point turn in the middle of LaSalle Street.

At the end of a morning, the back cargo hold of her green Plymouth minivan is stuffed full of birds in bags and boxes. Coconut air fresheners mask any bird smells. Today, she meets volunteer Suzanne Turner near the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive. Turner served as captain of the morning’s East Side Team.

Turner has had a busy morning, the trunk of her BMW sedan seemingly packed with brown bags. Many of them contain dead birds. The group saves the dead birds it finds and donates them to the Field Museum of Natural History, which uses them to research migratory patterns and behaviors.

One of Turner’s dead birds is a woodcock. Mottled brown and roughly crow-sized, the woodcocks move north along the area’s rivers. This one hit a building not far from Wacker Drive. The Bird Monitors, not wanting to antagonize building owners by giving away information that could bring bad publicity, are reluctant to name the site.

“They’re usually the first to arrive in the spring and the last to leave in the fall. This one was a little late. She was beautiful,” Prince says, examining the dead woodcock. She and Turner confer. Prince agrees to take Turner’s live birds, driving them to Willowbrook Wildlife Refuge in suburban Barrington. Turner will take the dead birds to the Field Museum.

Prince keeps the Bird Collision Monitors closely tied to other area groups interested in the more than 300 species that make up Chicago’s diverse bird population. She helped bring the CBCM into the Bird Conservation Network, a collective organization consisting of rehabilitation centers, conservation groups, bird watchers, and nature enthusiasts.

“When the group just started and it was only four or five people patrolling the whole Loop, they would sometimes just take the birds to Grant Park and let them go,” Prince says. “Now it feels like the whole city’s starting to wake up to these lives all around us.”

Today’s numbers aren’t huge, eleven live birds saved by Prince, another twelve by Turner. Many will go to Willowbrook until they recover from their concussions and traumas. Some will be released within hours. The more seriously injured may have to stay for weeks.

The sapsucker is one of the lucky ones. Noisily flapping in the bag throughout the morning, it’s clearly anxious to get out. Late in the afternoon, Prince calls Willowbrook. A volunteer has already taken the bird to the forest preserve. At the edge of the woods, she releases the catch on the cage the bird now occupies and swings the tiny door open. Her gloved hands reach in, cradling the sapsucker as she lifts it from the enclosure. She sets it on the ground, steps back a pace. It looks back at her for a moment, its tiny head swiveling as it hops forward. Another hop, and it takes to the sky.

To the untrained eye, the zoo is simply a place where animals live. Meet the woman who sees what you don’t. by Paige Gray

The sun finally breaks winter’s long, cruel hold and blesses the grounds of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo with a golden benediction. A girl barely old enough to walk sneaks under a fence to catch a closer glimpse of salmon-colored preening flamingos. An elderly couple, hand in hand, watches a Tibetan deer uses his immense antlers to maneuver a barrel around for some afternoon entertainment. Around the polar bear pool, a boy in a red ski cap jumps up and down, and yells in a thick Chicago accent, “Hey Ma, if we jumped in the water would we die ’cause the polar bears would eat us?”

And in front of a gorilla display at the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes stands Dr. Lisa Faust.

Like the vistors, she stares past the glass, captivated. With her blond hair barely touching her shoulders and her layman’s clothes, she looks like just another tourist, buoyant and youthful, smitten by the wonder. But while most visitors are drawn to a young child-ape playfully swinging from artificial vine to artificial vine, Lisa’s pale, intelligent blue eyes wander with a scientist’s scrutinizing gaze.

Indeed, Faust looks at these exhibits differently then the surrounding groups of students, young children, couples and families. They see an adorable, playful ape baby clowning on a vine. Lisa sees one small part of a much larger whole, a single family of apes in a whole populations. She see’s vast velds of mammals interacting, moving, migrating, communicating. Not just one baby ape, but tens of thousands.

Faust works and researches at Lincoln Park Zoo as a population biologist. Her job and research are complicated, but simply put, Lisa studies the growth and decline of certain animal populations to determine their future chances of survival.

It’s serious, heady, highly complex stuff, the kind that keeps her behind a computer many days. Still, in a flash, the serious scientist in her gives way to a little girl’s enthusiasm.

“Did you see the baby takin?” she prods John, her boyfriend and park zookeeper, referring to the newest addition to the zoo family, a rare yake-like Asian antelope species.

When they arrive at the exhibit, Baby, alas, has alredy been put away for the day. “But there’s the male!” Lisa gushes. “He’s pretty.”

From a young age, Lisa felt a passion for animals beyond the average child. She was the girl who always scooped up warty toads from the creek with her bare hands while other girls squealed in disgust.

“By the time Lisa was five or six, she was the one who would run down to the garden and pick up the frog or grass snake that had been discovered; her siblings were heading in the other direction,” recalls Ron Faust, Lisa’s father. Growing up with her parents, an older sister, Jennifer, and a younger brother John, Lisa relished her childhood, spending all the time she could with animals. She would sleep every night with one of her cats lying on her chest, the cat’s arms stretched up to Lisa’s neck. She whiled the hours away playing with bunnies and rabbits and caring for Archie, the family’s aging pony. Though too old to ride, Lisa found almost as much pleasure in simply brushing his hair and watching him graze through the pasture.

As she grew older, her amusement grew into a deep fascination. Travel introduced Lisa to the sheer diversity of animal life. Anytime the family went somewhere, Lisa begged to go to the nearest zoo or aquarium. A trip to the San Diego Zoo changed everything. San Diego’s large animal wild life park awed Lisa; she loved how the animals ran free throughout the park’s premises. It gave her a more realistic image of wildlife in a natural habitat.

Then the Faust family,including the 10-year-old Lisa, visited Hawaii..

“We went on a whale watch, and then I got whale crazy and wanted to be a marine biologist,” Lisa recalls. The exact moment of her sudden inspiration came with a whale breaching—the sleek mammal leaping completely out of the water then crashing back down in a cannonball splash—off the shore by their hotel. Lisa thought she found her career. Instead of spending her money on clothes or music like many girls her age, Lisa saved her allowance and baby-sitting money to join the Pacific Whale Foundation. “I wanted to study whales and do all that stuff, the whole ‘Save the Whales’ thing,” she says.

During her undergraduate years at Grinnell College, Lisa enrolled in different biology courses, unsure of what path to choose, but knowing she wanted to study animals not medicine. She discovered an interest in ecology. “I liked thinking about what’s happening with animal behavior and what’s happening with an entire population. The conservation biology aspects were really attractive to me . . . but I didn’t know exactly what all that meant.”

To find out, Lisa secured an internship doing whale research. It was good experience, she says, but made her realize it wasn’t really for her. She didn’t like that all of the research data came from underwater. For her, the only rush came in the few moments whales would come to the surface to breathe. “It was frustrating. We see about 10 percent of whales’ lives— the rest of the time they’re underwater.”

Eventually, she landed an internship at Lincoln Park Zoo researching a population biology project and “got hooked” to the vast challenge of tracking sexes, births, deaths and pedigrees in different animal populations.

Dr. Joanne Earnhardt, director of the Alexander Center for Applied Population Biology first met Lisa as an intern in the very Bronte-esque attic setting of their former office. “Lisa was literally in the rafters with the other intern students,” Earnhardt remembers. “She had one of the toughest projects—very computer-intensive and detail-oriented.”

In that particular project, Lisa worked with Earnhardt on to track male versus female births. The project required compounding data of many captive populations, focusing on births, deaths and growth rate over a period of time. All the information would then be stored in a database.

“I thought, ‘Wow, there is just a ton of data here to answer [ecological, biological] questions.’ I also sort of thought ‘Wow, its sort of nice to not have to be the person who is out in the field, collecting all this data.’ Especially from a population biologist’s standpoint; you want lots of years of data collected.”

Data sets may not inspire the thrill of a playful baby ape, but Lisa sees beyond the numbers to whole worlds of baby apes — and takins and gorillas. Lisa sees whole worlds. And how those worlds must be protected.

“We have a responsibility to, as much as we can, protect and conserve, not only a species, but an ecological system, a set of ecological relationships,” Lisa says. “I would be terribly sad if all the tigers were in zoos because I don’t think that is conserving tigers. It is conserving a species but not conserving [the environment] it evolved in. So I really think we have a responsibility, especially because we are the source of a lot of threats to those populations in the wild. We have a responsibility, when it is feasible, to make a change.”

This attitude secured Lisa a job at the Alexander Center after her internship and some time spent with AmeriCorps. Since then, she also completed her PhD from University of Illinois-Chicago, enabling her to be “taken more seriously” as a scientist.

“Lisa’s dedication is amazing to us,” Ron Faust says. “She works so hard on her research, her presentations, and her publications. Career is number one for Lisa. It took serious dedication to get her PhD completed as quickly as she did it while still holding down her job at the zoo the whole time.”

Equally rewarding was the chance for Lisa to travel to Tanzania in 2005 to actually see the elephant populations she had been researching on paper.

Collaborating with field researcher Charles Foley and his wife Lara, Lisa concentrated on a population study concerning the affects of elephant poaching on elephant family and group dynamics. Located in the heart of the Tarangire National Park, Lisa’s workspace transformed from a sterile building on the zoo grounds into an endless room lined with carpets of savannah grasses and walls of baobabs—massive, thick, trees that appear as if they’re upside down, with the branches looking like roots growing vertically.

Mornings in Tanzania began with an elephant search. Climbing into Foley’s Toyota SUV, Lisa and Foley would head out in hot pursuit of these enormous creatures, the largest living land species, standing up to 13 ft. and weighing sometimes 15,000 lbs. If either Foley or Lisa spotted little gray shapes off in the distance, Foley would veer off the path into the brush of the park and head toward the elephants. Recognizing Foley, the elephants would not run off, but occasionally would act out and do a fake charge or flap their vast ear out at them.

Foley named all the elephants, and Lisa familiarized herself with all their information as well as Foley’s personal stories and encounters with them.

“It was pretty cool driving up to Ophelia’s group,” Lisa says, after hearing numerous accounts of this matriarch. “When you see them, especially when you drive up to them, you’re at car level and they still just tower above you . . . [The first sighting] was pretty indescribable— just to anticipate it for so long and then see them up close and fairly oblivious to our car. One of my favorite sightings was when we came up to a very large male and a family group; the male was near a tree by the side of the road, and put his trunk and forehead against the tree and pushed it, and a ton of seeds rained down from the tree. He pushed the trunk a few more times, and then ambled around to the road and started picking up all the seeds, which were probably the size of coffee beans, up with his trunk. Smart guy.”

The hands-on research and exposure gave Lisa the chance to see her work materialize in front of her, and better understand the logistics of field research itself.

“I had seen the excel sheets with the data — which calves belonged to which mother, their estimated birth rates, and all those sorts of things — but I had never [seen the process] of collecting all this data.”

The days in Tanzania rolled by on the African savannah, surrounded by elephants, lions, giraffes, zebras and the occasional cheetah – sometimes coming almost close enough to touch. Some days, Lisa spent time naming elephants with Foley. A ‘Lisa’ elephant runs through the grasses of Tarangerie today. Other days, Lisa would try, and eventually succeed, in convincing Foley to use a system to organize all his data (“Of course I freaked out when I realized he had no back up”). As someone who deciphers patterns and numbers, Lisa requires strict methodology and orderliness. Besides the actual field research, flat tires, wet roadways and power outages played supporting roles in Lisa’s African production. But, eventually it was time to make the return trip to the zoo, taking with her an experience of a lifetime, but more importantly, bringing home useful information for her larger population studies.

“We really don’t know which species we need to save without understanding which species are declining,” Lisa says, explaining the necessity of population biology. “We can’t just pick where to focus our conservation energy and resources randomly — we need to know something about a population’s dynamics to know whether it’s at risk of extinction. Ignoring such studies might mean that we spend money on populations that are actually pretty secure, or we let a population decline to a point it can’t recover from, or we let a population expand to the point that it threatens other populations around it, including humans.”

In her studies, Lisa determines which species are thriving or declining. She must understand if species face the danger of overpopulation, which threatens other ecosystems, or if they face extinction.

Back at Lincoln Park Zoo, Lisa can now pour over her statistical data, comparing and contrasting population growth and decline. But the compiled, completed work fits into the grand scheme of the things, a “circle of life.”

“It is a pretty big piece, this question of population dynamics,” Lisa says.

The professional growth Lisa has made since coming to the zoo has proven to be an invaluable asset, colleagues note.

“Lisa has changed so much since taking her first job at Lincoln Park Zoo,” says Steve Thompson, head of the zoo’s conservation and science department. “She has always been thorough, well-organized, and meticulous with respect to projects and her research. However, as she progressed through her career — and graduate school — she not only became an excellent scientist, and an expert in demography — she became a leader.”

Lisa also realizes this coming-of-age since first coming to the zoo eight years ago. While earning her PhD, she admits to having no life outside the school and the zoo. Lisa pushed herself around the clock yet remained unsure of what to do with her education and experience. But with each year, with evolving confidence and knowledge, she slowly came to discover her role.

“When I first came I knew I was interested in zoos, and in conservation biology, but really had no distinct picture on how I wanted to pursue either of those as a career,” Lisa says. “The first few years when I was working as an assistant in the department, I learned so much about population biology, demography, and the way that zoo management works, and I really enjoyed it. As I went further in grad school and continued in the research, I started to slowly realize that I was one of “the experts” for some of this stuff in the zoo world—and people started coming to me as the expert. At first it was a little scary, but now it’s sort of an exciting role to fill.”

Without researchers like Lisa, zoos might not exist. They must uncover how animals interact with their own species and other species; they must consider the complex questions the everyday zoo visitor neglects. Lisa envisions zoos as having many purposes and functions. While a trip to the zoo provides an afternoon of family amusement, it can be something of much greater significance.

Beaming, animated children skip out of the penguin house, ready to explore and study a new animal and habitat. Attractive, college-aged couples jog across the grounds, taking in the sights and sounds of bufflehead ducks and harbor seals. The squirrels that inhabit zoo grounds may perhaps be the healthiest and happiest in the country. Plump and fluffy, one squirrel hangs from a man’s arm after eating food from his hand. Within this idyllic place lies a trove of buried treasure, purpose and potential.

“Zoos really serve three roles,” Lisa says, as she starts in on explaining a type of zoo mission statement, seemingly part of her livelihood. The first, Lisa explains, is the role of conservation and research, her forte. Behavioral study and research helps inform other scientists and the general public, and secures funding necessary for the zoo and further research. The second responsibility of a zoo therefore becomes education. “The zoo plays such an important role between people and animals, as well as kids and biology, kids and the diversity of life,” Lisa says. “Most of these children are never going to go to Africa and see a zebra in the wild. Even the farm animals—so many of the kids have never even seen farm animals because the live in the city. It is important to have a connection with these things; the world is not made up of urban environments.” The third role, of course, falls under the guise of entertainment, but Lisa believes education slips in here too. The value of advancing the zoo’s message and magnitude extends to every facet of Lisa’s life. She constantly reaches out to others in her field, trying to make them see what she sees.

“Maybe because her experience as an intern here was so positive and is still vivid she is a strong supporter of having interns in our department,” says Earnhardt. “She mentors them in all aspects of the job and their future careers.” Thompson also acknowledges Lisa’s contributions and her development as a scientist. “I am very proud of Lisa. She took her time, figured out what she wanted to do, worked toward it, and achieved the PhD while at the same time carving a niche for herself at the zoo,” Thompson says. “It’s always wonderful when a student makes the transition to colleague; it’s even better when he or she becomes better at something than the mentor: I now turn to Lisa for help with many aspects of demography and population biology.”

Lisa strolls past the various animal exhibits— the center for apes, the Regenstein African Journey, the Regenstein Small Mammal-Reptile House, and returns to her office in the zoo conservation building. Lisa stands out as one of the lucky ones among us; she is doing exactly what she wants to do — living her dream, one might say. She contributes in her own way to help animals, to preserve our eco-system.

“I’m not a field researcher; I know I wouldn’t want to devote my life to that. I collect data.” The reward for Lisa lies with finding and decoding the population patterns among species. She can ‘barometer’ a species, by looking at numbers over a period of time, gaining an understanding you cannot achieve in daily field research.

Not many people can say they’ve achieved what they have always wanted for themselves, even if that goal wasn’t exactly clear when a young Lisa muddied herself up to catch frogs.

Not many people can say they have a young elephant named after them running around Africa, either.

Though biased by his love for his daughter, Ron Faust may describe her role best.
“Lisa has taken her interest in animals all the way. It’s one thing to get into animals as a hobby and for many people animals are a number one avocation,” he says. “It’s quite another thing to dedicate all your effort into getting all the tools that might possibly help you answer real, scientific questions about animals and the survival of species on earth. Lisa has done this. Lisa can do a research project and finish it and get it written; in science and medicine, this is hard and not everybody can do all the steps. It’s difficult to predict what science will offer us in the future, but I believe Lisa has the tools and dedication to save a species someday.”

At the gorilla exhibit, children huddle around the glass, pushing in front of one another, each one trying to catch a glimpse of the human-like creatures, opposable thumbs and all. Lisa stands above the grade-schoolers, seeing more than just a gorilla.

What does she see?

Lisa sees pieces of a much larger puzzle, understanding these various animal exhibits represent the parts to the much larger whole of conservation— supporting and saving our ecosystem, species by species. Lisa puts herself behind the scenes at Lincoln Park Zoo; she doesn’t handle the animals, she handles the numbers. But these numbers reveal new questions, new answers and new worlds.

Michael McCarthy is a highrise climber, martial arts champion, sled hockey star and pal of the governator. Not bad for a ten-year-old double amputee.
by David Lanzafame

His hand gripping his crutch, ten-year-old Michael McCarthy gazes up into the stairwell of Chicago’s Aon skyscraper and its 1,628 steps to the top. Preparing to take his first step, Michael brushes back his blond hair. In his mind’s eye sees the finish line: his finish line. His legs are firm, balanced, still. But they are not flesh. Atop Michael’s sneakers are carbon fiber prosthetics.

Now, he lifts his left leg and, carefully, places it on the first stair, heel-first. He smiles.

Just five years earlier, he had to walk on his hands to get around his home. And he was good at it, too. He could push himself up stairs, pull himself into his bed or a chair, and could keep up with his brother, Tommy. He could count on his hands. He never dreamed that one day he could rely on his legs, too.

On this January morning, he can only hope. For it’s Michael’s four-year-old legs that are his only chance to achieve his goal of making 500 steps.

He looks over to Jeff Kohn, his teacher and mentor. Jeff Kohn will be his spotter today. As it happens, Michael is wearing the red, white and blue nylon team jacket for the North Shore Martial Arts Dojo, given to him by Kohn. It’s the same jacket Michael wore last year in California, where he met Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wanted to shake his hand.

Also with Michael is his mother, Julie McCarthy. She will follow the pair with water,
just in case. Days earlier, she had told Michael about the Aon Center’s 10th annual Step-Up for Kids Challenge. The organizers merely wanted his presence, but for Michael, that wasn’t good enough. “I want to do this,” says Michael – Climb.

Now, grabbing the banister, the boy with the carbon fiber legs begins to do just that.

His quest to climb the Aon Tower was only beginning. But Michael’s journey to that day began much earlier, back to the North Shore Dojo in Glenview, IL. He was five years old his first day at the martial arts school. The walls were covered with trophies and medals, earned from numerous tournaments and exhibitions by North Shore’s head teacher, Jeff Kohn.

A tall man with wide shoulders and grayish-black hair, Jeff had wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, faint lines formed from a lifetime of smiling. His voice rasps with age, but his biceps bulge under his karate uniform.

For 25 years, Jeff taught special needs children. His program taught balance, coordination and social skills to all sorts who are handicapped. But even he was taken aback when he met Michael.

Born in the southern region of Russia and adopted at age 4, Jeff learned, Michael suffered from Proximal Femoral Focal Deficiency (PFFD). A rare birth defect, PFFD deforms the pelvis, leaves 50 to 80 percent of the thighbone missing, and causes unstable knee joints, missing kneecaps and foot malformations. The cause comes from outside toxins or viral infections.

The extent of PFFD varies with each patient, but the treatment is the same: amputation with artificial limb replacement. Michael’s case was handled at the Children’s Memorial Hospital of Chicago where he was fitted with two above-the-knee prostheses made of carbon fiber.

Michael was already in rehabilitation. His presence at North Shore Dojo was for a sense of activity. “Tommy, his brother, was already in baseball,” says Julie. “Michael wanted to do something, he needed to do something.”

But Michael kept his head down. His eyes barely glanced at Jeff, and he barely answered when spoken to. “He’s just afraid of trying things,” says Jeff. He would start with Michael like he would with any student: with small steps.

Those small steps would be between two taut lines of rope stretched 20 feet across the dojo. Two ends wrapped around a support beam and two were tied to a ballet bar. Afternoon class was over. The gym was empty, quiet. Jeff convinced Michael to put down his crutches and try to walk using only these makeshift parallel bars. The exercise tested balance, but it also forced Michael to finally become acquainted to his new limbs.

Michael barely shuffled his feet. His white-knuckled hands gripped the ropes. He wanted to move, but he didn’t want to fall. Jeff encouraged, but didn’t rush him. Michael’s feet started to move. Slowly at first, then a little further apart, a little bit more, a bit more, until Michael took a step.

In time, Michael had enough coordination and balance to take larger steps, to walk a little faster. Eventually, Michael was balanced enough to walk without touching the ropes.

Then Michael fell. He didn’t shift his weight in time and tripped over his feet. He slammed against the ground, his head bouncing off the mat.

Jeff rushed over, but Michael waved him off. Then he reached up defiantly and grabbed the rope again. “I’m okay,” he said, pulling himself high enough to move his feet back into position before letting the rope go again. “I’m okay.”

With each passing month, Jeff saw Michael improve physically. Socially, Michael also flourished, making friends among his classmates. In time, Jeff offered to be one of Michael’s tutors. Every Thursday was study day for reviewing math, English and whatever else he learned in school. Jeff also helped Michael improve physically. Soon, Michael could toss a medicine ball and his 10 chin-ups were tops in his class.

In the Aon building, at 100 steps, Michael finds his rhythm. He tugs on the banister, and gains the next step, and the next, and the next. Jeff follows close behind. He promised $100 to Michael if he climbed those 500 steps. The pledge had the desired effect – strengthening the resolve of a boy who had never seen a $100 bill in his life.

Now, a group of firefighters marched by, single file, fully turned out in heavy helmets, coats and oxygen tanks. They tromp up the stairs past Micheal, but not before offering a word of encouragement or a quick thumbs up. They’re a team, just like Michael and Jeff.

Michael’s climb seemed extraordinary to those who didn’t know him. To those who did, it was no surprise. You merely need to watch him in the East Ice Arena in Bensenville Illinois to know. There, Michael glides with his friends across the ice. Every Wednesday evening the rink is Michael’s turf, his team, his gang and his rivals, fresh meat. He’s defense on the Hornets Youth Sled Hockey Team.

The sport mirrors hockey, but replaces skates with recumbent sleds and breaks the stick into a pair with picks to grab the ice. Michael learned about sled hockey from Brian Ruhe. A double leg amputee from a car crash, Ruhe went to the same Chicago rehab center as Michael. Their meeting was part chance and part miracle, says Julie. Ruhe held a gold medal in sled hockey from the 2002 Salt Lake City Paralympics.

Inspired by Ruhe, Michael joined the Hornets. In December of 2005, they attended the third annual Disabled Hockey Tournament. With his teammates, Michael defended his team, his rink and his hometown.

“You’re gonna wish you were never born,” says Michael, staring down an 18-year-old.

It’s the third game out of five against the Michigan Sled Dogs. Michael dons his face and body guards as he takes his defense position. The mix of age puts Michael’s in the path of teenage opponents eight years his senior and twice his size.

“He’s like a little gnat out there,” says Julie.

Michael works hard at bugging his enemies. He digs his picks and pulls himself like a skier across the ice. He rams into an intruder, derailing their chance to score and giving his offense a change of their own.

Soon another intruder, another enemy, sneaks into his territory; batting the puck and bee-lining toward his goalie. Michael barrels down the ice. He bashes, head-on into the side of their sled. Michael whirls from the impact. The enemy is off his sled and on his back. A whistle blows. The ref points to Michael. Roughing, penalty box, again.

Michael slides into the sectioned off rink, his head barely at shoulder level with the other ejected, overzealous players. He’s used to hanging back here, like he’s used to the whistle blows for coming in a little too fast and hitting a little too hard.

“I like knocking into people,” says Michael, his tenacity found in the nicks and scratches on his sled.

Despite Michael’s absence, his help put the Hornets over on the Sled Dogs. It’s their only win in the tournament, but it’s a win against longtime rivals.

“He was in the zone out there,” says Julie.

“The zone.” That intense focus felt by athletes. Julie saw it in Michael’s face when he took to the rink. There’s a glare in his eyes, a seriousness about his face. It’s a zone of pure determination. “He’s like another person sometimes,” says Julie.

He may be determined, but he’s still a 10-year-old boy. That can be found in a picture on the front page sports section of a December 2006 issue of Glenview’s Daily Herald. In the picture, Michael leans back in his sled, arms outstretched, eyes closed, his face toward the sky, and a smile on his face.

In the Aon building, Michael pulls himself higher. Following from a floor below, Julie realizes that 13 flights of stairs lie behind them without a slip or stumble.

“He must be in the zone,” she says.

Michael continues to keep his balance as he moves. It’s something he’s done before.

It was March 2, 2005, and California’s Greater Columbus Convention Center was playing host to the “Arnold Classic,” a sports festival celebrating fitness and martial arts named after its creator, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Among the professional athletes and martial artists, Michael represented North Shore Dojo as a member of Jeff’s small team. It was his turn to compete in the special division with other handicapped students in the exhibition category of weapons.

Thousands surrounded the mat. They snapped pictures and cheered the last performer while the judges sat close by, making notes. Michael put down his crutches and took up his weapon: the Bo staff, a wooden pole four feet high. Michael headed toward the center mat using the Bo as a walking stick, a crutch.

He reached the center. Keeping his legs spaced for balance, Michael began his attack on his imaginary opponent.

His Bo snapped upwards, a crack to the chin.

He twirled the Bo from side to side. Blocking attacks before it he swung down, full force, to pound the ground, a club to the head or shoulder.

Cameras flashed randomly while the crowd started to cheer.

The Bo planted and rooted itself as Michael pivoted, facing another would-be attacker. He thrust forward, the Bo spearing them in the chest. He thrust backward and speared the stomach of a hidden opponent.

Another plant and pivot and he whirled the Bo like a baton. The blurred stick made phantom circles as he defended and parried a supposed flurry of attacks.

Michael turned toward the judges and with the Bo raised and his feet balanced, he bowed.

The crowd applauded while cameras flashed. A short deliberation later, and the judges awarded Michael with a gold medal.

“He didn’t fall,” says Jeff of his pupil’s performance. “He was flawless.”

Out of the cheering crowd came Governor Schwarzenegger. He asked Michael if he could shake his hand. Michael offered.

“Can I get you to say, ‘I’ll be back?’” asked the governor.

“I’ll be back,” said Michael.

In the Aon stairwell, Michael still hasn’t slowed down. One hand pulls up on the banister, one hand pushes down on his crutch. His face is red, his hands are blistered and he hasn’t touched his water. He just climbs, rounding toward another flight of stairs.

It’s Jeff who stops him, who tells him that he has to stop. Julie finally catches up to the both of them; she says she’s lost count. Jeff tells them both that Michael has climbed 20 flights of stairs, 500 steps. He’s done. He’s crossed the finish line.

“Just one more,” says Michael, “just one more.” Julie and Jeff look at each other. Reluctantly, they give him the okay.

Michael swings his foot on the first step. His left hand grabs the banister, pulling the weight of his body upward while his right, crutch in hand, pushes down and keeps his balance. He pulls up, swings his leg, pushes down. Pull, swing, push. Pull, swing, push. He can’t stop,
he won’t stop. Another step. Another. He is panting now. Sweat pours in rivulets. His face is flushed bright red.

He could drop the crutch, let his legs take over. But he needs the balance. He can’t forget his hands. But he has legs, he has feet, he can let them do what they were meant to do.

Jeff and Julie hold him back. “He has to stop,” says Jeff. After thirty straight minutes of climbing, Michael, whether he knew it or not, was quivering.

Michael relents, but only because he’s being forced to stop. Otherwise, he would keep taking the steps, one after another. He would never quit.

“This,” says Jeff, turning an admiring face to Julie, “is an athlete.”

Jeff and his mother help Michael toward a nearby elevator. He barely feels the elevator lurch as it heads toward the top floor. There’s a party and Dad and Tommy are there, and some North Shore classmates too. But he’s too tired talk or eat or celebrate that the charity made $400,000 for Children’s Memorial.

He just thinks about the climb. He was supposed to climb 500, a number that seemed a fantasy.

He took 520.

Michael smiles. Not at the accomplishment, but at thoughts of future climbs.

“Next year,” he says, “600.”

Detective Mike McCann’s arson case was as good as solved until events put the case, his future and his health in doubt. Then along came the Popovich case. by Rachel Green

It was a hot July day in 2003, typical to central Ohio at that time of year, the kind that brings sweat and misery for some. But sitting at his desk at the station, Columbus Homicide Detective Mike McCann couldn’t help but feel relief. Three months into his investigation of the arson that took five Ohio college students’ lives, McCann had nabbed the man he believed had committed the horrible, tragic crime. Robert Patterson was in custody. Finally, McCann thought, he could put the case to bed.

He leaned his 6-foot large frame back into his office chair, thinking of all the ways this weekend would be different. He could spend time with his wife, Bonnie. He might have time to stop by his favorite downtown bar and grill for some lunch. Maybe, just maybe, he could get some sleep.

The ring of a telephone cut his reverie short.

“Mike McCann.”

The voice on the other end was a woman, a reporter he knew from previous media coverage about the case.

“How do you feel about O’Brien’s decision to let Robert Patterson go?” she asked.

What? McCann knew a case, even a good one, could go south unexpectedly. But not this one. No way.

In investigating Patterson, McCann learned this wasn’t the first time he had been suspected of arson. Four years earlier, in fact, Patterson had been investigated for allegedly setting fire to his mother’s trailer, but was never charged with the crime. With the OSU arson, McCann’s suspect had put himself at the scene, admitting that he was stealing car radios that night, in a parking lot right outside the house, according to news reports. He was identified by witnesses as being involved in an altercation that took place when party-goers caught him breaking into cars.

Given alll that, McCann was stunned at the reporter’s question. “Patterson’s not being released,” he said. “Who the hell told you that?”

“Oh,” she paused at the end of the other line, “Well, I don’t want to tell you this,” she paused again, “But O’Brien’s letting Patterson go Monday. He is being released.”

Ron O’Brien, the Franklin County prosecuting attorney. How could he turn on the case so quickly? McCann says he believed he had O’Brien’s blessing to make the arrest. What had changed?

To this day, McCann’s voice takes on an edge at the memory. Patterson was never charged with the arson and his family insists that he had nothing to do with the fatal fire. Patterson, who could not be reached for this story, has consistently maintained his innocence. O’Brien has said he feels strongly that his decision to let him go was in the best interest of the case.

“We base our decisions in any case on what the evidence reflects and what the law says. Any decision in this or any other case is based on the facts we have…it’s the totality of the circumstances,” O’Brien says. “Four prosecutors, who when combined, have over 100 years of prosecutorial experience worked on this case and we all concluded that further investigation needed to be done.”

McCann disagrees. To him, Patterson was, and still is, the primary suspect in the blaze on April 13, 2003 at 64 East 17th Avenue. With O’Brien’s decision, however, McCann was back at square one. And the crime he thought he had solved, the justice he believed he had won for the victim’s family’s, had vanished like smoke.

For weeks after the fire, the burned out shell of the rooming house where the girls died sat as a reminder to all who passed of the tragedy that still haunted the Ohio State campus.

But to arson investigators, the FBI and Columbus police, the remnants revealed something else — clues that the fire was intentionally set.

That’s when McCann was called to take the case. At the time, McCann was a young 50 years old. His blond hair hid any hints of gray, as did his neatly trimmed mustache. His blue eyes still held a twinkle.

His 28 years with the Columbus Police Department, 13 of which were spent in homicide, made him one of the most seasoned detectives the department has. Despite his experience, some cases still shake him. but nothing like this one.

When firemen arrived at the scene that night, they were met with an inferno. The intense heat emanated out from inside the house, as flames engulfed its first floor. The people who escaped the blaze stood outside the house screaming that there were more people trapped on the upper floors. Inside, the thick black smoke filled the first, second and third floors, making it virtually impossible to see. Crawling through the thick smoke, the three first responders were only able to find victims by catching a glimpse of a hand or a foot.

Each man was able to save one person before the fire flashed through the second floor. In an instant, it became apparent to everyone standing outside that the five still inside weren’t going to make it.

The victims were your typical college students celebrating a coming of age with friends. Kyle Raulin and Adam Schlessman were roommates living with 10 other friends at 64 E. 17th Avenue and were celebrating Schlessman’s 21st birthday. Erin DeMarco, Andrea Dennis and Christine Wilson made the 70-mile drive from Ohio University so they too could celebrate Schlessman’s birthday and enjoy time among close friends. The young women expected to return home to their friends, their “Alpha Gam” sorority sisters, and their studies that were waiting for them on O.U.’s campus the very next day, a day they would never get to see.

“These were all good kids, good kids,” McCann says.

The innocence of the victims, McCann says, is what drives him during an investigation. It’s them, he says, that keep you awake at night.

And indeed, sleep was an unobtainable luxury for McCann following Patterson’s release. After he hung up the phone with the reporter that hot August day, he rarely got through the night without the case, and images of the victims, churning in his mind.

Three a.m. So many times, too many times. He would be awake again. The world outside would be dark and silent. His mind would be roaring with thoughts of flames and death.

He couldn’t escape it.

Wherever he went – the store, to lunch, at home, the case stalked him. Some nights, he spend hours pacing in and out of dark moonlit rooms in his home, trying to see the hole the prosecutor was seeing. He might go to the station, look over old notes or make new ones.

“What if I just do it this way . . . what if, what if? If only . . .” he would tell himself over and over again.

But that Monday came and went with no change in the prosecutor’s stance.

For months after Patterson’s release, McCann and his investigative team, including FBI agent Kevin Horan, would discuss how they could persuade O’Brien. “It was pretty much a consuming event, it occupied our entire lives. But it got to a point where we don’t talk about it anymore. It’s too painful,” Horan says.

McCann might have thought he had his man, but Patterson’s brother and father feel differently. Patterson’s brother, Ron Patterson, told newspapers that Robert was treated unfairly in both arson cases and that he wasn’t capable of committing such terrible crimes. Ron Patterson said his brother, who has since left the area, had maintained his innocence to him throughout the entire investigation. (Attempts to reach the Patterson family were unsuccessful.)

Other prosecutors close to the case say they cannot discuss O’Brien’s decision beyond that more evidence against Patterson was needed.

McCann’s frustration erupts to this day. “Goddamn. We were scrambling around trying to get more evidence, but we didn’t have a clue as what he needed nor did he tell us what he needed. We worked our ass off. But there was just nothing we could do to stop that train from coming down those tracks.”

Still, McCann wanted to pursue the case – not for himself, but the victims’ families’. He felt he had let them down, a feeling that still haunts him today.

To go against the county prosecutor comes with a risk. McCann would undoubtedly have to work with O’Brien on other cases and the two men would need to have a working relationship.

But in weighing the possible risks to his career, he also thought of his own children, Michael, Todd and Kelly. At the ages of 20 and 19, some of the female victims were just a year younger than Kelly, his youngest. What would he want for his child?

He decided to fight. He explained to the media why he thought Patterson was guilty. A memo he wrote with his supervisor, Sgt. Wallace Rushin, was made public. According to news reports, the memo blasted O’Brien’s handling of the case.

Shortly afterwards, McCann was removed from the investigation. After 13 months, the Columbus Police Department said the case needed a new set of eyes. McCann says he was told his expertise in homicide was needed for other investigations.

Though he was no longer involved, McCann couldn’t shake the feeling that he had failed the family. And he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. Sleep still eluded him. He felt lousy all the time. Why? How? The questions burned in his mind like embers.

The stress he put himself under for the following nine months didn’t just plague his thoughts. It affected his health. “Pressures mount over time. You don’t feel good. Your mind is always at work,” McCann says. You’re always thinking, what can I do different? What interview technique should I use tomorrow? Things start to eat at you. Even at home your head is somewhere else,” McCann says.

Something had to give. And that something occurred in February 2005. McCann had the day off and was out running errands with his wife. They were grabbing a few last minute things before helping his son do some work in his new apartment.

That’s when he felt the pain. He couldn’t ignore the pressure that was building in his chest. He says it felt as though someone was standing on him, making it difficult to breathe.

Suddenly, it seemed his body was giving up on him.

He turned to his wife, “Bonnie, I’m having a heart attack.”

At first Bonnie didn’t believe him. She thought he was just trying to avoid the chores that awaited him. But after taking a good look at him, she realized he wasn’t kidding. Instead of their usual glint, his blue eyes looked frightened and unsure and his normally tan skin was turning pale. It didn’t take her long to decide that she needed to rush him to the nearest hospital.

At the hospital, doctors confirmed McCann’s suspicions. McCann had suffered a heart attack. The main culprit: The stress he had put himself under after losing the arson case.

In the weeks and months that followed, McCann struggled to get back his old life. He began worrying that he would be forced to quit. The stress of the job almost killed him. His brush with death really shook Bonnie. She, along with his children, suggested that maybe he needed to quit. Maybe they’re right, he thought.

After his release from the hospital, he took a four-month leave. Some of it was to rehabilitate, and strengthen his heart and his body before returning to the job. The other part of his leave was spent soul-searching: Did he even want to return?

Could he afford to quit and go on disability? He couldn’t. Officers don’t get paid well; he was already working “special duty” at Bishop-Watterson High School football and basketball games for extra cash to help support the family. Besides, he thought, homicide was where he belonged. This is what he was meant to do, it’s where he could help and do the most good.

“I realized that, hell, I’m lucky to be alive to have this decision to make. You just have to shut up and quit whining and get on with life,” McCann says today of his decision to not only stay with the job, but to stay with homicide.

It was in the summer of 2005, almost two years to the month after the fateful phonecall, that McCann he returned to the job. Shortly thereafter, another case with national notoriety was assigned to him. Like the arson case, this one involved another dead college student and more dead ends.

It started out as a missing person report. Julie Popovich, a 20-year-old OSU student, was last seen dancing at Ledo’s, a campus bar, on August 11. She was talking with a young man, who friends saw her leave with right before the bar closed. None of them recognized the young man, and Popovich wouldn’t be seen again.

Weeks went by with nothing for McCann. He called in Kevin Horan to help. No real leads. No body.

For those few weeks after her disappearance, Popovich’s tired friends, with dark circles around their eyes, canvassed Ohio State’s campus every night, asking bar-goers standing in line in the heavy, humid air if they recognized the pretty girl in the picture. Popovich was an attractive young woman. Her long dark hair and big brown eyes and huge smile allowed her to do some modeling work while she was in school. Most just looked at the picture, shook their heads, and wished the searchers well.

Then a break came for McCann. An ID, her ID, was found near Hoover Reservoir.

The ID would soon lead police to discover the aspiring model’s body in a nearby grassy field. Again, as with the arson, most of the hard evidence was already destroyed, this time from spending weeks decomposing outside in the late August daytime heat.

Again, the media descended. CNN host Larry King wanted to talk to McCann. On Fox News, Hannity and Colmes wanted an interview. Everyone was comparing the case to the disappearance of Natalie Holloway—it was the summer of 2005 and it seemed every network was trying to hype a rise in the kidnapping and murder of our country’s beautiful young college-aged girls.

McCann granted a few interviews, but stayed focused on the case. They had a body, but still no suspect, and the evidence was scant. Would this turn out like the arson? Another high profile case, but no indictment? He shuddered at the thought. Could he go through that again? Could he live through it?

Then, a tip. It was the sexual abuse squad who called about Adam Saleh. The detective who tipped McCann off to Saleh couldn’t put her finger on it, but something about the young man didn’t sit well with her. And although McCann can’t go into specifics, while interviewing Saleh, he says the young man’s story began to unravel to the point that McCann felt confident enough to make the arrest.

Saleh’s cell phone records later showed he was less than four miles away from where Popovich’s body was found, just a few hours after she was seen leaving the bar with him. According to prosecutors, Saleh had no reason that night to be in the remote area that surrounds Hoover Reservoir.

Because he testified in the case, McCann wasn’t allowed to be in the courtroom for the trial. However, he stayed close by the entire time.

“He was probably the most dangerous guy I’ve ever dealt with,” McCann says.

This time prosecutors didn’t hesitate to take the case to trial. No phone calls. No released suspects.

On May 2, after hearing two weeks of testimony, the jury reached its verdict. McCann sat alongside Kevin Horan, the FBI agent who worked with him on both the arson case and the Popovich case. The two sat three feet behind Saleh when the jury announced its verdict:

“Guilty.”

As difficult and tortuous as the arson case was for McCann, the Popovich case was satisfying. Saleh will spend 38 years behind bars for the attempted rape and murder of Julie Popovich.

“The trial is like the culmination of all your hard work. The evidence in this case was the same type of evidence we had in the fire – all of it was circumstantial. And the same feelings and intensity and hard work I felt in the arson I also felt with this case – it was all wrapped up in this trial,” he says.

The arson case that nearly killed him will never leave McCann’s thoughts fully, though he finds some solace in knowing that the families believe he did the best he could.

To this day, Tim Wilson, father of victim Christine Wilson, praises McCann. “We wish Mike was never taken off the case,” he says. “He had a game plan. He was really attacking it.”

Still, through the Popovich verdict, McCann has found a sense of closure — to his career and his constant worry.

In fact, little known to many people close to him, the day of the jury’s verdict McCann had made his own important decision. The trial was going well and he had been getting calls from the public safety director of Ohio. On a hunch that the jury would convict Saleh, McCann turned in his retirement papers that day.

After 28 years with the Columbus Police Department, McCann says he now feels after his success with such a huge case, that he is ready to leave and make his next move as deputy director of the State of Ohio investigations unit.

“The time was right and it is a good position,” McCann says. “I was coming off a good case, and this job promises to be less stressful. There’s no way that I’ll have the pressure from the victims, their families, and the restless nights – not in the same way that you do with homicide.”

With the Popovich’s family seeing justice, McCann sleeps much easier these days

And as for the new job? McCann is ready — He has his own fire back.