Hellos and goodbyes in Schaumburg

Schaumburg is experiencing some significant comings and goings in the areas of law and law enforcement this month.

In the former category, attorney Lance C. Malina of the firm Klein, Thorpe & Jenkins has been appointed as only the second person in Schaumburg's history to bear the title of Village Attorney.

Malina succeeds Jack Siegel, Schaumburg's village attorney since the 1950s, whose influence first was felt when he successfully defended the village against an early legal challenge to its 1956 incorporation.

Siegel died in September at the age of 88, having suffered from a major decline in his health for several months before that.

From its police department, Schaumburg soon will be bidding adieu to its longtime public information officer and crime prevention unit member, Sgt. John Nebl.

He is retiring from the force on Dec. 1, and after a few days of additional training will begin a new job as the emergency management coordinator for external affairs for the DuPage County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Nebl is probably the member of the Schaumburg Police Department that (law-abiding) members of the public are most likely to have met in recent years.

Even before becoming public information officer in 2007, Nebl worked with the Crime-Free Multihousing task force since November 1998. He's also been one of the department's Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) officers, the head of the Citizen Police Academy and the liaison to its alumni organization.

Although other officers will be taking over Nebl's tasks on a temporary basis, a permanent replacement likely won't be named until later.