Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 21, 1994 TAG: 9412210093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This year, Susie Boxley's holiday spirit took a rectangular shape.
More precisely, the shape of a 3-by-4-foot nylon flag with a ``Nutcracker'' design on it. The flag was one of a kind, made by her friend Judy Anderson of Flying Colors. Boxley hung it on the front of her house the day before Thanksgiving.
A week later, the flag disappeared.
Boxley set out to get it back. Before it was over, she was tripping over a tangle of red tape that started at her Avenham Avenue home in Roanoke, swung by Penn Forest Boulevard in Roanoke County and ended up knotted to police departments on both ends.
Boxley learned the $65 flag was gone when a friend at a "mother's morning out" gathering asked her why she had taken it in.
After rummaging through her neighbors' bushes, Boxley called the Roanoke police. Nothing happened until Dec. 6, when she took a shortcut down Penn Forest Boulevard in Roanoke County to pick up her daughter at North Cross School.
That's when she saw it. Her flag, her one-of-a-kind "Nutcracker" flag, was boldly displayed on someone else's house.
She slammed on her brakes, stomped up the steps with her 2-year-old son in tow and rapped on the door.
No one was home, so she called Roanoke County police. But officer Frank Walkiewicz was skeptical that it was really Boxley's flag.
For proof, Boxley drove back to South Roanoke to watch Judy Anderson's children while Anderson met Walkiewicz and identified the flag she had made.
Then began a stakeout. Actually, Boxley describes it as more like a rolling reconnaissance:
"I kept driving by the house, and driving by the house, and the police kept driving by the house."
After two days, someone showed up, but it wasn't the owner. According to Boxley, the man told Walkiewicz his roommate owned the flag.
The next day, the flag disappeared - again. About the same time, Walkiewicz took a few days off, and officer Rick Ruggieri took over the investigation in the county.
Ruggieri found the owner. First the man said he had bought the flag in Winston-Salem, N.C., then denied knowing anything about it. Finally he called Ruggieri and said he'd bought it from a vagrant for $25 on the City Market. He handed it over to police Dec. 11. No charges were filed against him.
End of story, right? Wrong.
Ruggieri couldn't give the flag to Boxley until he got the OK from Roanoke police. By then, the Roanoke officer on the case, John Otterman, was off work for seven days of rest, vacation and sick time.
Maj. R.D. Shields of the Roanoke patrol division said he's sorry for Boxley's trouble. He said someone else could have helped Boxley out, but the usual procedure is for only one officer to handle petty larceny cases. That way, when a case goes to court, three or four officers don't have to testify.
Otterman returned to work Dec. 15. The next day, he told Boxley she could drive out to the Roanoke County Public Safety Building on Peters Creek Road and pick up her flag.
"It's been a soap opera," Boxley said. "Friends call to ask what Officer Ruggieri said today, or what Officer Otterman said."
It also had the people involved wondering about why there was so much red tape.
"It makes a good case for consolidation," Ruggieri said.
After all, Boxley found the flag about five miles from her house - less distance than she ended up driving to retrieve it. If there were one police department, wouldn't she have had it back sooner?
Now Boxley's friends in South Roanoke are all taking their flags in at night, and, according to Boxley, they have had discussions about the merits of vigilantism.
Boxley said she briefly considered hanging her flag from the second story of her house. Saturday, though, she put it back on her porch.
"If I'd have known what trouble it was going to be," she said, "I'd have stolen the damn thing back myself."
by CNB