Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 17, 1993                   TAG: 9306170246
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THAT'S 1 WAY TO GET A BEEPER BACK

The man who had the pager returned his call. Collect.

"I paged him and, big as life, he called me back," said Lynn Bicknell, owner of Bicknell Painting Inc.

The caller claimed he had bought the pager from someone for $45, so Bicknell offered him $50 to get it back, and the two arranged to meet 30 minutes later at a busy intersection in Falls Church.

At that point, Bicknell said, "I thought, hey, we might as well bring in the police." He did and promptly was admonished for taking the law into his own hands.

But Bicknell, 49, refused to back off. He said he is a pretty good judge of character and figured he would be safe meeting the man in broad daylight in a public spot.

However, in his nervousness and haste, Bicknell stopped at his bank's money machine and picked up three $20 bills, so when he arrived at the meeting site, he had too much cash.

"This is your lucky day," he told the man who met him there. "You don't have change for $60, do you?"

The fellow did not. Bicknell handed over the three $20 bills and reclaimed his $138 pager.

As the man walked away, Bicknell called the police again on his car phone. They pursued and arrested the suspect at a nearby 7-Eleven.

The man, Robert Elton Jones, 22, pleaded guilty to receipt of stolen property last week. He was fined $146 and sentenced to 90 days in jail, with 50 days suspended.

Barbara Gordon, a spokeswoman for the Falls Church Police Department, warned that what Bicknell did was "inadvisable" and "extremely risky." He should have called the police first, she said.