She put her life on line, for Subway

I couldn’t help but feel an internal tremor Friday morning when I stumbled across the news accounts of a worker at a Northwest Side Subway sandwich franchise who was shot and killed during a Thursday night robbery.

According to both the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, the woman was working a Thursday night shift in the Subway on Western Avenue in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood.

WHEN A WOULD-BE robber entered just before 9 p.m. and pulled out a pistol, the woman worker tried to run out a back door. Which is what provoked the gunman to fire a shot at her – striking her in the neck. She died early Friday at Stroger Hospital.

For the record, another employee gave the robber some money, and he left. As of Friday morning, police had no one in custody, nor do they have any suspects in mind.

I’m sure many of you are wondering why this catches my attention? After all, the one-time police reporter-type person in me knows this incident isn’t that uncommon. Not to downplay the loss of life, but such robberies happen. If the woman hadn’t died, it wouldn’t have been covered at all.

And let’s be honest. There are certain neighborhoods where, if there had been a robbery and the worker had died, it still would have been ignored.

BUT THIS ONE is a little personal for me.

For the very first job I had when I was in high school (one that had set hours and cut me a regular paycheck) was work in a Subway sandwich franchise – specifically one in south suburban Calumet City.

In fact, I recall that I worked at a Subway that purposely stayed open until 2 a.m. – and when I was hired, it was explicitly to work three or four shifts a week from 10 p.m.-2 a.m. each day.

I worked that job one summer, just before going off to Bloomington, Ill., to attend college.

WHICH MEANS THAT learning of the account of this woman (Lyn Ward, who was 57), I couldn’t help but think back to the old memories and tensions.

I used to wonder how I’d react if confronted with a gunman – which fortunately, never happened to me. Although I did find out later that two weeks after I quit to begin college, that particular Subway got robbed.

Shortly after midnight on a Friday-into-Saturday – if I recall right. Which means I could easily have been working, only to find a pistol shoved into my face.

I do recall there was a foot-activated alarm located directly under the cash register. Which means I could have triggered it while heading for the register to try to get money.

IN FACT, IT was a sensitive-enough alarm that I recall my boss once accidentally triggering it while trying to ring up an order of sandwiches and chips.

I used to wonder how subtly I could trigger that alarm, if someone agitated enough to pull a pistol on me had walked in. Could I do it undetected? Or would my foot movement catch his attention, and anger him (or her, I suppose) enough to pull the trigger of his pistol?

I could easily have been in the same position as that woman, only it could have ended for me at age 17. Not that it makes the woman’s story any less tragic – 54 is too young an age to die at, particularly for a reason so stupid.

Although, thinking about this incident and my own high school years also reminds me of the popular film from that era – Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

FOR WHILE MANY a man of my age bracket will forevermore remember Phoebe Cates’ moment of cinematic glory, there also was that scene near the end of the film when Judge Reinhold’s “Brad” character managed to avert a robbery attempt while working as a late-night cashier at a 7-Eleven-like convenience store.

I doubt I – or any other clerk – could have done anything like that. Of course, if it happened in real-life, it would have turned the robber/gunman into a victim – no matter how unworthy that person would be of such status.

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We really are a split state

Illinois truly has become a place split between “Chicagoland” and “Downstate.”

OBAMA: Overcomes rural opposition



It seems like we’re on two separate mindsets that only occasionally get thrown together – and can’t seem to “play nice” when those occur.

I COULDN’T HELP but notice the latest poll commissioned by the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV concerning President Barack Obama.

The rural parts of Illinois (as in the ones that don’t view Chicago as a part of their daily existence) are down on our former member of the U.S. Senate.

Only 35 percent approve of the way Obama has handled the economy, and only 36 percent approve of Obama in general.

Yet the overall results show that Illinois remains a solid part of the Barack Obama bandwagon that could very well send him back to the White House for another term following the Nov. 6 elections.

FOR WITH APPROVAL ratings of 82 percent in Chicago and 63 percent in the Cook County suburbs (the area that accounts for about 45 percent of the state’s overall population), he has a solid base.

When one takes into account his 48 percent approval rating in the outer suburbs of Chicago (compared to 44 percent who disapprove), it means that the two-thirds of Illinois that is Chicago-area will overcome the resistance that is felt in the rest of the state.

In short, the 2012 elections in Illinois will look a lot like the 2010 election cycle – all those counties in red with just two or three blue blotches that can barely be seen by the naked eye.

EMANUEL: Wants handgun registry


Yet those two or three blotches will account for so many more people than the sea of red.

IF ANYTHING, THIS shows why the Democratic officials who gained control of the redistricting process handled the creation of new districts the way in which they did.

There simply aren’t many congressional or legislative districts that center around those “collar” counties (as in DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will). The people who live there will be voting in districts that are extensions of Cook County districts – and were drawn in ways so that the Cook County portions will likely prevail.

If that 48 percent (rather mediocre) approval rating were centered around specific districts, they could do some harm. Instead, Chicago and the inner suburbs will overcome their hesitancy and likely prevail.

And combined, they will “do in” the desires of places like Rockford or Danville or Marion. It all comes down to numbers. Which means we’ll hear a lot more grievances in coming years about how Chicago just overwhelmed the rest of Illinois.

IN SHORT, WE’RE going to see the regional partisanship grow to even more intense levels. Which is why I find it interesting that Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he’s pushing for a new measure related to handguns.

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley was already the anti-christ to many rural interests because of the continuous measures he pushed for related to restricting firearms.

It seems that Emanuel will follow in the same path, which is bound to instigate the regional split even moreso.

For Emanuel says he wants the General Assembly to approve an Illinois handgun registry.

CURRENTLY, PEOPLE ARE supposed to register their firearms with their local police. Emanuel wants something on a larger scale, saying that a statewide registry would make it easier for police here to figure out where all the illegal firearms are coming from.

As in the notion that it is the “rural” people who are peddling firearms to Chicagoans with a desire to do ill will upon others.

You just know this will stir up the resentment all the more – and not just because some will want to see it as a new tax (a $65 registration fee paid to the state whenever anyone buys a new handgun).

HARRIS: Wants marriage for all

At least Emanuel was honest enough to admit the difficulty in pushing for such a measure when he announced his intentions during an appearance in the far South Side Roseland neighborhood.

BECAUSE THERE ARE some people who will want to view this as an invasion of their privacy – the notion of having to provide their name, address and serial number of all their weapons. Then again, these are likely the same crackpots who think that state-issued driver’s licenses are somehow an un-Christian or un-American concept.



It will be interesting to see how many (actually, how few) rural legislators bother to take this bill (which has yet to be introduced) seriously. Somehow, I think it will be used for target practice by the members of the Illinois Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus (which is what the rural legislators like to call themselves when they feel like sounding official).

It may even wind up being less liked in certain circles than the bill introduced at the Statehouse in Springpatch earlier this week by state Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, to create full marriage rights for gay couples – yet another issue that will expose the Land of Lincoln’s regional split.

And a split that ultimately will prevent serious solutions to problems from being achieved.

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EXTRA: Ill. Lege cauldron of confusion

There are times when I wonder if the seven years I spent covering the Illinois General Assembly left my mind a little bit warped.

FRITCHEY: Still confused?



Then, in a humorous moment on Thursday before the Cook County Board, I got the impression I’m not the only person who feels that way.

FOR IT WAS during a hearing of the county board’s Intergovernmental Relations Committee that we got to hear an exchange between two former legislators-turned-county officials.

County board member John Fritchey, who represents the Northwest Side of Chicago, said the debate on an immigration-related measure was as confusing and chaotic as his memories of serving in the Illinois House of Representatives.

During his questioning of county Sheriff Tom Dart (who also served in the Illinois House before returning home), Fritchey said, “You and I both served a decade in the Legislature and survived it.”

To which Dart quipped, in response, “I’m still going to counseling.”

WHICH GOT ONE of the day’s few chuckles – considering that some of the people who appeared before the committee were there to make statements about the dangers posed by all those “illegal foreigners” who should not be receiving anything in the way of sympathy from Cook County government.

DART: Still recovering?



And for what it’s worth, five of the current county board members are former state legislators. Earlean Collins, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and John Daley of Chicago, along with Gregg Goslin of suburban Glenview, are the others. Which also means many of the county agency staffers have some Statehouse experience on their resumes.

Which makes me feel a sense of déjà vu at times, since in providing coverage of county government for one of the suburban-based daily newspapers, I’m dealing with too many of the same people I knew a decade ago.

I can’t escape them, anywhere.

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Innocuous images can take on bizarre meanings in street gang-land

I kind of wish I could have attended the session held Wednesday by city Clerk Susana Mendoza that related to the new city vehicle stickers that will soon go on sale.

The infamous vehicle sticker

Because Mendoza had to have a serious sit-down with the Police Department and the researchers who spend their time studying the routines of street gangs – all to figure out if the city was about to pay tribute to them.

THE NEW CITY stickers have a design that shows a heart with the Chicago city skyline imposed over it. Reaching above the heart are hands of various races – all trying to grab at symbols for the police and fire departments, and for paramedics.

It was meant to be a tribute to the support we all are to feel for public safety employees who try to protect us from the dangers of daily life.

To make it even more cute, it was designed by a 15-year-old boy as part of the city’s annual contest that is meant to make the vehicle stickers something more than a cold cash-grab by the city for those of us who operate a car and live within city limits.

But there are those people who see something sinister in this, and their view ultimately prevailed as Mendoza announced Wednesday afternoon that the design will not be used.

THERE ARE THOSE who are convinced that this new city vehicle sticker is loaded with imagery meant to promote street gangs. There are those who say the boy who won the city’s contest is actually a gang member himself, and that he managed to pull off a big con against the city – making us all look stupid for the next year as those stickers are forcibly displayed (unless a motorist is willing to risk a significant fine) on local automobiles.

One website written for police officers (Second City Cop) speculates that this may cause the annual vehicle sticker contest to end. You just can’t trust these young people.

Another website that is much more graphic in its content (written apparently for those police who want to believe all the conspiracy theories being touted) seems to think that this was inevitable and we should have known better than to ever let certain types of people try to express themselves.

This particular website (check it out for yourself) goes into details about how the heart-shape of the skyline can be a street gang symbol, and how the hands that reach above to the police symbols have their fingers positioned in ways that could be interpreted as pitchforks – which also can be a symbol.

OR MAYBE IT isn’t. The boy's mother is now saying there's nothing gang-intended about the design.

Personally, I think these symbols are rather innocuous. There may be some people who wish to interpret them in a gang context. But then again, there will be others who won’t.

If anything, I wonder if giving in to this interpretation gives them some legitimacy. I can’t help but think that we’d be better off if we delegitimized anything that is gang-related – taking their alleged symbols and turning them into a meaning that has nothing to do with the gangland life.

Ultimately, that is how those gangs will die off – turning them into nothing. They exist because they provide a sense of something, of somebody, to people in our society who have nothing else to turn to.

NOW I DON’T have any evidence to indicate that this particular teenage boy had any particular motivation with his design. Maybe he did pull off some sort of scam on city officials. Maybe he didn’t. Nobody, except for the kid, really knows.

I suspect the people who are getting the most into this conspiracy of vehicle stickers loaded with gang imagery are just the kinds of people who want to rant and rage about everything surrounding them. Mendoza seems to think that by scrapping the stickers, she can avoid the argument -- which is quite a bit of a distraction from a government that should be focused on serious issues.

For all I know, perhaps their real objection is the multi-racial collection of hands that reach out to public safety people for protection.

Maybe in their world, the police and fire swat back at the hands whose colors don’t match their own.

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No “boobies” in Jr. High makes sense

I usually don’t have a problem with writing a commentary that mocks a small-town mentality for being ridiculously strict. Yet this is one occasion where I can’t help but side with the school officials of a rural Indiana community who have a problem with a student going around school with “boobies” wrapped around their wrists.

If they were a little bit older, I could see the argument being made by the parents of a student who is upset that she can’t wear her “I (heart) boobies” wristbands to school as a way of showing support for breast cancer research.

BUT THIS IS junior high school we’re talking about. 12- and 13-year-olds who really haven’t reached any level of maturity. The kind who likely would have thought Beavis and Butthead (He’s named “Butt,” heh, heh, heh) were cool, except that those characters are so old I doubt that current pre-teens have a clue who they are.

I know that if a kid had showed up at school when I was in Junior High with such a wristband, it would have created a distraction. And based on the fact that I have a nephew who is now in that age bracket (and another who is just barely older), I don’t have any sense that people have changed with the passage of time.

Not even in Monticello, Ind., where the Glander family is upset that their eighth-grade son can’t have “boobies” on his wrist.

While I realize that the marketing campaign using “boobies” is part of a serious attempt to make people aware of the problem of breast cancer and of the research that is trying to find a cure, I’d argue it is definitely a message meant for adults.

IT IS WHY I dispute the line of logic offered up in the lawsuit filed by the family that says the junior high student’s older siblings were allowed to wear identical bracelets to class at high school.

There is a big difference in maturity at that age level.

So do I think the American Civil Liberties Union (which filed the lawsuit in federal court for northern Indiana on behalf of the family) is a bit misguided in taking on this particular issue and trying to claim it is some sort of constitutional right for pre-teens to wear such wristbands? Yes.

In fact, I was always of the understanding that, legally, the amount of rights that minors had were limited. They have a right to be protected from physical abuse. But expression can be limited.

AND NOW, THIS issue is going to spread. We probably will wind up at the Supreme Court of the United States someday, on account of the fact that differing states have courts ruling in differing ways.

Such “boobies” wristbands can be banned by school officials in Wisconsin, although federal judges in Pennsylvania have ruled that “boobies” wristbands aren’t “vulgar” or “lewd” – and therefore cannot be prohibited on students as any part of a dress code.

Great minds such as those possessed by Clarence Thomas will ultimately have to resolve this issue!

So what should we think, in the interim?

DO I ACTUALLY sympathize with the officials at Roosevelt Middle School in Monticello, Ind., for realizing that some of their students aren’t mature enough to see this bracelet and its silly slang term for the serious issue at stake – and would merely use it as an excuse to mock (she’s got boobies, heh, heh, heh)?

Yes!

And do I think that the real injustice in this whole affair is that a U.S. District judge in Lafayette, Ind., had to waste time this week in contemplating an order that says the school officials can continue to ban the boobie bracelet while the lawsuit at-large is still pending?

Heck, yeah!!!!!

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Way too early for real people, but not politicos, to think about ‘14 elections

Speculation that Toni Preckwinkle is already being considered for higher office – even though she’s barely finished the first year of her term as Cook County Board president – bothers me, although it doesn’t surprise me.

PRECKWINKLE: Governor, someday?

For the record, Carol Marin used her column for the Chicago Sun-Times to include a tidbit that the Illinois Legislature’s leaders (Michael Madigan and John Cullerton) are trying to encourage Preckwinkle to run against Gov. Pat Quinn when the position is up for election again in 2014.

MEANWHILE, THE CAPITOL Fax newsletter used its website to follow up with a statement from Cullerton (the Illinois Senate leader) saying it’s not true, and that it is “irresponsible” to think about such things right now.

After all, how should Quinn react to the idea that the two legislative leaders who are supposed to be his political allies are already searching for his replacement? I can’t even recall former Senate President James “Pate” Philip doing anything like that to then-Gov. Jim Edgar!

Personally, my guess would be that it is too strong to say that Madigan and Cullerton are backing Preckwinkle for a future gubernatorial bid – which allows them to “deny” the story at this point.

But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been discussed, and that there aren’t some people trying now to figure out what would have to be done to prepare for such an electoral bid to take place three years from now.

THAT IS THE reality of electoral politics. People who run for government positions have to constantly think forward. Personally, I compare them to sharks – who have to keep moving at all times or else they can’t breathe properly and they’d die.

I’m sure some of you will think of other ways in which government officials and sharks are similar, but I’m not going there. Not today.

But that is also part of why many of us feel that disconnect between the people who run government, and those of us who expect government to operate to our benefit (those of you who like the Grover Norquist image of “drowning government in the bathtub” are a unique breed who should best be considered at a different time).

I personally am not really even in the mood to have to think about who should be president in 2012, or who should win election to Congress or the state Legislature (the big posts that will be up for grabs in this year’s election cycle).

I CERTAINLY DON’T want to have to think about who should be the new Illinois governor (since a part of me hasn’t really recovered from the ugliness of the 2010 elections for governor). A part of me reads these tidbits being reported in recent days about Preckwinkle and shudders in disgust.

It’s too early to be thinking of any such effort to depose Quinn – almost as though the powers-that-be have already determined they’re not going to accomplish much of anything during the next couple of years. So they’re shopping for a leader with whom they’d rather work.

Which makes me wonder (at least in part) if the hard-headed attitude that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich used to take in dealing with the legislative leaders may have been justified.

Madigan recently used a speech at Elmhurst College to say that Blagojevich’s goals as governor seemed more motivated by trying to make him look noble for a future run for higher office. In short, they were about himself, not the people!

BUT COULD IT just be that Blagojevich knew he was working with legislative leaders who had their own agendas, and that he’d have to get tough if he weren’t to get pushed around? Which takes on some more credibility because of the oft-expressed complaint by Democratic political people that Quinn is weak and lets himself get pushed around.

Perhaps the reality is that he’s not getting pushed around enough to appease the legislative leadership. So they want to dump him?

I don’t know what to think. Personally, I have no problem with the concept of Toni Preckwinkle. She has been effective in her current post. And it wouldn’t shock me to see her try to run for some higher level office at some point in the future.

Maybe even in 2014.

THAT’S JUST TOO far in the future for me to want to contemplate at this time. And I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that way.

The only problem is that we’re now forced to have to consider it on some level.

Because if we’re not careful, the political powers that be will work some sort of deal behind the scenes, and then they’ll try to impose it on us in a couple of years in such a way that perhaps they’ll make us think it was our idea to begin with and they're just following our will.

Which sounds, to me, like the sequel to the film “Wag the Dog” will be set in Illinois.

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EXTRA: Kirk upgraded to “good”

Why do I suspect this will be the high point of the news cycles this week?

Seriously, it is encouraging to learn that Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., was upgraded to “good” condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, within just a couple of weeks of suffering the stroke that has caused him to undergo a few rounds of surgery.

IT MAY WELL be sometime this month that he gets to go home to continue his recuperation, although doctors indicate his recovery is a long-term process and one that could result in paralysis to one side of his body.

And no, I don’t have a clue who Kirk was rooting for Sunday night while watching the Super Bowl from his hospital room.

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