When lawbreakers do good

Suzie Graham called The Press office with a funny tale.

While she'd watched car after car slide off the road near her office on the unplowed intersection of 3rd Street and Linden Avenue, it was the red Pontiac Grand AM that needed help getting pushed out of a pile of snow after it was stuck in the middle of the crossing roads.

So Graham, an attorney, went to help.

But the driver, who got out of the car to survey the stuck scene, accidentally locked her keys in the running automobile.

Along came a police officer, who offered to call a tow truck.

Meanwhile, the car was blocking the intersection.

The driver, Graham said, didn't jump for joy at the thought of a tow truck bill, but behind the officer drove up a Kootenai County Sheriff's deputy, with a gang of its labor program workers.

"Don't any one of you guys know how to break into a car?" Graham asked the incarcerated, paroled or probationed workers.

They did.

One unscrewed the car's antenna and used it, like a coat hanger, to unlock the door by sliding it down the window.

Presto.

"Who knew you could do that?" Graham asked.