The last thing a journalist wants to have happen is to become part of a news story.
I can’t say it’s never happened in my nearly 40 years of both radio and newspaper reporting, but the infrequent times it did occur were by accident.
That is not the case with Bob Heinle, the Missoula Police Department sergeant who died Feb. 12, two days after his 47th birthday.
I was in Portland with the Grizzly basketball team that Friday, when Police Chief Mark Muir’s e-mail informed me of his death.
I immediately went to the printed word for comfort, and posted on my Facebook page that my friend, a man I described as a “Beacon of Light,” had died.
That’s how I felt about Bob, a man struck down by a bullet and paralyzed just after 5 p.m. on Wednesday Oct. 21, 1998, in a parking lot just east of the intersection of Orange and Broadway streets in Missoula.
I know those things because I was standing over him in that parking lot moments after fellow Officer Leila Haack breathed life back into Bob after he had stopped breathing.
I stood with Missoula County Attorney Fred VanValkenburg , who inquired as to Bob’s identity, as medical personnel worked feverously to get him to nearby St. Patrick Hospital.
A couple of hours later, I was standing a block away near a downtown alley talking to Officer Jim Johnson, who was using my cell phone to let his wife Lauri know it wasn’t him who had been gunned down, when shots rang out a few hundred feet away and the wounded assailant was captured.
A short time later, I stood in the chaos at the Missoula Police Department as command staff scrambled to both handle the apprehension of a suspect and disseminate information to the throng of reporters.
I was covering the cop beat in Missoula that week and the previous two evenings Bob was my point of contact for an armed robbery and a pedestrian struck in a crosswalk on Higgins Avenue.
As often happens when you are the night reporter chasing police scanner traffic and tips on breaking news, you develop a working relationship with the people who can get you the necessary information when you’re working on a deadline.
That was how I came to know Bob after he was hired by the department in 1991. And as my admiration for him grew, mostly because of his demeanor under pressure and his infectious smile, he quickly began rising through the ranks of Chief Pete Lawrenson’s department and, while only 35 at the time of the shooting, seemed destined for even a greater leadership role.
After the shooting I followed Bob’s progress as he transferred from Missoula to the Craig Institute in Denver and tried to go to Colorado to write a feature story about his rehabilitation progress, but Bob would have nothing of that and I respected his preference for privacy.
But a couple of days after he returned to his Frenchtown home, which was still being reconstructed by a group of friends to become more accessible, I got a call from Bob, who wanted to know if I was still interested in writing “that story.”
That was the first day I met his wife, Lisa, and wandered through his home. She talked about the challenges of installing an elevator so Bob could get to the workout area on the second floor.
He was frustrated but not dismayed and, while his breathing was still challenged and required frequent bursts of air from the tube situated close to his lips, it was still the Bob I knew, still the optimistic, bright, stud ranch kid from eastern Montana who assured me he’d eventually get out of that chair.
I believed him that day and continued to believe him until Feb 12.
He wasn’t much interested relating details about the shooting and talked only about his future with Lisa, his wife of just a couple of years, and his excitement that a “sip and puff” rifle could be equipped so he could still go gopher hunting.
I saw Bob and his family, which included his first service dog, Kirby, and later Cooper, at basketball games when his cousin Brian was playing for Cal State Northridge. His and Lisa’s optimism always touched my soul and I almost felt guilty that he made me feel better instead of the opposite.
The last time I saw him, at a retirement party for Capt. Marty Ludemann, while a bit tired Bob remained that optimistic do-it-all guy I first encountered all those years before.
Before his paralysis and afterwards, nothing was going to stand in his way of living life to the fullest and nothing did.
Lisa, a 911 dispatcher when Bob was shot, was always at his side. The scene of the couple coming across the finish line, Cooper in tow, in 1998 after running a marathon for to raise money for the Christopher and Dana Reeve spinal research fund, will always stick in my mind.
The way Bob lived his life stands as example to us all. That’s why he will always be my “Beacon of Light” and Lisa remains an angel.
At his recent memorial, which was attended by about 600 people including more than 100 uniformed personnel, the sun from the western sky broke through the cloud cover and lit ever so slightly one side of the filled-to-capacity church.
You might say there was a “Beacon of Light.”