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Police officers connect dots to solve string of burglaries

Kansas celebrating 100 years of license tags

By Ian Cummings icummings@ljworld.com

Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photos

TOM ALLEN, WHO LIVES SOUTH OF LAWRENCE, has a collection of more than 15,000 license plates, which are sorted in various ways and stored in tubs in his barn.

Collection of plates serves up history, and the people who tell its stories

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he little diner was offering a different type of blue plate special, and best of all it didn’t require Tom Allen to dig through the mud and muck of a creekbed to get it. Allen, a rural Baldwin City resident, once dug through an old creekbed on the rumor that a fellow had tossed a couple of 1918 Kansas motorcycle license plates into the creek decades ago. He found them. When you have 15,000 license plates, you tend to have some luck like that. But the diner’s plate was easier: it was a blue 1951 auto plate with the Douglas County stamp on it — and a license number of 1. A friend of Allen’s in Florida had seen it hanging on the wall of a South Carolina diner. All it took to add that plate to his collection was a call to the diner and a

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little bit of wheeling and dealing. The diner’s owner was happy enough to give the plate away, but Allen wanted to give him something in return. He found out the man had been born in South Carolina in 1946, so Allen made a quick call to another friend, and just like that, Allen had a 1946 South Carolina license plate to trade. The 1951 Kansas No. 1 plate is a nice conversation

SOME OF ALLEN’S LICENSE PLATE COLLECTION is on display in the county treasurer’s office at the Douglas County Courthouse, where residents take care of their vehicle taxes and tags. piece, but it isn’t the prize of Allen’s collection. In fact, oddly, a license plate may not be the prize of his collection at all. It seems Allen collects friends, too. “At some point, this hobby became more about the people than the plates,” Allen said.

This year, the plates are kind of important, too, at least to the approximately 75 members of the Kansas License Plate Collectors Association. That’s because 2013 is the 100th

On May 4, a Lawrence woman found her rented storage unit ransacked, with thousands of dollars worth of musical instruments and recording equipment missing. Three days later, a resident in the 2400 block of Alabama reported a Gary Fisher mountain bike stolen. The next week, in the 2100 block of Kasold Drive, a man reported that he was assaulted by a burglar returning to steal from him for a second time. T h e s e kinds of crimes happen every Ian Cummings/Journal-World Photo day in Lawrence, and LESLIE CARPER, of Lawrence, many remain had a storage unit at A1 Self unsolved. Be- Storage, at 1717 W. 31st tween 500 St., that was ransacked by and 600 bur- thieves. glaries are reported here each year, and many more go unreported because residents don’t believe the offenders will ever be caught or the property returned. In June, North Lawrence residents became so fed up with a local theft problem that they said they would turn to state legislators for help. But last week, the Lawrence Police Department said it had solved at least 20 local burglary cases, arresting three people suspected in a string of meth-fueled burglaries and thefts dating back to the beginning of the year. The arrests came after a three-month investigation by two patrol officers. One of the officers broke the case while responding to an otherwise unremarkable domestic disturbance, Sgt. Trent McKinley, a Lawrence Police Department spokesman, said. Police on Wednesday arrested two men and a woman who each now face more than a dozen charges in connection with burglaries in April and May. Most notably, they are charged in several cases in which suspects allegedly backed rented moving trucks up to storage units at A1 Self Storage, at 1717 W. 31st St., and emptied them after cutting the locks. One suspect is facing a single charge of methamphetamine possession. McKin-

Please see LICENSES, page 2A

Please see BURGLARIES, page 5A

Woman with disability becomes advocate for others like her By Giles Bruce gbruce@ljworld.com

Stacy Tucker decided she’d had enough. She was tired of the awkward stares and giggles, of having people tell her what she couldn’t do, of being treated as less than human. The fight the 35-yearold Lawrence woman has entered into isn’t glamorous. There’s no certainty it will make a difference. But it’s everything to her. Tucker was born with severe learning disabilities, impeding her ability to read, spell or do math.

She never got to reach her dream of going to college or becoming a teacher. But she persevered, had two beautiful children, got married. At home, she’s Mom, or Stacy. Everywhere else, it seems, she’s still treated like an “other.” As a person with a disability, it’s hard not to notice the pointing, the whispers, the laughter. She’s been dealing with it since she was a child, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten better. People can be cruel, yes, but is there something more to it? How much

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Today’s forecast, page 10B

Tucker just wants to be treated the same as everyone else, to have people say, “Hi, how are you?” rather than stare or ask what’s wrong. She’s willing to bring her message anywhere (“I’ll go to Washington or the White House if I have to,” she says), to tell anyone who will listen about the bigotry people with disabilities still face every day — and how it needs to change. “It’s finally time to get the word out,” said Tucker, whose personality is a mix of innocent and vivacious, on a recent day Please see ADVOCATE, page 2A

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does the public really know about the challenges people with disabilities endure on a daily basis? Tucker set out to tell them. She began to write, in longhand, with her husband transcribing her words on a computer. She wanted something she could show people she met, to not only introduce them to her and her disability but to the struggles of millions of people like her. A magazine for parents of disabled children published one of her articles in 2007; it printed a second earlier this summer.

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Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photo

TRAVIS BISSELL, A DISHWASHER, and Stacy Tucker, a housekeeper, both work at Lawrence’s Presbyterian Manor and have severe learning disabilities. After Tucker decided to advocate for people with disabilities, Bissell has become more outspoken about the subject as well.

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The Douglas County Fair ended Saturday, and 4-H’ers who worked so hard all week got to let off steam with the Barnyard Olympics. Page 3A

Vol.155/No.216 32 pages


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