Faces of the Year

Let the music play: Yasmina Nader and Mena Abadir, co-owners of Arabian Nights, a new hookah lounge in Schaumburg, unintentionally helped clarify a gray area of the state's indoor smoking ban when they applied for an entertainment license last winter.

They wanted to retain the cultural aspects of hookah lounges, especially live music. But the Jan. 1 law prohibited smoking everywhere except designated smoking businesses, and officials first concluded the lounges would no longer be "smoking only" businesses with entertainment.

With no other precedent to look to, Schaumburg officials did the research to determine how the cultural aspects of hookah lounges could be legally retained and still abide by the new ban.

Even then, it came down to Mayor Al Larson having to break the trustees' tie - and permit the music to play.

Like fingernails on Billie Roth's blackboard: Voters put Jason Speer on the Streamwood village board in 2007 but the 32-year-old made the kind of noise in 2008 you don't usually hear from people who hold elected office there.

Not afraid to clash publicly with longtime Village President Billie Roth, Speer argued that trustees should have more responsibility in running Streamwood, suggesting that too many decisions are being made privately by the village president.

Now, Speer has decided to run against Roth in the April 2009 election, should she go for another term.

If Speer's complaints sound familiar it's because they were raised by the Democratic candidates who ran for trustee in 2007 - the same candidates Speer beat to get onto the board. Speer says it's taken a while but he's come around to their way of thinking.

Thinking about beating Roth, however, is a different matter. She will finish her fifth term as mayor in April, and historically has been re-elected without opposition.

In his sister's memory, a catalyst for change: Michael Bischof of Barrington never sought the political limelight.

But with the murder of his sister, Cindy, in March by her ex-boyfriend, Bischof became the catalyst for changing Illinois state law to protect domestic abuse victims. He led bipartisan efforts to pass legislation named for his sister that Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed into Illinois law in August.

The Cindy Bischof Act gives a judge the latitude to order a person charged with violating a protective order to wear a satellite tracking device. The device alerts police - as well as the holder of the protective order - when a court-imposed boundary is breached.

In October, Bischof attended a "Celebration of Courage" luncheon in Schaumburg.

"Cindy herself asked a judge to order this, but the judge felt it wasn't within his jurisdiction," Bischof said of his sister who lived in Arlington Heights and was gunned down at her job in Elmhurst. "I feel like we're carrying on the torch for her."

The Breuder era comes to an end: Robert Breuder's retirement ended before it ever began.

The 10-year president of Harper College - a lightning rod for both warm praise and hostile criticism since Day 1 - had been preparing for several years to retire in June 2009.

Then, in October, the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn named him a finalist in its own presidential search.

Breuder, who has maintained he was head-hunted by COD, not the other way around, then threw off COD trustees by announcing he got the job before a contract was signed.

In the end the marriage went off without a hitch and Breuder left his post at Harper eight months early, his $508,000 retirement package still intact.

The news didn't stop Harper voters in November from agreeing to fund more than $150 million in improvements to the Palatine campus.

Politics gets personal in Hanover Park: Since 1985 Sherry Craig had been both Hanover Park's clerk and its collector. She's made $55,000 a year doing both jobs.

It all unraveled in 2008 when the village board - several members of which dislike her husband, Hanover Park Mayor Rod Craig - voted to eliminate the collector position entirely, arguing it was no longer needed.

Sherry Craig has been elected and re-elected village clerk since 1985. The job pays the equivalent of a cup of coffee a day, about $5,000 a year. The real payoff was the collector job, which paid $50,000 a year.

Craig was devastated, but her request that the board hold off until her term ends in April 2009 was refused. Since then, she has announced she won't seek re-election.

Her husband maintains the move was a cheap shot directed at him. But providing opponents even more ammunition was the discovery that Craig had been overpaid by more than $10,000 over the last seven years. She's promised to pay back the inflated salary.

Amante Enad has a lot of friends: This bizarre story of illegal pig roasting in Wheeling made national headlines in January and for a time Wheeling residents lived in fear of a crackdown on barbecues.

It started after officials cited Amante Enad Jan. 25 for roasting pigs in his back yard.

Officials weren't discriminating against pork. They thought Enad was cooking a suspicious number of porkers, and concluded he was actually running a business, for which he had no license.

Enad vowed he was cooking only for family and friends, including the time he made three pigs for a Filipino fiesta at a church in Glenview.

The pig roasts, or lechon, are a part of the Filipino culture.

In February, a judge ruled that Enad must stop roasting pigs for the masses but would not have to pay a $1,000 fine if he didn't have any violations for the rest of the year.

"I want you to celebrate your traditions; they're wonderful traditions," Judge Joel Greenblatt told him. "(But) you cannot do it on such a mass scale in the manner in which you're doing it."

Didn't seem so dumb when gas hit $4 a gallon, did it? Former Wheeling Village President Bill Hein thought his village should do its part to conserve gas and he had just the thing.

Hein proposed that Wheeling allow people to drive Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, which - similar to golf carts - would be allowed only on slow-moving, local roads. The NEVs range from $5,000 to $11,000 and run on eight batteries that last about 60 to 70 miles per charge.

In October, the Wheeling village board passed an ordinance that would allow NEVs on local streets.

A week later, when one trustee who had been absent came back, the board overturned the vote. Trustee Bob Heer said he, along with the Wheeling Police Department, was concerned about safety.

Hein, meanwhile, is undaunted. He vowed to continue researching NEVs and hopes the board will consider another ordinance.

We've seen the tape, and we're still not sure how he did it: It is not overstating things to say that on May 23 Henry Raskin had a very bad day.

It all started when Raskin, 70, was pulled over in Buffalo Grove, where the officer told him he was clocked doing 58 on a 35 mph road.

Raskin got his ticket. And then, eager to leave, he hit the gas to take off on Dundee Road.

What Raskin didn't account for was that his car's gears were in reverse.

But instead of flying backward and smashing the front of the squad car dead on, somehow the Toyota Camry backed on top of the Buffalo Grove police car.

Raskin was cited for reckless driving. He was also fined $220 and ordered to traffic safety school.

Judge not, lest you be judged: It's one thing to preach about forgiveness from the pulpit every Sunday. But the Rev. Randy Thompson got the chance to practice what he preaches just a couple of weeks ago.

Cross & Crown Lutheran Church in Arlington Heights was vandalized by two 15-year-old boys late Dec 13 or early Dec. 14. The boys tipped over bookcases; they broke windows, doors, four computers and a copier. They set off fire extinguishers, coating toys in the day-care center with dry chemicals. They also ruined the church's artificial 10-foot Christmas tree.

In a letter to his parishioners, Thompson instead asked them to focus on the needs of the young boys. For him, it was what the holiday season is all about.

"Remember to pray for the two teens charged with the crime," Thompson wrote. "Such a rage within them to cause such violence, and they will need both healing and forgiveness.

"Praise God we know about forgiveness, and we know the story that unfolds at Christmas - God coming down to save us, to grant forgiveness to all who believe."

Cop gets his 15 minutes, considers giving it back: Hoffman Estates Police Officer Vince Pusateri became a reluctant folk hero - to some, anyway - on a May afternoon at the Sears Centre when he refused to shake Todd Stroger's hand.

Suburban police officers were at the arena drilling on bioterrorism preparedness - a drill sponsored by Cook County - when the Cook County Board president arrived.

Stroger, who at the time was being savaged in the Northwest suburbs for the new 1 percent sales tax hike, chatted up officers and extended his hand to Pusateri, who refused it. He then told Stroger he wasn't happy with the job he was doing as board president.

The mini-storm that erupted was kept alive largely by online chatter, where many commenters considered Pusateri a hero. Hoffman Estates' official reaction was muted, and Pusateri, for his part, quickly dropped out of sight.