It took a village to write that column, but it's not magical

This column wants to express sympathy for those poor service industry employees whose jobs require them to end every conversation with a pitch:

Grocery checkout clerks who ask if you want to buy 10 bags of Blazin' Buffalo & Ranch tortilla chips for $10. Computer troubleshooters in India who offer no help and then inexplicably must ask, "Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

But it's going to take me forever to get to that subject because I first have to tell this story. It starts with an e-mail from a friend and reader and ends with that story on today's front page about the guy who wrote "Enchanted."

"I thought you might like to know that the new Disney film, 'Enchanted,' which the critics are fawning over, was written by an old classmate of mine from Elk Grove High School -- Bill Kelly, class of '79," a reader and friend named Kate e-mailed on Thanksgiving. Knowing he came from a large family, Kate suggested Kelly's relatives might still live in the area.

I started calling all the Kellys listed in the Elk Grove phone book on Tuesday. I like making cold calls. People see "Daily Herald" pop up on their caller I.D. or hear my introduction and they brace themselves for bad news along the lines of:

• "I'm calling to get your reaction to the murder of (insert loved one's name here)."

• "Did you suspect your spouse was a serial killer?"

• "How long have you been dating Drew Peterson?"

• Or even the dreaded, "If you subscribe today…"

People must be so relieved when I tell them I'm just trying to find a screenwriter.

One Kelly tells me Bill Kelly is his brother, but that Bill Kelly is retired and spends a bulk of the year in Florida; another says she isn't related but wishes me luck; a third says she's no relative to the Bill Kelly I'm seeking but her daughter was a high school friend of that Bill Kelly's younger sister, and she knows the sister married baseball player Dave Otto.

Bingo. Our sports editor, TV critic and the Comcast folks give me phone numbers for Otto, who does a fine job as an analyst on TV and WGN radio when Ron Santo is on the DL. Helpful as can be, Otto works overtime to get me in touch with his wife, a school teacher. She not only phones me after school with a couple of numbers for her brother, she also calls him and greases the skids for me.

Bill Kelly phones me during his dinner and couldn't be nicer. He gives me as much time as I need, tells me about his days at Elk Grove High School and the park district's Channel 6. He even says he'll have the Disney publicity people in New York e-mail me a photo.

Everyone at EGHS, the park district and Channel 6 bend over backward to help. They get me phone numbers of retired teachers and people who worked with Kelly in the 1980s. They get me access to old photographs. Film critic Dann Gire helps me.

It was like being a columnist with a team of legmen who do all the work. In response to questions that cropped up, Kelly patiently e-mailed me back nearly a dozen times from morning until nighttime.

But the story didn't run Thursday because Disney left me hanging by not sending the photo. (Had I simply asked Gire for help, he'd have gotten my photo, but I wanted to do some part of the column myself and I figured getting a photo was easy.)

My request for that photograph of Kelly on the set of "Enchanted" circulated from New York to California to Chicago as if it were a plane circling an icy O'Hare.

A Disney official added to the delay by misspelling another Disney person's name (Carmen instead of Carman). She finally sent me the photograph "only hours" after my deadline. So my story was held until Friday.

The story didn't run Friday because of our coverage of the death of Henry Hyde, whom Kelly met back in the Channel 6 days and remembers as a "nice guy."

Today (barring big news after I went home), the story should be in the paper. Thanks to all who helped.

And, as I started to say at the top of this column, I feel sympathy for beleaguered people in customer service -- especially the Disney operator who, despite my snippy assurance to the contrary, still mustered her syrupy closing line of "Have a magical day."