SECURITY, SECURITY, SECURITY

BILL OSBORNE writes:
Here's a potential new thread: U-T security guards. These are almost invariably good people who work hard and do what they can to uphold the best interests of the company. Over the years many of them become members of the club of people we see every day and people we miss when suddenly we don't see them anymore, regretting that we did not make a greater effort to engage them. Still, there are some great stories about our security people.
Here's one of them: Back in the early or mid-1970s, during the days of the Arab oil embargo and odd-even gasoline rationing, there was a reporter at the Tribune named Bob Dorn, an iconoclastic fellow whose name has come up a couple times before in the 919 newsletter. Bob and I rented the Cardiff home of Union financial writer Wayne Carpenter while he was sailing around the world with his family, but we could not carpool to work during the gas crisis because of significantly different schedules. Bob drove an ugly yellow Fiat with windows that were forever coated with the slobber of his mangy but lovable dog, Sumo. One day at work, Bob discovered that his Fiat was out of gas in the parking lot. The car next to his belonged to fellow Trib reporter Barbara Herrera, so Bob asked Barbara if he could siphon a gallon or so of gas from her car to get him going. She agreed and Bob started doing his siphon thing. As Bob told the story, the next thing he knew there was a U-T security guard behind him, gun drawn, demanding that he halt the gas thievery. Bob, who on any given day could easily pass for a gas thief, talked fast and all ended well, with no casualties. But Bob spent the rest of the day calculating the odds of whether that security guard was the one who carried the bullet that day.