City officials show off the hundreds of firearms turned in during a gun-buyback program. Oct. 29, 2007.

Springfield-area police officers take a pie in the face as part of the annual Badges for Life summer blood drive. Sept. 5, 2007.

A truck hauling large pieces of concrete overturns at Veterans and J. David Jones parkways in Springfield.

A group of men and women protest on the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq.

Sue Pilger from the Animal Protective League talks about a break-in at the shelter in March 2008, during which a sick puppy was stolen.

House fire on Carpenter Street on Jan. 9, 2008.

After the city of Springfield hosted a gun buyback program in 2007, I started pestering the folks at the police department about following along to watch the guns get destroyed. After months of documenting, processing and background-checking all the guns, they finally invited me observe the process of getting rid of the more than 500 guns and other evidence.

This story was a ball to report. The officers on the police department’s evidence destruction team were fun and knowledgeable. Watching them go through all sorts of old evidence was interesting, but getting to go inside a Bartonville foundry to watch the guns as they were dumped into the white-hot flames of a furnace was a sight to behold.

Hundreds of city buyback guns fed to foundry’s furnace / Old paperwork and evidence, illegal drugs also destroyed
May 27, 2008

The idea of a gun buyback, during which Springfield residents could turn over their unwanted weapons to police, no questions asked, seemed like a good one last fall.

The offer turned out to be far more popular — and expensive — than expected. And it culminated last week when nearly 500 buyback guns — plus a variety of drugs, paperwork and other no longer needed crime evidence — went into a 3,000-degree furnace at the Keystone Steel and Wire foundry in Bartonville.

When the buyback was envisioned, the idea was to get guns off the street, cut down on [...] Read the rest of this entry »

On Aug. 22-23, 2008, I again donned a laptop backpack and headed downtown to blog about preparations for and the day of presidential candidate Barack Obama’s visit to Springfield, where he was to announce Joe Biden as his running mate.

It was incredibly hot, and I’d say I worked about 22 hours those two days, documenting what was happening, what people were saying, tips for visitors and residents and news updates.

The result was a one-stop-shop blog where people could understand what was going on and feel like they were there, even if they couldn’t be.

You can read the blog entries here.

I covered the local polar plunge in 2008 and shot video of the frigid fun. You’ll notice there was snow on the ground. This was a fun event to video and write about. I think this is my favorite video of the ones I’ve shot and edited.

I blogged Black Friday shopping in November 2008. I’m not sure who was up in the middle of the night reading about all the shoppers standing out in the freezing cold in anticipation of rock-bottom prices on DVDs and toys, but the blog was a hit the next morning once people got up.

You can read my black Friday blogging here.

Throughout the holiday season we posted various seasonal news items, videos, links, recipes and other tidbits at the Yule Blog. We also posted on the blog a fun little idea I came up with and executed with the help of photographer T.J. Salsman. The idea was to solicit from readers messages they might want Santa Claus to recite to their children on video. We dubbed the project “Santa Shout-outs.”

We asked parents to submit their children’s names, ages, hometowns and an item they had on their wish list for Christmas. We had dozens of replies — so many we had to break the video into three segments to make it easier for parents to find their child’s shout-out.

The response from parents was fantastic. Many wrote us to say their children were amazed or speechless when they watched the video and heard Santa with a personalized greeting for them.

Go here to watch the shout-outs, as well as an interview with Santa in The State Journal-Register press room.

I’ll admit it: I’m a state fair junkie. I love the state fair.

It’s a good thing, because that’s where I spent about two weeks straight in August 2008. I was the “fair reporter.” Each morning I donned a backpack with a laptop computer, a point-and-shoot camera, sunglasses and a good pair of sneakers and drove to the city’s north end to cover the fair. I stayed on the grounds until 5 or 6 p.m. each night, filing updates to the blog and rewriting blog entries for use in the newspaper.

Among the sights I saw at the fair: former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his family prior to his indictment; a senior spelling bee I thought would never end; several carnival rides you will never, ever, catch me on; an auctioneer contest; and a record-setting crowd.

The name of our blog was “In All Fairness.” You can check it out here. (By the way, other reporters contributed to the blog on weekends and at night.)

The camping accident that killed two young Springfield children in July 2008 is by far the most tragic, emotion-filled story I’ve ever covered. It took all I had to report on this accident, primarily because my two boys were the same ages as the Stuebs children.

I wrote a series of stories about what happened — straight-line winds knocked over a tree onto the Stuebs family’s camping tents, killing two of their children — and cried my way through all of them. As a result of the news coverage, people from all over began donating money and having fund-raisers to help the family with medical bills. The response was overwhelming.

I think everyone was shocked by what happened to the family and realized the same thing could happen to any of us and our loved ones at any time. There wasn’t much else people could do to help in this terribly helpless situation, so they prayed and donated whatever they could, hoping it might help ease the parents’ pain.

Family in shock waits to see if daughter will live / Funeral plans for son on hold while parents try to cope
July 23, 2008

Four-year-old Dustin Stuebs loved his new Spiderman shoes, riding his bicycle and going to school on the bus. He had reached the age where his personality was taking shape, family members said Tuesday.

The Springfield preschooler’s life [...] Read the rest of this entry »

I will never let my good friend and colleague Amanda Reavy forget how I filled in for her the night of Nov. 10, 2007.

It started out as a routine night in the newsroom. Mike Kienzler, who was the dayside Metro editor, was filling in for someone as well.

The first sign something was up: the lights flickered. Then came the 911 dispatcher’s voice over the police scanner — there’d been reports of an explosion at the City Water, Light and Power plant. I packed up my stuff and sped over to Stevenson Drive, calling my husband at home to tell him what was being reported and urging him to get out candles and matches just in case.

The first thing I saw near the power plant was lots of flashing emergency vehicle lights. But the thing I’ll always remember most vividly was what I heard. It sounded like a huge, loud jet engine was whining over the plant.

No one was injured in the explosion, thank goodness.

Explosion at CWLP / No injuries reported, but damage appears severe
Nov. 11, 2007

City Water, Light and Power’s main power plant was severely damaged Saturday night by a series of explosions and a spectacular fire.

The blast - one large explosion followed by about a dozen smaller ones - occurred about 6:50 p.m. No one was injured, and the oil- and wind-fed fire was extinguished by 10 p.m.

“There is a lot of [...] Read the rest of this entry »