DIVISION 4
Best News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure/Category 1
Staff, Daily Journal (Franklin)
Search for boy ends happily
For more than six hours, a toddler wandered through a neighbor’s house, playing with toys he
found, while hundreds of police officers, firefighters and neighbors searched up and down the
streets of his subdivision for him.
By 3:15 p.m., 3-year-old Michael Stepien had likely grown scared but didn’t know how to get
out of the house he wandered into.
That’s when Kaleb Tucker returned from Clark-Pleasant Middle School. He opened his front
door and found the little boy crying in his home. Kaleb immediately recognized who Michael
was from his pajamas, which he had seen described on Facebook alerts about the missing child.
Kaleb ran back out the door to get police.
Michael, scared by a stranger coming in the house, started to run away. He reached the
neighbors’ backyard before Greenwood resident Tiffany MacFarlane scooped him up to take him
to the police, who had been looking for him since they got a panicked call from the Stepien
family at about 10:45 a.m.
“I heard him cry,” MacFarlane said. “He knew where he was going. He was pointing to his
house. But I think he just couldn’t get out of the (house).”
Moments later, family members ran from their home to be reunited with their child. Hundreds of
police officers, firefighters and neighbors had searched the neighborhood, a pond, their
backyards and even under vehicles for hours, fearing the worst.
Finally, it was over. Police are calling it a rare happy ending.
“There’s no words to describe how grateful we are to everybody that helped us,” mother Jessica
Stepien said.
Michael, who will turn 4 next month, was likely shocked to see hundreds of people frantically
running in his neighborhood. The youngster was checked out by Greenwood Fire Department
medics, who deemed the boy healthy and happy.
More than 50 police officers, 50 firefighters and 100 neighbors searched for the boy, who went
missing from his home in the Sweetgrass subdivision north of Worthsville Road between 9 and
9:30 a.m. Monday. Divers searched a retention pond. Officials had ruled out abduction but could
not find the boy. Police dogs and officers looked under vehicles. Neighbors knocked on doors,
asking fellow residents to check their backyards and sheds. A description and a photo of the
child were released by the Greenwood Police Department, asking residents to call 911 if they
saw him.
“He’s a willful, smart, inquisitive child and is not afraid,” his father, Brian Stepien, said.
His father was home but was in another room when his son slipped away. His son didn’t go far.
The home he walked into was the next street over from his own backyard.
“I just didn’t believe that he could undo a door bolt. He’s never been able to do that yet,” Stepien
said. “And we now know that he can undo deadbolts.”
Michael walked into his neighbor’s house through an unlocked door and found toys to play with.
Police did not think he went anywhere else before he was found, Greenwood Fire Chief James
Sipes said. In the excitement after he was found, Michael hadn’t complained of being tired or
hungry.
Before he was found in his neighbor’s house, Michael had heard the helicopters flying overhead
and the sirens from police and fire vehicles, Sipes said. But he had no idea that the commotion
outside was about him.
“He doesn’t even understand what the hubbub is about,” Stepien said.
Word spread about Michael’s disappearance through social media. Seven police departments
brought police dogs, and agencies from Indianapolis to Trafalgar were looking through open
fields, backyards, under cars and in nearby subdivisions.
By 3 p.m., about 35 residents from Sweetgrass subdivision and Villages of Grassy Creek
gathered to start a search through the neighboring subdivisions.
“If it was my 3-year-old, I would want everybody possible out here,” said Greenwood resident
Jessica West, who was part of the initial search party. “I have three (children), and God forbid
something happen, I would want everyone (looking).”
Just 15 minutes after dozens of volunteers were knocking on doors to ask if anyone had seen
Michael, Clark-Pleasant school buses dropped off students at their homes. Kaleb, an eighthgrader, had heard about Michael’s disappearance at school. Students and teachers were talking
about the missing child throughout the day, Kaleb said.
When Kaleb opened his front door, he heard crying. He saw a small boy standing by his stairway
just inside the front door.
“I was afraid for my life that it wasn’t actually him, and that I could have been mistaking him for
another kid,” Kaleb said. “As soon as I opened the door, I tried to identify him.”
Kaleb knew by the Paw Patrol pajamas that it must be the child who police were looking for.
Once Michael was returned to his parents, he noticed the dozens of police, fire, EMS and dive
team vehicles that were lining the streets. He didn’t know why they were all there but wanted to
visit the fire station someday to see firefighters in action.
Sipes promised that Michael can visit the fire station whenever he is ready – as long as his
parents are in tow.
Best News Coverage With No Deadline Pressure/Category 2
Tom Lange, Daily Journal (Franklin)
Wrongly arrested
Whenever Alex Kenney takes medicine, he risks becoming paranoid about anything bad that’s
happening in the world.
The 16-year-old Center Grove junion has been dealing with substance-induced psychosis for two
years, and anytime he takes medication prescribed to help him, he can become disconnected
from reality.
At first he doesn’t realize what’s happening. All he knows at the time is that he can’t sleep.
Then, that insomnia is followed by an overwhelming guilt that he’s somehow responsible for the
problems of the world.
When this happened for the first time two years ago, after taking medicine prescribed to treat a
poison ivy rash, he became paranoid about the drought that was affecting central Indiana. He
thought he had something to do with the severe weather and that he could control the climate
based on what he ate.
The delusions worsened, and he became catatonic for a time before his father, Jack Kenney, and
stepmother, Stacy Uliana, got him treatment with a counselor and a psychologist.
“I can’t think straight,” Alex said, recounting what had happened. “Everything is really fast. My
mind is racing everywhere, all at once.”
Earlier this year, Alex started taking medicine to help with attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, and he started becoming paranoid and confused again. The symptoms of the psychosis
returned April 15, the night Center Grove High School officials discovered a bomb threat at the
building. Alex became worried people would think he had something to do with the threat.
The next day, Alex was arrested for making the threat and taken to the Johnson County Juvenile
Detention Center, where he spent the night on suicide watch. But he had nothing to do with the
threat.
‘I was in shock’
Center Grove officials called Alex’s parents on April 16 and told them their son had admitted to
making the bomb threat at the high school. They didn’t believe Alex had made the threat, his
parents said, but they knew they had to get him help for the psychosis. Jack Kenney immediately
went to see his son, while Uliana called Valle Vista Health System so that Alex could receive
treatment for his reaction to the ADHD medication.
When Jack Kenney arrived at the high school, he saw Alex shaking. His son told him that he
didn’t leave the bomb threat, and that he didn’t confess to it. Jack Kenney asked school officials
to check the high school’s surveillance video so they could verify who left the threat, but they
refused, Jack Kenney said. Instead, Alex was arrested and taken to the juvenile detention center.
“I was in shock,” Jack Kenney said. “I thought we were going to take him to the hospital. And
instead he was taken out in handcuffs. It was heartbreaking.”
Center Grove Community School Superintendent Rich Arkanoff will not answer questions about
the incident, policies or the investigation.
A Center Grove news release on April 16 said that the school district’s police department and
administrators had investigated the bomb threat and that a student was arrested after admitting to
an administrator about making the threat. Two days later, the school district sent a second news
release that said the student had falsely confessed to school officials and that another Center
Grove student had been arrested for making the bomb threat.
Johnson County Prosecutor Brad Cooper has said Center Grove police, and not administrators,
should have been conducting the investigation and that Alex never should have been arrested for
making the bomb threat. Surveillance footage and student interviews conducted after Alex’s
arrest proved he had nothing to do with the threat.
A week after the arrest, Cooper had the teen’s record expunged.
‘We can forgive mistakes’
Jack Kenney and Uliana are considering whether to file a lawsuit against the school district and
are frustrated with school officials who have been unwilling to admit they made a mistake and to
review and change the way crimes at schools are investigated. Failure to admit a mistake was
made means other students could be falsely arrested and jailed for crimes they didn’t commit,
they said.
“We can forgive mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes,” Uliana said. “Nobody ever admitted
they made a mistake.”
Arkanoff and the school district’s five school board members declined to be interviewed for this
story.
Arkanoff provided the following written statement in response to several requests for an
interview:
“The safety of Center Grove students and staff is always a top priority in any situation. While
every situation is unique, Center Grove will continue to work with the Johnson County
prosecutor, parents and our students to ensure that safety. We will continue to work with our
students to build positive relationships with law enforcement and to educate them about the
importance of being honest with police officers and school administrators in all situations. We
will also continue to follow all policies and laws related to situations involving students.”
Arkanoff declined to answer questions about how the school district would ensure other students
aren’t taken to jail by school police for crimes they had nothing to do with. He also has not
responded to specific questions asking when Center Grove officials checked surveillance tapes or
interviewed students to verify who left the bomb threat, how and why the investigation focused
on Alex, how school officials learned Alex wasn’t responsible for the bomb threat and how the
school district learned who actually left the threat.
‘He was gravely ill’
Alex didn’t show any symptoms of psychosis until July 2012, when he was prescribed a steroid
to help treat poison ivy. That’s when his parents noticed he was acting differently. He wasn’t
sleeping, and he started acting paranoid, worrying he was somehow responsible for the safety of
people throughout the world.
That summer a severe drought was affecting Indiana and much of the Midwest, and Alex worried
that people weren’t getting enough food and water because of the drought. He also thought that
he was responsible for the drought and that if he stopped eating and drinking, the weather might
improve.
His parents took him to his pediatrician, who treated the teen’s reaction to the steroids with
Benadryl and additional medication, but the condition worsened. He started to become
delusional, eventually stopped talking and became catatonic. His parents took him to the
hospital.
“It was just a nightmare,” Jack Kenney said. “He was gravely ill.”
Alex spent about two weeks at Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health and at a
stress center at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis before he started to improve. A low dose of
an antipsychotic medicine helped, but it’s very difficult to know how Alex will respond to
medication. Medicine that helps him one day could stop working or become harmful later, his
parents said. Alex also started seeing a counselor and a psychologist, his parents said.
“You don’t know what’s going to help him and what’s going to hurt him,” Jack Kenney said.
He missed the first few days of his freshman year while he was recovering, but he quickly made
friends at Center Grove High School and joined the football team. The Kenney family told his
teachers and counselors about his condition and what had happened during the summer, and they
all wanted to work to ensure Alex could complete high school successfully.
‘We were horribly mistaken’
Alex remained healthy and didn’t appear to have any recurrence of the psychosis until the spring.
He was having trouble concentrating in Spanish and geometry, and he asked his parents if he
could start taking medicine for ADHD.
Jack Kenney and Uliana didn’t want Alex taking medication. But he was persistent.
“I wasn’t considering the consequences,” Alex said. “I just wanted to generally have better
grades. I just thought it was the right decision at the time.”
Alex’s parents spoke with a neuropsychologist, who recommended a low dose of medication to
help him focus. The doctor told Jack Kenney and Uliana that the effects would be similar to
caffeine.
“We were horribly mistaken about that,” Jack Kenney said.
He started taking the medicine. While it did help him focus in class, his insomnia returned. Over
spring break, Alex was prescribed a different medication for the ADHD.
The insomnia remained, and Alex seemed anxious. Then, the night of the bomb threat, he started
telling his family he was worried people would think he was involved in making the threat.
He saw on social media that the bomb threat had been written in purple ink. Alex’s room is
painted purple, and he worried that anyone who knew that would think he had something to do
with the threat, his parents said.
‘I was really frustrated’
Jack Kenney and Uliana tried to get Alex to calm down and not worry about what people would
think and whether they would suspect him because of the color of his room. But they also didn’t
realize how concerned he was, they said.
The next day, April 16, Alex was questioned about the bomb threat and arrested. He was taken to
the juvenile detention center, where he was placed on suicide watch. That meant spending the
night in a room where the lights are never turned off, making it nearly impossible to sleep, Alex
said. Seeing four blank walls also reminded him of being catatonic.
“I was really frustrated,” Alex said.
Jack Kenney and Uliana, who are both lawyers, quickly hired an attorney who worked with
Cooper to get Alex released from the juvenile detention center the next day and to have his
record expunged within a week. The couple are thankful they knew enough to hire a lawyer and
work quickly for their son’s release; otherwise he could have remained in the center longer, they
said.
“Thank goodness the prosecutor put a stop to this,” Jack Kenney said. “Thank God they put a
stop to this insanity.”
The stress from the false arrest also affected Alex’s brother, Ian Kenney, who graduated in May
as Center Grove’s valedictorian. Ian Kenney missed several days of school because of the stress
caused by his brother’s arrest, and at the same time he had to keep his grades up.
“I wanted everything to be worked out,” Ian Kenney said. “But it was kind of beyond me.”
‘I felt duped’
After Alex was released from the juvenile detention center, his parents took him to an area
hospital for treatment, and he’s been seeing a counselor and psychiatrist. Alex missed a lot of
school during his recovery and had to take summer school classes to make up for the work he
missed at the end of the school year.
Uliana asked for a meeting with Center Grove administrators after the arrest. She wanted to talk
about what had happened, the school district’s procedures for investigating threats, how they
needed to be changed and how the school district deals with students who are medicated. She
spoke with one administrator who said that was a reasonable request. But when they spoke again
several days later, the administrator told her that the school district had done nothing wrong.
“That really hurt,” Uliana said. “That was when it caused a lot of anger and hurt. And I felt
duped.”
As the Kenneys decide what to do, they also are considering how what they do will impact their
son, who soon will be back at Center Grove. Alex thinks it will be awkward when he sees
administrators who investigated the bomb threat and who had him arrested. But he’s also looking
forward to seeing his friends and counselors and teachers who have helped him in his classes.
“I just want to get back to normal,” he said. “As soon as possible.”
Best Ongoing News Coverage/Category 3
Staff, Daily Journal (Franklin)
Executed? Overstreet attorneys present case
The man sentenced to death for murdering a Franklin College student 17 years ago understands
why he’s on death row, but his attorneys say he doesn’t comprehend that his execution will mean
the end of his life. Now a South Bend judge will hear four days of testimony from doctors
discussing whether Michael Dean Overstreet understands his punishment.
If she determines he isn’t competent, the decision would put an immediate halt to his death
sentence. He would continue living in prison until a time when the state could prove he is
competent.
Fourteen years have passed since a Johnson County judge sentenced Overstreet to die for
abducting, raping and murdering 18-year-old Kelly Eckart, a Franklin College freshman who
lived at home in nearby Boggstown. Overstreet abducted Eckart after bumping his van into her
car at a Franklin intersection in September 1997.
Less than a week later, her body was found in a Brown County ravine, sending shivers through
the community as police tried to figure out who had raped and strangled her. Less than two
months after her death, police arrested Overstreet, a lifelong Franklin resident who lived near
where she worked at the city’s Walmart.
During his trial, Overstreet’s brother told the story of how Overstreet had taken an unconscious
young woman to the Camp Atterbury area early Sept. 27, 1997. Overstreet’s then-wife told
thecourt about how they cleaned his van days after Eckart disappeared and how he was glued to
newspaper and TV reports about her disappearance, murder and search for the killer.
DNA evidence found on Eckart’s body matched Overstreet with a certainty of 1 to 4 trillion. The
jury convicted him on all four charges – confinement causing serious bodily injury, rape, murder
and murder in commission of a felony after the trial. Judge Cynthia Emkes handed down the
sentence: death.
None of those details is being argued now.
These hearings won’t rehash the details of whether hemurdered Eckart, whether the jury was
right to convict him, whether he was mentally ill when he committed the crime or whether the
death sentence is appropriate. Since 2000, those decisions have all been upheld by local, state
and federal courts when asked to review them. In May 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court denied
Overstreet’s request for judicial review on his case and sentence, ending that line of appeal.
The hearings don’t take into account Overstreet’s mental state at the time of the murder,
either. During the trial, three doctors examined Overstreet, with diagnoses including paranoid
schizophrenia, schizotypal personality disorder and paranoid schizoaffective disorder. He was
found guilty at trial, and his mental issues were not a factor in the decision. The judge will need
to determine only whether he is competent to understand the punishment now.
Criteria for execution
The new hearings, which were ordered by the Indiana Supreme Court and start Tuesday in St.
Joseph County Superior Court, are one of the final legal maneuvers available to try to stop the
execution.
After a decision is made, both sides could choose to appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court and
federal courts again. After those appeals, the final option is a request to the governor, verstreet’s
attorney Steve Schutte said.
“Our argument is that Dean does not have the capacity because of his mental illness. Dean has
schizophrenia,” Schutte said. “Does his schizophrenia leave him with delusions that prevent him
from having a rational understanding of what it means to be executed? Yes, absolutely.”
In order to be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court says people must meet two criteria. They
must be able to understand both why they were sentenced and the meaning of the punishment,
Schutte said.
His attorneys argue that due to schizophrenia, Overstreet is incapable of understanding the
severity and outcome of the death penalty, Schutte said. That’s the conclusion a psychiatrist
came to in a review in early 2013. After reviewing that new evaluation in fall 2013, the
Indiana Supreme Court determined there was enough merit in the argument to launch the new
hearings.
The Indiana Attorney General’s Office will argue that Overstreet still has the legallyrequired
understanding to be executed for Eckart’s murder, spokesman Bryan Corbin said.
The attorney general’s office declined to discuss any further details about the case, since it is
ongoing, Corbin said.
Ruling by Dec. 5
Both sides will make their argument by providing testimony from long lists of doctors and
mental health providers who have interacted with Overstreet.
Dr. Rahn Bailey will be a primary witness for Overstreet, since it was his recent evaluation
that caused the high court to order the new hearing. But Bailey isn’t the only doctor who will be
able to testify to Overstreet’s chronic schizophrenia, which causes visual and auditory
hallucinations and difficulty separating reality from delusion, Schutte said. Schutte’s witness list
includes multiple doctors and staff from Corizon and Prison Health Services, which provide
mental health treatment to inmates in state prisons, he said.
“It’s not just our expert to whom Dean has been saying these things,” Schutte said.
The deputy attorneys general have their own list of doctors as well as witnesses who will prove
the authenticity of documents and files regarding Overstreet’s behavior. Those items include
audio from phone calls made by Overstreet, emails he sent, prison records regarding his
daily activity and letters he’s written and mailed while being on death row, according to the
state’s witness and exhibit list.
The hearing will take up to four days, and the judge will not immediately make a decision.
Attorneys from both sides will have until the end of October to submit written closing
statements, Schutte said. In those documents, attorneys will summarize the points they think
they proved during the hearing, cite appropriate case laws to support those points and a make
a recommendation as to why the judge should agree with their position, he said.
Miller has until Dec. 5 to issue her ruling on the case.
Best General Commentary/Category 4
Amanda Beam, The News and Tribune (Jeffersonville)
Hope for Harper
When Harper Wehneman’s hair slowly came back in after the chemo ended it was soft as a
kitten’s fur.
Harper has always been a force to be reckoned with; her strong will and self-assured nature are
as obvious as her mischievous eyes and bright smile. The short hairdo only accentuated the
9-year-old’s famed ferocity.
When her parents Melissa and Brian would bring her to PTA events, she was a ball of energy.
Running here and there. Playing with the other kids. Volunteering to help when needed.
She was life. Anyone who knew Harper understood the stage 4 Wilms’ tumor that had invaded
her tiny body never stood a chance.
A little less than a year after her diagnosis, just as expected, Harper beat the kidney cancer. An
end of chemo party was held this past June. “Harps” fittingly belted Sarah Bareilles’ song
“Brave” in front of her friends and family, her two hands grasping the microphone
tight. Her summer was spent in the sun, swimming and camping and enjoying the life of an
ordinary, healthy kid.
School break has ended now and most children are back in the classroom. Not Harper, though.
While the other fourth-graders at Georgetown Elementary learn multiplication, she remains in
the hospital with a fever, unable to keep anything down. Yesterday, her beautiful, silky hair
began to fall out again in handfuls.
Harper’s cancer has returned to her lungs and abdominal wall only three months after the
doctors declared her disease free. Her chemo treatments have resumed, too. This
time the medicine is stronger, which in turn makes Harper sicker. The nausea has been
overwhelming. A second round of chemo should start next week, followed most likely
by a stem cell transplant during which time Harper will be in isolation for more than six weeks.
None of Melissa’s friends can understand why Harper was afflicted with this illness. How could
anyone? A child should not have to endure so much pain let alone an unknown future. A mother
and father should never have to witness it.
So we all do what we can, but it feels so terribly insignificant to the obstacles ahead. Some offer
to help with Melissa and Brian’s other two children. Others send Harper gifts to cheer up her
day. Many, many people pray.
All I want to do is tell everyone how awesome Harper is. Like the time we drove through a rundown section of town, and how she found beauty in a dilapidated pink house among
the empty buildings. She seems to notice the best in everything and everyone.
Or the evening when she asked if the reason I didn’t like to dance was because I thought about it
too much. “You can’t think about it,” she said from the back of the car. “You just have to
feel the music.” That’s some sound advice from a 9-year old.
And then there are the moments that leave you speechless, such as the ease at which she tells
inquisitive onlookers that she has cancer and lost her hair due to chemo. Or when she explains
treatment has stopped for her good friend Lydia because the doctors can do nothing more to
contain the disease.
More children have these conversations than we realize. Roughly 15,700 kids
under the age of 19 will be diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. this year alone, according
to the National Cancer Institute. Close to 2,000 will die from these various illnesses.
Harper continues to fight, and to smile. If you wouldn’t mind thinking of her now and again, the
support would be appreciated. You see, our Harper is your Harper. She is what’s good
in this world as much as her cancer is what is bad.
And have no doubt, a year from now you’ll see her playing once again in the pool, her soft hair
rustling in the warm summer breeze.
Best Editorial Writer/Category 5
Misty Knisely, Pharos-Tribune (Logansport)
Sounding alarm on bad alarms
Here in the newsroom, we listen to police and fire calls on the scanner all day, every day. We
hear all manner of calls and the corresponding dispatch of the appropriate emergency responders.
We listen because it’s a part of the news-gathering process. When you read about a car crash or a
fire, many times the story originated from listening to scanner traffic. But there’s one thing
we’ve learned from all that listening: When the call of an activated alarm system comes in, we
wait. We don’t immediately head out to the location of the call to cover the news that’s
happening.
We wait and listen for confirmation. We wait because we know it’s often a false alarm. It’s
alarming how often it’s a false alarm. Though we are afforded the luxury of waiting, it’s
not one shared by first responders.
They must suit up and head out in haste to every call. Even if they know that business’ alarm has
been tripped three times in as many days and have no doubt it’s a false alarm, they still have to
hit the ground running.
It’s an exhausting and expensive process. It’s also a process that could easily be avoided. If
businesses and residents would properly maintain their alarm systems and have proper
protocol in place, it’s a problem we would quickly see resolved. But for many of the alarm
systems in the city, as first responders have learned the hard way, that maintenance is not
happening.
The Logansport City Council is stepping in to force the owners into properly caring for their
alarm systems. An ordinance passed on first reading Monday night requires owners of alarm
systems – whether business or residential – to register with the city’s police department.
While we’re not sure we’re sold on the registration fee just yet, we are sold on the fine structure
for continued false alarms. (Fines could result after three false alarms or any violation of the
ordinance that the chief of police or a designee determines not excusable. A first violation would
result in $50, a second would result in $100, a third would result in $150 and all violations
beyond that in a calendar year would result in $200.)
Oftentimes the only way to get people’s attention is through their wallets.
We agree with Police Chief Mike Clark when he says false alarms force the department to waste
fuel, manpower and risk the liability associated with a quick response.
We think this registration is a good first step in fixing the problem.
Best Business/Economic News Coverage/Category 6
Sarah Einselen, Pharos-Tribune (Logansport)
Lights out at Whitehouse
After 73 years as “Whitehouse No. 1” on Sixth Street, the local breakfast and lunch diner is
shutting its doors after Aug. 1.
Owner Karen Grisamore stepped outside the restaurant Friday morning after six hours at the
breakfast grill, where she’d been cooking pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausage since 3:30 a.m. As
she let her assistant Vicki Jackson take care of the odd diner coming in for a brunch, she said
she’d decided to close Whitehouse Restaurant about a month ago.
Grisamore began telling customers Tuesday, explaining her decision to “regulars” one by one or
in small groups. It wasn’t easy to make, she said.
As she took her seat in one of the plastic chairs, she described how some of the regulars liked to
sit in those chairs early in the morning, watching the sun rise over the buildings toward the east.
“They love coming out here and sitting and talking to one another,” she said. Then she started
wiping her eyes, struggling to get her next words out.
“It’s really hard. There’s some kids come in here that I love. I really love.”
Grisamore bought the restaurant seven years ago from her stepfather, Lester Hettinger, after
having worked there for nine years under his ownership. Hettinger, who passed away in 2012,
had cooked for Whitehouse Restaurant for 61 years – up until late 2011 – and owned the
restaurant since 1975. He’d bought it from the restaurant’s founders, Loren and Mabel Kathrens.
Founded in 1941 just before the U.S. was thrust into World War I, the restaurant has seen its ups
and downs.
It became “No. 1,” Grisamore said, when the Kathrens opened two other Whitehouse Restaurant
locations around town – on the ground floor of the Barnett Hotel near Market and Second streets,
which later moved to a Market Street lot that’s since become a city-owned pocket park, and on
the corner of Fifth and Broadway where
There’s been just the one since before Hettinger purchased the business. It’s where Grisamore
has spent about 55 hours a week for the last few years, serving an estimated 50 people a day on
average in the 13 bar stools and four booths in the small diner.
Most diners, she said, are regulars like 66-year-old Roger Myer of Deer Creek.
He’s been stopping in at Whitehouse Restaurant almost daily for at least 25 years, he said.
Another diner called out that it might be closer to 35 years, since she remembered him from
when she started coming in the 1980s.
“I can come in here and I can harass and I can sing zippity-do-da and play my kazoo and not get
kicked out,” Myer explained, tongue in cheek. He likes the camaraderie built up among diners
and with Grisamore and Jackson, he added.
“Not many places you can come in and interact with everybody,” he said.
Grisamore described the interactions as a big family.
“You walk in the door – ‘hi Roger, hi Shirley, hi Brenda. You feel OK?’ “ she said, naming a
few customers she’s gotten to know well.
The restaurant’s Facebook page reflects the familial character. Interspersed between friendly
invitations to dine on burgers or waffles are information about longtime customers’ funerals or
pictures of the regulars hanging out in the sidewalk chairs.
As Myer ordered his usual request – pancakes and sausage, sometimes varied with eggs – he said
he was disappointed the restaurant was closing, saying he wasn’t “into change.”
“I don’t like it, but it’s something that’s got to happen, I guess,” Myer said.
Grisamore said the decision to close the restaurant was a personal one. She’d sought a buyer for
the business last year with no success.
And last year, as well, what once was a busy Saturday morning has become a slow trickle of
diners looking for a weekend breakfast.
“Business has just been down for some reason and I don’t know why,” Grisamore said. “It’s just
time.”
Grisamore has already started part-time work as a fry cook at her brother Larry Isaacs’
restaurant, Amelio’s and Ike’s at Fifth and Melbourne streets. She’ll move to full-time work
there after Whitehouse Restaurant closes, she said.
She and Jackson broke the news to a pair of young boys Thursday. “They about broke down and
cried,” Jackson said.
Grisamore let each boy take his chocolate milk in one of her glass Coca-Cola bottles – just for
once.
“I told them, if you eat all the sausage on your plate and drink all your chocolate milk, you can
take these Coke bottles home with you,” she said.
It’s how she hopes to keep the memory of Whitehouse Restaurant in the minds of the children
who come with their parents or grandparents. She also plans to give away the 30 to 50 plastic
dinosaur toys she usually has on hand to keep children occupied while they wait for their meal.
But there are a few things she’ll put in her dining room at home.
“Anything that says Whitehouse on it is going to my house,” she noted.
Whitehouse Restaurant is located at 87 S. Sixth St. and is open 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday through
Saturday through Aug. 1. Grisamore can be reached at 574-722-2414.
Best Short Feature Story/Category 8
Annie Goeller, Daily Journal (Franklin)
Moving past the hurt
The three-bedroom house has a screened-in back porch, a cozy kitchen and a bedroom fully
decorated for a little girl.
The master bedroom and bathroom still need work, but Chris Abbott wasn’t concerned about
that. He wanted to make a home for his daughter, Aley.
Nearly a year ago, a fire destroyed their Nineveh home, killing Sirena Slusher-Abbott, Chris’
wife and Aley’s mom, and two of their children, Hailey Slusher-Abbott, 22 months, and John
Slusher-Abbott Jr., 5 months.
Since then, Chris and Aley Abbott have been figuring out how to rebuild.
They moved in with Chris Abbott’s mother but are now ready to live in a home of their own.
“It’s going to allow us to have our own space, to be a family again,” Chris Abbott said.
The home in Sweetwater was familiar to Chris Abbott – he and Sirena had looked at it and
wanted to buy it last year. After the fire, he dropped plans to buy it, but then he came back again
earlier this year. He made an offer, negotiated and bought the home in May. Since then, he has
been working to get the home ready for his family.
Nearly every weekend since he bought the place, Chris Abbott has worked on the home,
repairing walls, replacing carpet, and rerunning pipes and wiring. The work has been therapeutic,
he said.
“It’s very bittersweet, but it’s an awesome moment, “he said.
The work he has done to the home has been focused on Aley. The bedroom and bathroom for
him have barely been touched, said Vicki Taylor, wife of Paul Taylor, pastor of The Crossing in
Nineveh church.
“He’s really focused on doing his best for Aley,” she said.
As the time approached for the family to move in, Chris Abbott became more nervous. At first
he couldn’t figure out why. He and Taylor talked, and he realized he was nervous about being
solely responsible for his family, since he felt he couldn’t protect them before, she said.
So they got together with fellow church members, prayed for protection of the Abbott family’s
new home and put up a plaque that says “God bless this home.” She hopes that has helped ease
his mind.
Taylor has been impressed with Abbott’s skill in decorating, picking out colors that fit together
and make the house feel like their own. She told him how proud Sirena would be.
“He really, in a sense, built it for her,” she said.
Nearly a year after losing two of his children and his wife, Abbott thinks of them daily.
“I still have ups and downs. I still miss them. That’s going to be that way for a long time,”
Abbott said.
Driving by their old home has gotten easier since the destroyed building was torn down. Now,
it’s just a field, he said.
Both he and Aley have been in counseling and gotten help and support from their church and
community.
Aley, 6, is in kindergarten and has twice as many friends as she had last year, her father said.
Their new house is right down the street from his mother, so Aley can still walk to and from her
bus stop with grandma, he said.
Taylor has been so impressed with Aley, who was at home when the fire started last year and ran
to a neighbor’s house for help. At first, she barely spoke, avoided eye contract and became
withdrawn, Taylor said.
But now, she is thriving and talks about her mother and siblings, she said.
“She is really out of her shell now and acting like a normal little girl,” she said.
Abbott has continued improving, too.
He was hired on full-time at Toyota in Columbus and is looking forward to living in Sweetwater,
a quiet, small community where people know each other. He’s wanted to live there for a while,
he said.
He insisted on being put into the rotation to work at the nursery at church, which his two
youngest children would have been in now. And he has been working with the children’s
ministry, because he wanted to be around kids, Taylor said.
“He is an incredible young man. He really is. It’s been amazing how well he’s done,” she said.
After a recent dinner at the Nineveh fire station, he also began talking about becoming a
volunteer firefighter like the emergency workers who tried so hard to save his family. He’s not
ready to make that decision yet but is considering it, she said.
And he is also slowly considering the future, including dating, she said.
“It’s been great for him to focus on Aley, because she has needed it, but he needs more to life
than that,” she said.
She said she thinks that is what Sirena would have wanted.
Abbott is considering the future, too, in a house that would have room for a larger family
someday.
“Even though it’s just me and (Aley) now, down the road, there will be more,” he said
Best Profile Feature/Category 9
Noelle Steele, Daily Reporter (Greenfield)
Fighting for Katie
It would have been easy to dwell on the negative – and there were times it was tempting.
When the doctors first said, “Kidney failure.” When the hospital visits became more frequent and
the stays, longer. When a transplant became the best option to save 10-year-old Katie Curry’s
life.
But the Currys are unfailingly positive people. They knew what to do.
They embraced one another. They trusted the doctors. They folded their hands in prayer.
And Danny Curry prepared to put his own health at risk, volunteering as a live kidney donor, to
give his daughter the best chance possible at recovery.
“How do you not do this as a parent?” he said. “I have two, she has one that...”
He trails off. It’s too much, sometimes, talking about all that’s happened in the last 18 months.
Far from routine
Danny and Jen Curry didn’t know their daughter was sick – really sick – in the beginning.
Her symptoms varied, and at first, there always seemed to be a simple explanation. A little flu
bug. Car sickness. The kinds of aches and pains all kids get.
But Katie kept getting sick.
It was summer of 2013 when the Currys went to see a specialist. They suspected food allergies
might be the problem.
Jen took her daughter to the doctor that day. Danny, a minister at Park Chapel Christian Church,
was in Nebraska for a church conference.
Jen expected a routine visit, a few tests before they headed home.
But the doctor who examined Katie became concerned while looking over the results of her
blood work. Then a CT scan revealed a mass in Katie’s upper chest.
Her parents thought back to a familiar complaint – whenever Katie was sick, she said she felt
like she had a lump in her throat.
That lump, they would later learn, was her heart. Katie’s failing kidneys had caused her blood
pressure to skyrocket, enlarging her heart.
Katie would not be going home from the hospital that day.
An answer
When Jen called her husband, her voice was calm and even. The doctors still weren’t sure
exactly what was wrong, but Katie would have to be admitted.
Danny was utterly confused.
“I was like, ‘For food allergies? They admit a kid for allergies?’” he said.
The rest of the day, Jen stayed with Katie as doctors put her through a battery of tests. Teams of
doctors from all manner of specialties weighed in on the case, narrowing the possibilities.
Her heart and kidneys weren’t working, though doctors weren’t sure which organ was
responsible for the damage.
Finally – an answer.
One of Katie’s kidneys had never developed beyond the size it had been when she was an infant.
And the other was giving out.
Kidneys play a key part in the body’s regulation of blood pressure, and as Katie’s began to fail,
her blood pressure steadily climbed.
It was so high, the doctors were shocked Katie was still conscious.
Jen called Danny in Nebraska again, and this time, emotions ran high.
Kidney failure. Heart failure. Every word, a shock to the system.
Danny hardly had time to react. An auditorium of 1,500 high-schoolers was waiting on him to
preach the morning message.
Danny, still reeling, went ahead with his sermon. He told the Old Testament story of Joseph,
whose jealous brothers threw him in a pit.
It’s hard to remember God loves you when you’re surrounded by that kind of darkness, when
you don’t understand why something so awful is happening.
But he does, Danny told the students.
He needed to hear that message as much as anyone.
The fight begins
It took doctors two weeks to bring Katie’s blood pressure down to a safe level. When word came
she could finally go home from the hospital, the Currys were relieved.
They thought the worst was over.
Then the doctors began talking about dialysis, hooking their daughter up to machines for hours at
a time to filter the toxins from her body.
It would be impossible to avoid unless Katie got a kidney transplant – and soon.
Jen was overwhelmed. She started to excuse herself from the room but didn’t make it. She
passed out right there over the examining table.
Her daughter wasn’t going to get better.
“There’s no medicines that can fix kidneys,” Jen said.
In September of 2013, doctors went forward with removing one of Katie’s kidneys.
The next nine months would be spent making monthly trips to the hospital for blood work.
Doctors were closely monitoring Katie’s remaining kidney’s filtration level. A healthy kidney
ranks at a score of more than 100 on the scale that measures how much blood passes through the
organ. Anything less than 30 on that scale is considered severe renal failure.
Katie’s remaining kidney registered 25.
Doctors thought there could be time – years even, before Katie would need more serious medical
intervention. But their hope was short-lived.
Keeping Katie’s blood pressure down remained a constant battle, and her filtration levels
continued to decline. Once a patient’s dips to 10, they need dialysis to live. And even that is only
a temporary solution.
By June, Katie’s filtration level was 18 and dropping fast.
The search for a kidney donor began.
Power of positivity
From the beginning, there was good news. Katie’s blood type – Type A – made her potentially
compatible with 85 percent of the population.
The chances of finding a live donor were excellent.
Her parents didn’t hesitate. They were first to be tested.
Excess protein in Jen’s system eliminated her as a possibility early in the process. Danny was a
borderline match.
Additional testing took weeks, with two different teams of specialists – one advocating for Katie,
one for Danny.
A person’s good intentions don’t guarantee they’ll be accepted as a donor, Danny explained.
They must undergo extensive testing to determine that their own health won’t be placed at risk if
they give up an organ.
Once Danny was approved, things began to move quickly.
The transplant was originally scheduled for Nov. 19, but Katie had been struggling with
bronchitis at the time and was too sick to undergo surgery. Surgery was delayed nearly a month,
and the wait was agonizing.
Meanwhile, the Currys’ church family rallied to support them.
After all, many parents in the congregation looked at Katie like one of their own – even those
who had never met her.
With 1,500 people attending Park Chapel on an average Sunday morning, it’d be impossible for
Danny to introduce his family to every church member.
But that never stopped him from trying.
From the time his children were babies, Danny has interwoven tales of life in the Curry house
into his sermons. There’s rarely a Sunday when a portrait of Katie and her younger brother,
Caleb, doesn’t make its way onto the big screen.
Katie and Caleb grew up in front of hundreds of people who applauded their successes, laughed
at their antics and came to think of them as an extension of their own family.
And so, it’s no surprise that on this latest journey, the church has been there every step of the
way.
The Currys post frequent updates to Facebook and Twitter, and friends from across the globe
reply with words of encouragement and prayers for healing.
By Dec. 15, the day of the transplant, Katie’s filtration rate had dropped to 9, below the threshold
requiring dialysis to survive.
Danny’s kidney would be removed at IU Health University Hospital; Katie would undergo her
surgery at Riley Hospital for Children.
The buildings are connected by a series of walkways, but it’s nearly a half mile walk.
That morning, Danny stayed with his family in Katie’s hospital room for as long as he could.
Then, it was time.
“I hugged them, and I made the long walk over to IU by myself,” he said. “But I didn’t feel by
myself at all because there were thousands of people praying for us, all over the world.”
Thinking of others
The kidney began functioning immediately.
Katie’s numbers began to climb, and as Christmas neared, the Currys found so many reasons to
be thankful.
Danny’s quick recovery surprised his doctors, who marveled as his ability to walk the half mile
of hospital hallways to his daughter’s room just a day after his surgery.
And Katie began regaining her energy.
On Christmas Day, the family decided to spread the joy.
They packed a little red Riley wagon full of six boxes of donuts and made their way through the
halls, passing them out to patients and staff.
“Word got out, and lots of different teams of doctors that didn’t need to visit Katie came to
‘check up’ on her,” Danny said.
The day after Christmas brought the best present yet – approval to take Katie home.
In some ways, it felt like crossing the finish line.
But the marathon is just beginning.
The next three to four months are critical. Katie is on a variety of medications that suppress her
immune system. While the goal is to keep her body’s natural defenses from attacking the new
kidney, the medicine also leaves her susceptible to illness.
As the Currys update friends and family through Twitter and Facebook, the hashtag,
#coverforcurrys, has become a social media movement among their supporters.
Members of the congregation who have followed Katie’s progress have been posting photos of
themselves, donning hospital masks.
But #coverforcurrys has taken on a broader meaning in the church, said Charlie Ketchen, a youth
minister at Park Chapel.
“It started, people were putting on a hospital mask, … but I think the main thing is just, ‘Hey,
we’re covering you in our prayers,’” he said.
Katie and Kinedy
There’s plenty of praying going on in the Curry household, too.
In the kitchen, an entire wall is dedicated to Bible verses to memorize – the parts of the good
book that remind the Currys how lucky they are.
Written on one of the index cards in bright green marker is the simple phrase is from 1
Thessalonians: “Pray without ceasing.”
It’s Katie’s personal favorite.
“Because it’s the shortest,” she said with a shy smile.
While Katie is still recovering from surgery, she’s already seeing great dividends from her new
kidney, which she has dubbed “Kinedy.”
She doesn’t require frequent naps the way she did before the transplant, and she can finally eat
normal foods again.
The low-sodium diet she was on has given way to pickles and macaroni and cheese.
Her filtration level is up to 109, a signal that Kate and Kinedy are doing just fine.
There will be bumps ahead, but the Currys are prepared, with faith and family at the ready.
“We do what we can do and trust that God’s gonna take care of the rest,” Jen said.
It will be several months before Katie can return to school, but she’s already looking forward to
getting back to her classes at Greenfield Intermediate School, where she is a sixth-grader.
In the meantime, an industrial-sized pump of hand sanitizer is offered to anyone who stops by for
a visit, including Katie’s teachers, who come by each week to help her keep up on her school
work.
The next few months will be punctuated by hospital visits – always with an overnight bag in
hand, just in case – and inevitable ups and downs.
But the Currys’ positivity hasn’t waned.
“We’re still in the midst of it, but it’s a choice you have,” Danny said. “One (road) is about
worry and fear, and the other is ‘look how far we’ve come.’”
BECOMING A LIVING DONOR
Every year, friends, family members – and in some cases perfect strangers – volunteer as living
donors for patients in dire need of a transplant. It’s a process most know little about beforehand,
and one that changes lives.
Q. Who can donate?
A. Generally speaking, anyone healthy between the ages of 18 and 60 can be a potential donor.
Race and gender are not factors in compatibility; blood and tissue type are.
Q. What can I donate?
A. Kidneys are the most frequent organs donated by a living donor, but you can also donate a
lobe of a lung, a partial liver, pancreas or intestine.
Q. Will my health be put at risk?
A. Any person volunteering to be a living donor will first undergo a battery of tests to determine
their eligibility. If any results suggest your heath would be compromised by being a donor, the
process stops.
Q. What if my remaining organ fails?
A. Anyone who has made a living donation goes to the top of the transplant list if their remaining
organ – a kidney, for example – fails.
Best In-Depth Feature or Feature Package/Category 10
Jonathan Streetman, The Herald (Jasper)
Another chance
This isn’t how Kami Hopster’s life was supposed to be.
Not since she was a 4-year-old rescued by Child Protective Services from an abusive home.
Especially not since she was placed with foster parents Mark and Cheryl Hopster, a Jasper
couple that later adopted her and her younger sister, Harley.
Kami, 23, was going places. She was an athlete at Jasper High School, where she qualified for
the state swimming finals and sprinted with ease during track and field.
She was never supposed to get busted for underage drinking. I mean, all of her friends were
doing it, too.
Going to jail, being led from her parents’ Mill Street home in handcuffs with red and blue lights
flickering as neighbors watched. Missing nearly two years of her young daughters’ lives instead
of helping their father raise them.
None of that was in the plan.
But she made her choices. She knows it. It haunts her. What could have been? What now?
Of the 150,000 women in U.S. prisons and jails, 75 percent are mothers and the majority have
children younger than 18. In Dubois County, approximately 53 women were served in the work
release program during 2014; 23 were mothers with children younger than 18.
Kami’s future is as uncertain as it ever has been. In a way, that’s a good thing. For the last year
and half, her past, present and future were bound by cinder block walls, barred doors and jailissued jumpsuits that made her feel less like a person and more like a navy blue sack with a
number.
But now she’s a free woman. Free to again make her own choices. Kami has her life back. The
question now: What will she do with it?
Snow covered the ground last winter, but Kami couldn’t see it. It was business as usual – jail
slippers and concrete floors in a life in which the outside world didn’t much matter. Yet it was
the only thing on Kami’s mind. Lying on a thin mattress on the bottom bunk of the steel bed at
the end of Cell Block J in Cell J4 at the Dubois County Security Center, Kami yearned for an
exit.
She’d been doing everything in her power to make it happen. She attended Alcoholics
Anonymous classes at the jail. Sheriff Donny Lampert let her speak to groups of students about
drug and alcohol abuse, Lampert hoping the story might scare some sense into the kids.
Kami hoped for the same, but the promise of fresh air and a fast food lunch were good, too. She
agreed to appear on local television, where she spilled her life story from the jail library.
Kami told the camera everything. She talked about drinking at age 15 to mask childhood
memories.
“The drinking and the drugs and everything, it was my outlet,” she said. “It was to cover up the
pain and pretend everything was OK. To not feel emotions. It was my best friend.”
By 17, she received her first drunken driving citation, a violation that shocked her parents.
Kami was kicked off her sports teams and lost potential scholarship offers. The mistake only sent
her down a darker path.
By 18, sick of rules and sure that she could handle life on her own, she moved out of her parents’
home. She began drinking all the time, hanging with the wrong crowd.
By 20, she’d again been cited for driving while intoxicated (this time, she failed a drug test for
marijuana).
By 21, she had her third OWI (this time, she wrecked her car, injuring a passenger inside).
Amid the parties and her legal troubles, Kami and Chad Merkley had two daughters – Mya, now
4, and October, 2.
“I didn’t learn my lesson because I wanted the party life,” she said. “I wanted to be what I was in
high school. The popular one, the one who has every single friend.”
That summer, in the two months leading up to the crash, she was drunk or high or both nearly all
the time. Her detox in the jail was bone-crushingly brutal.
“That’s really when I wanted to stop was after I went through the detox. Having two kids and
ignoring them through the entire time was just horrible. Now it’s time to grow up, be a parent.
Being in jail as long as I have has really made me rethink everything.”
The TV episode from the jail library aired last February. She watched from a metal stool
attached to a metal table. Oh, do I really look like that?
It wasn’t easy to see, but she’s glad she did it. The reward came a few days later when Kami’s
mother, by telephone, told her daughter she’s proud of how far she’s come.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear,” Kami said.
It was the middle of winter years ago when Kami and Harley arrived at the Hopsters’ home, cold
and scared with merely the clothes on their backs. Cheryl had been in her front yard, planting
rose bushes in unseasonably warm weather when several police cars sped up Mill Street, sirens
blaring and lights spinning. The police and Child Protective Services were rushing toward two
girls in a rescue that happened not a moment too soon.
Kami’s biological mother and stepfather were mean when they drank, and they drank a lot. Kami
was Harley’s protector. She sometimes grabbed baby Harley and ducked into a bathroom, locked
the door and hid. She took the blame for everything and absorbed the spankings that followed. In
that way, Kami became the bad child and Harley the good kid. It was a role Kami found hard to
escape.
In the Hopster household, Kami clung to the role of guardian. She stared down Mark and
Cheryl as they fed baby Harley.
“She didn’t know how to play. She had to learn how to play,” Cheryl recalled. “They say the
first 18 months is the most critical time for a child’s development. They learn good, they learn
bad. They learn creativity. She learned survival.”
Kami eventually settled into her new role as a fun kid in a loving family, but her past was never
far behind. She rebelled against authority and learned to lie to get what she wanted. Mark and
Cheryl enrolled her in Holy Family School in Jasper so she’d receive more one-on-one time
with a teacher and encouraged her to play sports in high school.
They knew Kami was mischievous but never suspected the drugs and the drinking. She was at
the pool for hours every day. How could she misbehave?
Kami’s story is not uncommon.
According to a 2010 report by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, of the
2.3 million inmates incarcerated in the nation’s jails and prisons,
1.5 million met the medical criteria for substance abuse or addiction. The report further found
that substance-involved inmates, compared to those not involved with substance abuse, are more
likely to be reincarcerated, to begin their criminal careers at an early age and to have more
contact with the criminal justice system. They are also twice as likely to have had at least one
parent who abused alcohol or other drugs when they were children and are 29 percent less likely
to have completed high school.
In the Venn diagram that is Kami’s criminal past, she fits smack in the middle.
While Kami owns up to her decisions, the numbers say the odds were stacked against her.
Women who were abused or neglected as children face a 77 percent higher chance of arrest
than women who endured no such childhood trauma.
Children of incarcerated parents also face an increased rate of anxiety, depression, aggression,
truancy, attention disorders and poor scholastic performance.
They’re sobering statistics and Kami hopes she can count herself among the 64 percent of
formerly incarcerated individuals who remain free, rather than the 36 percent who land back in
jail within three years of their release.
Jail is no place for children.
Never was that more apparent than 10 minutes during visitation on Easter Sunday last spring.
Kami thinks about how she’ll be a better mother to her daughters. She’ll hug them more. She’ll
play with them and laugh and carry them on around on her hips, even when they’re too big to be
lugged. Most importantly, she’d do all the things a mother does, all the things she missed.
When Harley brought the girls to see her on Easter, Kami couldn’t touch them. She could only
smile through the glass separating mother and children.
“Look who it is!” Harley said to Mya and October, wearing matching yellow dresses with their
untamed curly blonde hair.
“It’s mommy!” Mya said, pointing at Kami.
Kami smiled broadly. Harley placed Mya on the metal stool and handed her the phone. Kami
clutched the matching receiver from across the glass.
October (they call her Toby) sat on the counter, pressing her hand against the glass as Kami did
the same.
After several minutes of brief questions and answers, Mya was ready to hand the phone to her
little sister. Harley reached to pluck Mya from the chair, but the toddler squirmed and nicked her
knee under the metal countertop. Her skin began to bruise. The tears were just as quick.
Kami dropped the receiver and pushed her hands to her mouth, helpless as Mya cried into
Harley’s shoulder.
“Get her some ice,” Kami mouthed through the glass.
Harley looked at the bare, block walls of the visitation area. Every passage lies behind locked
doors.
“Where am I supposed to get ice?”
Mya kept crying.
“She’s just like her mom. Cry for a few seconds because she can,” Harley said of her niece. “Are
you ready to go back to daddy?”
Feet away but miles apart, Kami’s shoulders sank as Harley motioned that she and the children
were leaving. Kami never even said hello to Toby. The visit lasted 10 minutes.
“I was happy to see them in those matching dresses. They looked really cute,” Kami said, forcing
a smile that didn’t last.
Jail is no place for a mother.
Kami saw the budding leaves from the back of a Dubois County Sheriff ’s Department van, the
one deputies use to transport inmates to the Dubois County Courthouse. It was May 13 and Kami
had a hearing with Judge Mark McConnell who held her future in his hands.
Kami was on her best behavior. With shackles on her wrists and ankles and the jumpsuit
swaying from her frame, Kami shuffled out of the van. It was her day of reckoning.
She was called to the stand by her attorney, Scott Blazey of Jasper. “Has this period of
incarceration left an impression on you?” Blazey asked.
Simple, good. Start with a softball.
Kami, nervous, replied with a single word.
“Yes.”
“What’s it been like incarcerated in the jail?”
There it was. Time to let the judge know she’s a changed woman. A mother with a purpose.
“It’s not been fun, but the lesson has been learned, that I can’t keep going behind people’s
backs to get what I want.”
That has been an issue for Kami. Her mother describes it likes this: There’s a set of rules by
which most of us abide – society’s rules – and there’s rules that Kami abides by – Kami’s rules.
Kami told the judge she wants to play by society’s rules. He nodded. Kami told him about AA
and speaking at schools. She told him she wants to quit partying, wants to stay sober. Kami
doesn’t want her daughters to end up like her.
“I’d like to take this opportunity seriously. I do want to get better.”
Give me work release, she requested. Let me raise my girls, she pleaded.
Blazey rested his case. Prosecutor Beth Sermersheim was less pleased. She’s heard this before,
she said. What about the last couple of times Kami was granted work release, only to break her
terms and end up back in jail? What about the time she ran from work release and racked up
another charge?
“As is demonstrated by her criminal history, she has been given opportunity after
opportunity,” Sermersheim noted.
Heartbroken on the stand, Kami fought tears.
“I can’t miss any more of my kids’ lives.”
McConnell was moved. He sensed progress in Miss Hopster and said so. But 75 days remained
on one of Kami’s concurrent sentences and McConnell wanted Kami to serve it in jail. After
that, he said, he would consider work release.
Kami plodded out of the courtroom. Her face was stone but tears cracked the surface and rolled
off her cheek. Her voice cracked as the elevator doors shut. Again, the walls closed in.
Last summer, several law enforcement agencies joined forces for a covert operation that netted
16 arrests of drug dealers and users. Large amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine and other
drugs were confiscated. It was a victory for law enforcement. It also meant Kami had hardened
criminals as cell mates. The days of braiding fellow inmates’ hair and watching Dr. Phil on
afternoon TV were gone.
She kept to herself. She grew stir crazy. She needed to see her girls
In late September, Kami was granted work release. She packed her belongings, put on street
clothes and headed across the parking lot to Dubois County Community Corrections.
Two garbage bags. Everything she owned fit into two clear garbage bags. One of them contained
her court papers, a cell phone she didn’t expect to ever see again and an inhaler for her asthma.
The other bag was full of county-issued potato chips she’d collected during her stay behind bars.
It’s a short walk from one side of the facility to the other, but it was the first time she’d been free
to make her own decisions. Kami took her time, retrieving a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from
a bag. She walked slowly and took a deep drag. She knew what was next.
Kami fell into a seat inside the facility’s foyer and was handed a stack of paperwork. One form
prompted her for a home address and she wasn’t sure what to put. She left it blank.
A guard at the facility asked Kami if she had the back pay for her previous visits. Her tab
reached about $3,000. She’s a familiar face around here, the guard mentioned.
Even though she’d seen it twice before, Kami was forced to watch a 15-minute instructional
video explaining the details of the community corrections program.
“You waive your Constitutional rights,” the voice on the video stated. “We need to know where
you are at all times.”
She soaked in every word. They’d know if she didn’t, and she wasn’t about to get in trouble 30
minutes after leaving jail.
Kami spoke privately with Jennifer Fuhs, her case manager who is now the facility’s interim
director. Together, they covered Kami’s life story and identified her strengths and weaknesses.
They talked about getting her a solid job and filling in the blank space on her home address.
“You’re coming from next door. You have to get re-established,” Fuhs told her.
Kami was already emotionally drained, but the day had only just begun. Harley picked her up
from the facility and together they drove to their parents’ home, where Kami changed into her
sister’s spare clothes, tinkered with the piano and checked Facebook for the first time in months.
But she was there to look for her belongings, mainly her own clothes, stashed in her car before it
was impounded.
She called her father after a futile search through the garage.
The car was at a business near Big Lots, he told her, and he never fetched anything out of it.
They headed to the store and were inside for two minutes. Kami kicked open the doors, tears
flowing.
The car had been sold at a fraction of the price. All of her belongings were destroyed.
“I have nothing!” she wailed. “Why can’t just one good thing happen to me?”
Harley, desperate to calm her sister, countered with an idea – let’s go visit your girls. After a stop
at Chad’s parent’s house in Huntingburg to pick up Kami’s purse, they headed to the girls’ baby
sitter.
Kami walked into the home. Not expecting to see their mother, Mya and Toby weren’t quick to
say hello. Kami, conditioned to hide the pain, picked up Mya and tickled her. Mya laughed and
Toby wanted in on the action.
But there was a problem. Kami forgot to call ahead to let the baby sitter know she’d be there.
The sitter’s mother was angry. She contended these are Chad’s girls and, as the girls’ father, he
has every right to deny this visit. Kami apologized and borrowed Harley’s phone to call Chad at
work. Chad, who has maintained custody of the girls during Kami’s incarceration, didn’t mind.
But Kami’s welcome had clearly expired.
She had time to ask how her girls are doing. Sometimes, during their days at the baby sitter, the
girls pick up a toy phone and scream “Mommy! Mommy!” into the receiver. Kami’s heart broke
when she heard the story.
She left her girls behind and sank back into the car’s passenger seat. It’d been a long day.
The terms of work release are pretty clear. You have to work. Fresh off her disastrous release
day, Kami was sent back into the world to find a job. She applied all over Jasper and used her
new freedom to visit friends at their places of business. As long as her time sheet was signed, all
was well.
Despite her spotted past, Kami landed a job cleaning rooms at a Holiday Inn Express.
Things went well, and Fuhs predicted good things even when Kami quickly changed jobs to the
McDonald’s on Jasper’s north side, where she previously worked. It was a good fit. She
previously fared well in the fast-pace environment and enjoyed being back.
Because of her large debt to Community Corrections, and in an effort to help provide for her
young family, Kami grabbed all the hours she could. Night shift. Early mornings. Every hour on
the job was an hour not spent behind locked doors.
Kami’s luck held up until October.
“Defendant was ordered on May 13, 2014 in a Modification Agreement to contact the Court
Alcohol and Drug Program immediately upon release from the Security Center. Defendant failed
to contact this office upon her release,” read a violation notice, dated Sept. 25.
Kami had several chances to schedule a meeting, the notice reads, but her hours at McDonald’s
made the get-together difficult to schedule. After three attempts, Drug Court coordinator William
Wells called it quits. He filed a petition to revoke her work release. Both Kami and Fuhs were
shocked and together they talked. After all Kami endured, it wasn’t drinking or drugs or skipping
work that landed her in trouble.
It was missing a meeting because she was working to pay her bills.
On Oct. 15, Kami’s work release was revoked. She was again led from the courtroom back to
jail.
She always said it would be unfair to her girls to get their mommy back only to lose her to jail
again. She was determined not to let that happen. Yet here she was back behind bars.
Her new release date, if all went well, was Dec. 23 – two days before Christmas.
Chad has his own past. Kami wasn’t partying alone, after all. But he’s practically been a single
father, and while he has the support of his family, he knows the girls are his responsibility.
Everything they have, he provides. He works at Farbest Foods, where he’s been for five years,
and lives in a duplex on the north side of Jasper, where the girls have a backyard and can hear
roosters crowing in the morning.
Mya looks after Toby with a sense of fierce duty. Nobody but Mya gets to pick on Toby, just like
Kami and Harley at that age.
Chad would love help from the girls’ mother but he hasn’t exactly counted on it in the past. He
likes what he’s heard from her, that she intends to change, that they can raise the girls as a
family.
While Kami was on work release, Chad proposed and she said yes.
“I’m hoping that this time in jail will straighten her out,” he said. “Party time is over.”
It’s the middle of winter again and Kami is free.
Kami was scheduled to be released at 8 a.m. on Dec. 23, as expected, and Chad’s mother, Sherry,
was standing outside her car by 7:45.
She was there to pick up her future daughter-in-law, the mother of her precious granddaughters.
It was a responsibility she did not take lightly.
Sherry teared up at the mention of Chad and how he’s taken care of the girls. She’s proud of
Kami, too, for staying sober and for trying to regain control of her life. That’s all anyone can ask
of her now.
It was 8:15 before Kami walked through the door. She and another inmate stayed up all night
chatting, Kami too excited to sleep. When 8 o’clock finally rolled around, she began shouting for
a guard. I’ve got prior commitments, she said playfully, you can’t keep me in here.
As Kami strolled through the final set of locked doors, Sherry hugged her.
“You know what this means right?”
“What? I’m scared ...”
“No more coming back here.”
“Oh, I know.”
As they left the jail, Sherry made sure Kami had the ring Chad had given her. It was already back
on Kami’s finger. On a patio at Chad’s duplex, Kami and Sherry chatted. About the rooster in the
neighbor’s yard and about fresh air and mostly about Mya and Toby.
The rest of Kami’s morning was spent cleaning the apartment – vacuuming floors, washing
dishes and cycling through laundry. In one fell swoop, she went from inmate to mother. Even as
she changed a bag of trash filled with dirty diapers, plugging her nose to keep from gagging, it
felt better than the alternative.
Misplaced toys and crushed grapes filled the girls’ bedroom. Mya’s cup laid by the sink. Kami
laughed at the mess.
“I leave her for one and a half years and everything goes amok,” she joked.
In the afternoon, running on zero sleep, Kami crashed on the couch, curled up with a blanket.
She couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not Mya will forgive her for leaving. Toby is young
and may never remember Kami was gone. But Mya is 4, the same age as Kami when her world
turned. Mya shows many of the same strengths Kami did, fighting for survival, protecting her
sister at all costs. Kami hopes she hasn’t caused too much damage.
“She’s a tough cookie,” Kami said of Mya. “Sweet and polite, but she don’t take nothing from
nobody.”
Kami was that same little girl once. It’s going to be an uphill climb to rebuild her relationship
with her girls, to find a job that will give a convicted felon another chance, to stay clean and
sober.
In the months that followed her release, she was able to accomplish those early goals. She and
Chad have remained together and are redecorating the apartment. Her girls help her clean. They
got a dog, Gracie, and Kami found work at the Smoke Shop in Jasper.
But on the first day of her new life, with so much still undetermined, worries consumed her until
she could no longer keep her eyes open. She drifted to sleep, alone but free.
Best Sports Event Coverage/Category 11
Josh Chapin, Palladium-Item (Richmond)
Division I Devils make college choices official
When Mackenzie Taylor tore her ACL in the summer of 2013, some college recruiters backed
away.
Not Wright State.
The Raiders never wavered in their commitment to making Taylor a part of their women’s
basketball program. On Wednesday, Taylor officially committed to the Dayton-area school.
Taylor was one of three Division I-bound Richmond seniors to sign their letters of intent during a
ceremony at Tiernan Center. Joel Okafor will play men’s basketball at Wisconsin-Green Bay and
Mariam Khamis will dive for Minnesota.
Wright State’s continued recruitment as Taylor rehabbed and eventually returned from the injury
was a major part of her decision.
“Tearing my ACL going into my junior year, a lot of schools … I never heard from them again,”
Taylor said. “Not even, ‘We want to see how you recover. We want to see what happens.’ Just
cut off all communication. A week after surgery, they (Wright State) called and said, ‘We know
about the injury. We still want her.’
“I went on campus and fell in love. Their commitment and trust and belief led me to them. Those
are the type of people you want to play for.”
Taylor didn’t miss a beat – or a game – during her junior season.
She played limited minutes to start the year, but that didn’t matter. Taylor still averaged a teamhigh 17.6 points per game as the Palladium-Item’s 2014 Player of the Year earned high
honorable mention all-state honors from the Associated Press.
Taylor even topped 1,000 points for her career last season as she climbed to No. 4 on
Richmond’s all-time scoring list. She sits just five points behind No. 3 Angela Willis (Willis has
1,225 to Taylor’s 1,220) heading into Friday’s season opener at home vs. Centerville.
Richmond coach Casey Pohlenz had no doubt Taylor was a Division I prospect from the moment
he first saw her shoot.
“I knew that was where she was going,” he said. “There are some kids you think, ‘Oh, they can
develop.’ The minute she walked in this building, I knew. That’s a credit to her, to her previous
coaches, to her mom, her dad, her family, the people who have got her there.
“She’s just meant the world to us and our program and our team. And she’s gotten better every
year. She never rests on her laurels.”
Pohlenz has another RHS connection at Wright State. He also coached Richmond graduate Kim
Demmings, a senior guard for the Raiders who was recently selected as the Horizon League’s
Preseason Player of the Year.
Wright State finished 26-9 a year ago, 12-4 in the Horizon League.
“That’s a wonderful thing,” Pohlenz said of Wright State adding another Red Devil. “Obviously
it’s benefiting Wright State, and we want to do that. It’s great for us as well, that we have that
connection, that our players are good enough.”
Taylor also is a standout shortstop for the Red Devil softball team.
She verbally committed to Wright State in September 2013 after a sophomore season where she
averaged 21.7 points. Taylor plans to major in physical therapy.
“Wright State’s program is definitely on the rise. That is something I want to continue,” Taylor
said.
“I’ve known I’m going there for a long time, over a year now. I woke up this morning, and this is
about to become a reality. It started with a little girl dribbling the ball and to actually make that
dream come true is amazing.”
Best Sports News or Feature Coverage/Category 12
Jim Ayello, Daily Reporter (Greenfield)
Tales of Tink
Gene O’Neal can still thrill ’em.
Whether it was in the Eden High School basketball gymnasium back in 1945, or Hinkle
Fieldhouse on Saturday, the man they call “Tink” knows how to bring a crowd to its feet.
Invited to Butler University to be honored as one of the last living players to have been coached
by Bulldogs luminary Tony Hinkle, O’Neal put on a show, though not in the way he once could.
Back in 1945, O’Neal was an Eden Flyer junior armed with one of the deadliest shots in the
county. He regularly posted double-digit point totals in an era when a team averaging more than
40 points per game was considered high-scoring.
He led Eden to back-to-back sectional championships and became what is believed to be the first
career 1,000-point scorer in Hancock County history en route to earning a scholarship to play for
Hinkle at Butler.
On Saturday, though, the 86-year-old, deprived of his legendary shooting stroke, managed to
slay the crowd of more than 9,100 with the only tool at his disposal – a microphone.
“There was one day in practice,” O’Neal began, his image and words displayed on the Hinkle
Fieldhouse big screen during a break in the Butler-DePaul basketball game. “Mr. Hinkle came
over to me said, ‘I want to play you in a game of 21.’ I said, ‘Boy, that would be all right.’ And
he said, ‘You shoot first.’”
To this day, O’Neal does not know why the legendary coach asked him to play the game. All he
knows is how it ended, as he explained to the crowd Saturday.
“You know in 21, you hit a long (shot), it’s worth two, short’s one. So I hit seven straight longs
and seven shorts, and that was 21 points. I never missed a shot.
“I handed the ball over to him, and I said, ‘The game is over coach. I skunked ya.’”
The Butler crowd bellowed with laughter, as they rose to their feet to give O’Neal a standing
ovation.
O’Neal clearly appreciated the gesture, but he was not quite finished. Like most who know how
to put on a show, he saved the best for last.
“I want to say one more thing.”
The crowd around him quieted to listen.
“I brought my same girlfriend with me today. The same one who used to come out and see me
play. We’ve been together 66 years.”
With that, the crowd went wild, and the TV camera panned to Elaine O’Neal, Tink’s wife. She
reddened with embarrassment, knowing her face was plastered on one of the biggest video
boards in the country.
A couple days later, though, Elaine sat just a few feet away from Tink in the living room of their
small home in Wilkinson, and as she listened to him recount this story, she smiled proudly.
O’Neal was gracious enough to share many other stories with the Daily Reporter during a recent
visit to his Wilkinson home and farm. In this two-part series, we’ll recount more of the memories
of Gene “Tink” O’Neal – the Greenfield-Central Athletics Hall of Famer who helped turn
Indiana basketball into what it is today.
You will learn, in O’Neal’s own words, the story behind his 47-point outburst against
Charlottesville High School, his connection with the first African-American basketball player in
Hancock County history and, of course, the origin of his legendary nickname.
The school record
The tale of O’Neal’s 47-point spectacle against Charlottesville in 1945 began in a barbershop.
Charlottesville – which later consolidated with Wilkinson to become Eastern Hancock – had
recently hired a well-respected coach named J.B. Good, O’Neal said.
Good had enjoyed some big success as the leading man at Mt. Comfort, winning multiple
sectional championships in the late 20s before retiring. However, Charlottesville was able to
coax him back into the coaching ranks. Once he returned, the achievements of his past seemed to
color the opinions of the future.
One day, the story goes, while sitting in a Greenfield barbershop, the coach was asked about the
upcoming Eden-Charlottesville basketball game. He declared that the Flyers (who later
consolidated into Hancock Central High) were a coach away from being a complete team.
“He said, ‘They’ve got the best players in the county, but they got the poorest coach,’” O’Neal
remembers. “Well, our coach (Max Weddle) got wind of that. He told us that night, ‘I’m going to
show him how poor of a coach I am. I am going to beat him as bad as I can beat him.’”
Then Weddle unleashed O’Neal.
A 6-foot-2 sharp-shooting forward, O’Neal’s scoring prowess ranged from a menace under the
basket to a marksman beyond today’s 3-point arc, which did not exist in O’Neal’s time. Had the
line been established, O’Neal suggests, his career and game totals would have risen dramatically.
Fortunately for Charlottesville, the line did not exist, and O’Neal had to settle for 47 points, an
Eden record and a sum he reached during the beginning of the fourth quarter before Weddle
decided enough was enough, taking O’Neal out. The Flyers won the game 109-32.
“It was an awful hard feeling thing,” O’Neal said of crushing their county rivals. “Eden High and
Charlottesville fans … got into it after the game. Poor sportsmanship, they said. Of course, we
were just kids. We just played basketball.”
The development
Growing up in a time with where there was not much to do and even less money to do it, O’Neal
often found himself with a basketball in his hands, working on his shot.
As a child, O’Neal, who was raised on a farm outside of Greenfield, mounted a goal on his barn
door and often shot at it for hours.
When it rained, O’Neal placed a bucket on top of a hay mount inside the barn and shot at it for
hours. Sometimes, O’Neal would nail a coffee can to the door of his back poor and shoot a little
ball at it for hours.
“Nowadays, they have these kids playing in kindergarten,” O’Neal said with a chuckle. “It’s
amazing. We didn’t have any of that. All that shooting, that was my, that’s what I liked to call
my AAU.”
The name
It often happens that the origin story of a lifelong nickname is concealed by time, surrounded by
unprovable myth or buried deep within the mind that forged it never to be accessed again.
Fortunately, that was not the case with “Tink.” Though less than eager to talk about it, O’Neal
divulged the details on his legendary name.
“All it was, was when I was 3 or 4 years old, I couldn’t talk plain. And my neighbor always tried
to deal me out on my toys. ... Of course I was serious about it, being a little fella. I always told
him, ‘I’d think about it.’ But it came out ‘tink about it,’ and he just started calling me Tink. ... I
went to school in the first grade, and it was Tink, and I could take you over to the cemetery, and I
have Tink on the tombstone I have set up for myself.”
Coming Thursday, O’Neal shares why he only played one year at Butler, and his love of the
“fieldhouse” his family built for him on his Wilkinson property.
Best Sports Columnist/Category 13
Rick Morwick, Daily Journal (Franklin)
Colts at bottom without Luck
His team is imperfect, his numbers uneven, and his name isn’t Manning, Brady or Rodgers.
Even his ball-handling ability has come into question.
But never mind.
With or without impurities, the NFL has no stronger MVP candidate than Andrew Luck.
None. Period. End of story.
Picture-perfect passer, he is not. Laser-accurate, not all the time. Fumbling problem, he has one.
But when MVP ballots are cast next month, each and every voter needs to ponder one question:
Where would the Indianapolis Colts be without Luck?
The answer is not hard.
Without him, they would be well south of .500.
With him, they are at top of the AFC South.
That’s why he’s the MVP.
Think about it.
Operating behind a wretched offensive line, with no run support and only one reliable deep
threat, Luck leads the NFL in passing yards, touchdown passes and presides over the league’s
No. 1 offense.
And because of that, the Colts are destined for the playoffs – for the third straight year – instead
of the No. 1 overall draft pick.
That’s how valuable Luck is.
Not that you don’t already know that. Most Colts fans do. But with so much of the national
spotlight still directed at Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers – players whose teams
could actually win a championship – it’s unlikely Luck will get the serious consideration he
deserves for the MVP award.
Not always the prettiest passer and occasionally not the best ball-protector, Luck is always –
without fail – the fiercest competitor on the field. It’s the sole reason the Colts win games. It’s
the sole reason they won last week.
When all else fails (and a lot usually does), Luck is, more often than not, able make the
difference. By himself. With his arm, his legs, his savvy, his poise, his determination, he finds a
way to lift this team to heights it otherwise would never approach.
As has become obvious in recent weeks, the Colts are not immensely talented. They have glaring
weaknesses at a number of positions, a few really nice pieces at others and an other-world
quarterback who simply finds ways to win.
Show of hands: How many thought Cleveland made a fatal mistake last week allowing the Colts
one final opportunity – even with the length of the field in front of them – with just over three
minutes to play?
If you raised your hand, you know what Indianapolis fans have known for three seasons: It’s not
over till it’s over.
And it wasn’t over until Luck drove the Colts 90 yards in 11 plays for the game-winning score
with 32 seconds to play.
End of game, end of story.
The occasion marked the 12th time in Luck’s 45-game career that he has orchestrated a comefrom-behind fourth-quarter or overtime win.
By any definition, that’s an MVP.
Critics, of course, would disparage his candidacy by pointing to the turnovers that have plagued
the offense, particularly in recent weeks. They committed four against the Browns, two via Luck
interceptions and a third courtesy a Luck fumble, and the trend will no doubt doom in them in
the playoffs, if it continues.
But per Luck’s role in turnovers, and fumbles, in particular (he’s tied for the league lead with
six), seldom are they the result of carelessness. Usually, they’re the result of strip-sacks or trying
to make something out of nothing when pass protection breaks down, as it frequently does.
Luck isn’t perfect, but he isn’t reckless, either. He’s a playmaker who does need to develop a
better sense of when to take a sack instead of trying to force an issue in a collapsing pocket.
Other than that, there’s nothing really to criticize. If you think there is, ask yourself this question:
Where would the Colts be without Luck?
If you don’t know the answer, you don’t know an MVP when you see one.