J. TODD FOSTER: The Hazards Of Being A Fair-Minded Newspaperman

I was looking out in the newsroom Tuesday and saw reporter Michael L. Owens walk by. The memories flooded back.

Mike was my investigative reporter in Waynesboro, Va., before I came to Bristol in late 2006. It took me 15 months to get him in this newsroom, but it was well worth the wait. He started work in Bristol four months ago.

Looking at him Tuesday, I remembered one of my most memorable moments with Mike – say that three times real fast – in Waynesboro.

IT WAS the time he got beat up by a girl.

April 21, 2006. Mid-afternoon. My office phone rings with Mike’s cell phone listed on the caller ID. I put it on speaker so I could continue writing the next day’s editorial.

A breathless Mike was screaming from my speaker. “The b---- broke my arm, the b---- broke my arm!”

MIKE HAD gone to the woman’s home to get her side of the story after her early-morning arrest.

“Mike,” I said, “calm down. What happened?”

“Tina Bickley attacked me! She broke my arm! Call the police!”

“WHERE IS she now?” I said excitedly.

“She left,” Mike said. “But she might be coming back! Call the police. Call an ambulance!”

My heart was racing as I prepared to call 9-1-1. But first, I uttered one of the funniest, most spontaneous lines in my life.“Mike! Stay alive! No matter what occurs, I will find you!”

(IMAGINE ME yelling it in a Daniel Day Lewis voice.)

Sports Editor Jim Sacco crumpled to the floor in laughter. A crowd gathered outside my office, half amused, half concerned. One hundred percent curious.

“9-1-1: What is your emergency?”

“UH, YEAH, my reporter was just assaulted!” I gave the address.

“What’s the victim’s name?” the dispatcher asked.

“Michael L. Owens of The News Virginian,” I said. “Hurry! He’s hurt.”

“DOES HE know his attacker?” the dispatcher asked.

“Yes. It’s Tina Bickley,” I said.

Dispatcher: “Did you say Tina?”

ME: “YES. Her name is Tina. My reporter got beaten up by a woman, all right?”

A pause. I thought I heard a snicker. “We’ll send an officer and an ambulance.”

A few hours later, Mike came into the office after medical treatment. I had assigned another reporter to write the story and to interview Mike; he couldn’t write a story he was now involved in.

MIKE WALKED up to me, his arm and shoulder in a white sling and one side of his face reddened from a haymaker.

“I wasn’t going to hit a woman,” Mike said sheepishly.

“Mike,” I said. “I know this woman. She doesn’t count.”

BICKLEY HAD come to my office two years before. She drove a garbage truck for the city of Waynesboro and said she was being sexually harassed by her male co-workers. Her story seemed authentic and was definitely maddening: Her barbarian co-workers were engaging in all manner of illegal activity, and I was eager to expose them. I hated what these brutes had done to Tina.

“Tell me your story and let me use your name,” I urged Tina in 2004. “I’ve got to use your name though. Besides, you’re the only woman on the garbage crew. Everyone would know who you were anyway. Let’s blow this thing out of the water.”

Bickley considered my offer but said no. She was afraid if I printed her name, she’d be fired. I told her she was going to get fired anyway, and that she had nothing to lose.

I HAD just broken a story about Waynesboro city workers moonlighting on the taxpayers’ dime to do water and sewer repairs at private residences. I was itching for another run at City Hall.

Bickley had seen that story and thought I could help. But she got cold feet and left my office. I had a bad feeling for her.

About a year later, she lost her job despite filing numerous sexual harassment complaints with the city and staying within channels. A year after that, she went to City Hall and punched the city manager and the human resources director and – that afternoon – my reporter.

SHE TERRORIZED three men in one day.

Bickley was charged with three counts of assault and battery. She pleaded guilty to two – the city manager and the human resources manager.

A few days after I left Waynesboro, in October 2006, Bickley went on trial for Mike’s assault. A jury acquitted her. Apparently, it was OK to assault a reporter if, under cross examination, he admitted going to her home without an appointment. The jury wasn’t allowed to hear why Mike went to her home in the first place: to get her side of the story about her assaulting two city officials. Jurors never heard about Bickley’s rampage that day; the judge deemed it prejudicial.

MOST REPORTERS would have made an obligatory phone call to Bickley to solicit her side. Mike made several calls and went to her home in a yeoman’s effort to be fair. He paid the price. We all got a great story though.

Mike asked me the night of the assault what I would have done?

“Mike, hitting a woman is off limits. But if the woman tackles you from behind, rips our notebook from your hand, pulls the ligaments in your shoulder and bruises your face, all bets are off. You have every right to defend yourself.”

THE HILARITY of the incident grows with each passing day and retelling of the story. Mike says he’ll never forget lying on the ground with this woman on his back and hearing a man who was driving by yell: “Hey! That’s no way to treat a woman!”

Mike also remembers Bickley’s little girl telling him during the attack, “That’s what happens when she gets upset.”

The night of the attack, Mike asked me another question: “Could you have taken her?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Best three out of five. But those other two would have been rough.”

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at jfoster@bristolnews.com or (276) 645-2513.