ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 20, 1997 TAG: 9701200002
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: & now this...
DATELINE: BEDFORD
Linda Richie didn't get to put her Christmas tree in the front window, but she did bring in the new year in her new home.
While others sang of auld lang syne at parties and bowl games Dec. 31, Richie was making beds and adding a few personal touches at the home that she and Habitat for Humanity volunteers had built.
Hers is the first house constructed by the Bedford Habitat program, which organized a couple of years ago. A second house, next door to Richie, is scheduled to be completed in early February.
Habitat volunteers Willie Witt and Gene Reed had hoped to have Richie in her home for Christmas, but delivery of the carpeting delayed the move.
Witt, who sometimes labored at night with Richie, was sorry Richie and her three children weren't in the house Christmas Eve.
"I really did my part," said the woman who was spending as many as five days a week working on the house.
The one-story house still needs a few exterior touches, and Richie has to complete all the paperwork, but on Jan. 3, after investing hundreds of hours of sweat equity, she was cooking and unpacking.
She had a few things she had to clear out of her old apartment, and wondered if she would have space in the new house for everything.
- JOANNE POINDEXTER
ATF agent gets Hostile Action Award
Senior Special Agent Don Harris of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is glad to have the Hostile Action Award, but he hopes it's his last.
``One's enough,'' he said.
Harris was awarded the Treasury Department honor last month in Washington, D.C., as recognition for having been shot at in the line of duty - and living to tell about it. The award is a fairly new honor awarded to agents who are subject to hostile gunfire.
Harris was staking out a heroin deal in Lynchburg in April 1994 when an unrelated drive-by shooting occurred nearby. After a van sprayed bullets at a house down the street, Harris and Lynchburg police Vice Officer J.P. Stokes followed the van while other officers remained to watch the drug transaction.
Harris and Stokes were fired at at least twice before they arrested two suspects at a roadblock.
Harris could have remained undercover and called 911 to get other police to go after the van, said his supervisor, Jim Silvey, but Harris went the extra mile.
It was the third time Harris has been shot at, although he has never been hit. The first time was in 1977, when a suspect he was trying to arrest grabbed Harris' gun. The second time, he tried to stop a reckless driver in Campbell County in 1983 and was shot at when the driver made it back to his house and his shotgun.
The 25-year ATF veteran acknowledges that most law-enforcement officers make it through their whole careers never being a suspect's target. He says he's just been in the "right place at the wrong time."
"It could happen again this afternoon," he said.
"Just hope they keep missing," Silvey added.
- JAN VERTEFEUILLE
LENGTH: Medium: 64 linesby CNB