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How 2 cops and 'The Bartlett Way' reunited couple with lost wedding ring

Not much was going right for Kenny Brighton last Friday night.

First, while he was working his side gig delivering pizzas, his car got stuck on a snow-covered driveway in Bartlett. Then, when using his bare hands in a futile effort to dig his way out, he lost his phone and wedding ring in a snow drift.

With the help of co-workers, the South Elgin man eventually located the phone and dug out his car. The ring was nowhere to be found.

"I thought it was lost forever," Brighton said Thursday. "I probably said every swear word in the book, at least in my head."

His wife, Vanessa, wasn't much more optimistic.

"I had just chalked it up as gone and we had to let it go and move on," she said.

Later that night, Vanessa wrote a post about the couple's bad luck on the Bartlett Area Moms Facebook page. That's when their bad luck turned good, and a couple of Bartlett's finest saved the day.

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  Kenny Brighton of South Elgin thought his wedding ring was gone forever last week after he lost it while trying to dig his car out of the snow. A pair of Bartlett officers armed with the department's metal detector found the missing ring. Joe Lewnard/jlewnard@dailyherald.com

'Maybe we can find it'

Among the readers on the Facebook page that night was officer Tammy Schulz, a 25-year veteran of Bartlett's force.

"I thought, well, the department has a metal detector," she said. "Maybe we can find it."

Schulz replied on Facebook, got the address of the house where the ring was lost and headed out there the next day with community service officer Dave Lacriola, metal detector in tow.

After about 30 minutes of searching - and with the help of a shovel borrowed from a neighbor - the pair found the ring.

"You'd have thought the ring was ours, we were so excited to find it," said Lacriola, a 19-year member of the department. "There's so much bad stuff going on out there, that to be able to do something that was joyful at the end, it made us feel good."

  Bartlett police officer Tammy Schulz and community service officer Dave Lacriola went above and beyond the call of duty last weekend when they braved the cold and snow to search for - and eventually recover - a wedding ring lost by pizza delivery driver Kenny Brighton in a customer's snowy driveway. Joe Lewnard/jlewnard@dailyherald.com

"We didn't even notice it felt like 9 degrees below zero, we were so ecstatic to find the ring," Schulz said.

Schulz admits it was one of the more unusual tasks of her law enforcement career but said her department sincerely believes "no problem is too big or too small."

"We call it the Bartlett way," she added.

When the Brightons got the call that the ring had been located, they could hardly believe it - and not just because they thought the officers were on a mission impossible.

"I had no idea that they would even do that," Vanessa Brighton said. "We're just so grateful.

Kenny Brighton, center, was all smiles after Bartlett community service officer Dave Lacriola, left, and officer Tammy Schulz reunited him with his lost wedding ring. Courtesy of Bartlett Police Department

"The moral of the story is to wear gloves, don't wear your wedding ring when you're working a second job, and that there are good police officers out there."

<h3 class="leadin">Wrong side of the law

An Elmhurst attorney busted with what a prosecutor labeled a "nauseating" amount of child pornography won't be practicing law anytime soon.

The Illinois Supreme Court on Tuesday disbarred Ralph Tellefsen due to his conviction last year for possessing child pornography.

Tellefsen, 64, was arrested in August 2017 after authorities said an employee of his law office found child porn on an office printer. Police said they later found a banker's box containing thousands of pornographic images.

He pleaded guilty to the possession charge in August 2018 and was sentenced to 30 days in the DuPage County jail and two years of sex-offender probation. He also paid $2,527 in fines and court costs and must register as a sex offender.

Tellefsen wasn't the only suburban attorney disbarred this week for a criminal conviction. Spring Grove attorney Robin Perry lost her law license as a result of her 2017 conviction on allegations she stole more than $26,000 from a McHenry law firm. Perry previously was an assistant McHenry County state's attorney, as well as a member of the county's zoning board.

<h3 class="leadin">Memory loss

Can someone be convicted of a crime when the victim - and only eyewitness - doesn't remember it happening?

That was the question before a state appeals court deciding the case of a Lombard man convicted of domestic battery and unlawful interference with the reporting of domestic violence.

A jury convicted John T. Rushing of the misdemeanor charges alleging he beat a woman at a Lombard motel in March 2016, leaving her with a broken nose, dislocated jaw and fractured cheek. However, during Rushing's trial, the woman testified she could not remember the assault because she was asleep when it started and head injuries she suffered left her memory "fuzzy."

In his appeal, Rushing argued that because the woman couldn't recall the attack, her testimony established only "suspicious circumstances" and he couldn't be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Illinois Second District Appellate Court disagreed. In a unanimous Jan. 25 ruling, justices found that despite the victim's memory lapses, the things she could testify to were uncontradicted.

"(The victim) testified to simple matters, particularly to defendant's presence in the room before and after the attack, his comments to her, and his lack of sympathetic reaction to her injuries," Justice Robert B. Spence wrote. "A jury could reasonably conclude that even a person with 'fuzzy' recollection could testify accurately to these facts."

Rushing was sentenced to 120 days in jail and ordered to pay $707 in fines and court costs.

<h3 class="leadin">Team Aurora

Whether they ride in fire trucks or squad cars, Aurora's public-safety workers say they are one team, #teamaurora.

That was evidenced Tuesday night, when firefighters spent several hours battling a blaze as temperatures plunged below zero. Sympathetic police officers brought the fire crews hamburgers and pizzas.

• Got a tip or thoughts on a cops and crime-related issue to share? Email copsandcrime@dailyherald.com.

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