Transportation News, Volume 25, Number 9, May 2000 Page: 16
16 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 41 x 29 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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2.6 Ibansportation News May 2000
'of Tanporation
A-IA4 24 9 -
Jim Jennings, maintenance supervisor at the San Patricio County Area Office of the Corpus
Christi District, helped deputies catch a kidnapper last February.'I don't think I had time to be scared'
Employee thwarts kidnapperODEM - The look on her face was
unmistakable terror.
"Anybody could tell something was wrong
by the look on her face," said Jim Jennings,
maintenance supervisor at the San Patricio
County Area Office of the Corpus Christi
District.
Jennings was returning to Sinton after
attending training in Corpus Christi on Feb.
1 when he encountered a man and a woman
outside a convenience store in Odem. The
man held the obviously frightened woman by
the arm. Once he was back in his TxDOT
truck, Jennings turned on his radio and
immediately heard a report from the San
Patricio County Sheriff's Office, which had
deputies searching for a knife-wielding man
who had abducted a woman.
The license plate number and the descrip-
tion of the vehicle deputies were looking for
matched that of the car belonging to the
man and woman Jennings had seen.
The man forced the woman back into his
vehicle and left the station with Jennings in
pursuit, talking to deputies on his cellular
phone he followed the kidnapper and his
hostage.
"By then he knew everyone was looking
for him. For three or four minutes in Odem
we had a little cat-and-mouse game until theMore Letters
deputies showed up," Jennings said. "I stayed
with him until I saw two deputies force him
off the road."
The man was later arrested. He had
stopped in the convenience store to ditch the
knife he had used in abducting the woman,
Jennings later learned.
Jennings wasn't afraid during his
encounter with the kidnapper, he said. "The
only thing I could think of was that we had
to get her (the hostage) away from him. I
don't think I had time to be scared."
Jennings, like other TxDOT maintenance
employees, spends a lot of his work time
talking to police and sheriff's office dispatch-
ers, so San Patricio County deputies were
not surprised to have an offer of help from
him.
"I deal with them daily," he said. "They
call me on the radio just like I was a deputy."
Dispatchers, however, thanked Jennings
for his assistance in apprehending the kid-
napper. But Jennings shrugs off mention of
his heroics.
"It was the right thing to do and I was
raised to do the right thing," he said. "I guess
I was just in the right place at the right
time."*
Cliff Bost of the Corpus Christi District con-
tributed to this report.PP"
Maurice Farris is the supervisor in the Harde-
man County Maintenance Office, Childress District.
MCD branch offers 'efficient help'
Robin Moten and Lydia Sahley, administra-
tive technicians in the Motor Carrier Division's
Commercial Vehicle Operations Branch, received
the following:
I wanted to thank you for your compas-
sion and understanding with our dilemma. I
did not realize the need for any further docu-mentation after we received our Interstate
Commerce Commission authority, and I cer-
tainly did not want to have to keep our truck
up in Kansas until the paperwork was com-
plete. I am very grateful for your efforts and
help with getting the RS-3 form completed
and sent to our drivers once you had our
insurance information
Be assured, I will not make that error
again! It was a pleasure to find efficient help.
Karen S. Pooser
FredericksburgU
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a~FINAL THOUGHT
If you can drive your car on a highway,
cross a river on a bridge or drink clean
water from your tap, you can thank civil
engineers.
The American Society of Civil
Engineers has named the Top 10 Civil
Engineering Achievements of the
Century: airport design and develop-
ment; dams, the interstate highway sys-
tem; long-span bridges; rail transporta-
tion; sanitary landfills/solid waste dispos-
al; skyscrapers; wastewater treatment;
water supply and distribution; and water
transportation via canals and ports.
ASCE named the Panama Canal the
greatest achievement, "one of its finest
moments in history, inspiring generations -
of engineers to continually challenge
those who say, 'It can't be done.'"
ASCE also named the Panama Canal
as one of the Seven Wonders of the
Modern World. It shares this distinction
with the Channel Tunnel (England &
France), CN Tower (Toronto, Canada),
Empire State Building (New York, N.Y.),
Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco,
Calif.), Itaipu Dam (Brazil/Paraguay),
and Netherlands North Sea Protection
Works.
Founded in 1852, ASCE represents
more than 123,000 civil engineers world-
wide and is America's oldest national
engineering society.i6
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eTransportation News
May 2000
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Texas. Department of Transportation. Transportation News, Volume 25, Number 9, May 2000, periodical, May 2000; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth576386/m1/16/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.