Newspaper helps replace medals stolen in Wilmette burglary
BY IRV LEAVITT Columnist December 30, 2011 5:44PM
Article Extras
Updated: January 13, 2012 5:59PM
Burglars stole about $30,000 worth of jewelry from Kristin Rodeno’s home late last year, but she says she doesn’t care much about that.
Really.
The bandits stole something else from her Wilmette house that she misses more than gold or diamonds. They stole the medals that prove she finished four marathons.
They’re hard to earn, but you’d be lucky if a scrap dealer gave you a couple of nickels to rub together for any one of them.
The burglars “probably just thought they looked cool,” Rodeno said. “I’ve gone to all the local pawn shops, like the one on Lake Avenue, the ones on Howard Street. They said no one brought them in, and there is no way they would ever consider buying anything like them.”
Everybody knows that you have to train a lot to run a marathon, and running 26.2 miles all at one time is very hard to do. It’s even harder if you run one in under 3 hours 45 minutes, as Rodeno did in the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon in 2002 and 2005.
That qualified her for the Boston Marathon in 2006. She followed up with the ING New York City Marathon in 2010.
But there’s more to this story than running fast and far.
About 8 years ago, Rodeno’s second daughter, A.J., was born with a golf-ball-sized tumor pressing on her right eye. Scheduled for surgery two days later, her mother wanted to try to transfer all the strength she could to her little girl.
“I put [the 2002 medal] on her bear when she went in. When she came out, the nurse had put it around her neck,” she said, stifling a sob.
She gave the staff at Children’s Memorial some of the credit for the operation, too — and cash. When she ran in 2005, she raised $5,000 for the hospital.
A couple of years later, when little A.J. had some cosmetic surgery around the eye, there were three medals in the gurney. If she gets a touch-up, there would be four.
But the medals are all gone.
After the Nov. 7 burglary, Wilmette Police Det. Dave Sweet said that it was unlikely the medals would ever be seen again.
“When they realize what they are, they’re probably going to throw them away,” he said. “They’re not going to get any money from them.”
Rodeno appealed to a couple of local newspapers, hoping a story would lead to their return.
A free newspaper tried, and nothing happened.
But Pioneer Press Editor-in-Chief Jeff Wisser, who looks at life differently from the way most people do, asked if instead of basically trying to appeal to the better angels among sneak-thieves, why not see if the race organizers had some old medals they might be willing to part with?
Rodeno, it became clear later, had already tried that.
“A friend used to work for LaSalle Bank, and she said, ‘No way can you get replacement medals. They don’t keep them that far back.’”
But magic sometimes happens when somebody calls from a major metropolitan newspaper company.
It’s different from glorified shoppers, and from websites people tend while lounging in their bathrobes.
Big news companies engender trust, by investing in actual visible commodities to produce a product of substance: carloads of paper, barrels of ink, trucks to carry it in, and honor boxes on street corners where people can feed in quarters to buy it.
And they hire editors, who try to make sure what’s written on the paper has a friendly relationship with the truth.
That may be why Barb Kummerer, a volunteer for the (now) Bank of America Chicago Marathon, was open to our suggestion.
Also, she’s a nice lady.
The River Forest resident is the president of the Oak Park Runners Association, and still a long-distance runner in her late 70s.
And most important, she was the first person who answered the telephone.
“I think they may actually have those two medals,” she said happily, after looking into the possibility on her own time.
A few days later, they arrived at Pioneer Press in a FedEx envelope.
Richard Finn, spokesman for the ING New York City Marathon, said coming up with a 2010 medal was next to ridiculous.
“We don’t have medals lying around,” he said. “There were a record 47,000 finishers. We gave away all we had.”
But he loved the story about the little girl and the tumor and the gurney. And he admired Rodeno’s prowess.
“If you break the four-hour barrier, you’re running,” he said.
And a few days later, an envelope arrived from New York.
John Hancock Financial Services shovels money at the Boston Marathon, but the Boston Athletic Association doesn’t let anything, even a company named for a big-time signer of the Declaration of Independence, put its name on the Boston Marathon.
Despite that condition of relative modesty, Hancock’s Boston Marathon PR man, Brian T. Carmichael, promptly returns press calls, even when the race is five months away.
He chased down T.K. Skenderian and Jack Fleming of the BAA, and they came up with a 2006 finisher’s medal.
“Pass along our regards to Mrs. Rodeno and her daughter,” Carmichael wrote, as he sent off the last FedEx envelope.
And so it goes. Managing Editor Gary Taylor surprised Rodeno with the replacement medals Dec. 28, when she came by with A.J. for what we told her was an interview.
“No one’s ever done anything that nice for me,” she said after the shock wore off. “It blew me away.”
Since the burglary, her husband Tom replaced her engagement ring, and he’s working on the wedding band. And the burglar alarm has been upgraded.
And one more thing. She’s running in the Walt Disney World Marathon in Orlando Jan. 8, and the Marine Corps Marathon in Quantico Oct. 28.
“I want to make sure I have more medals,” she said last month.
You never know when you’ll want to put one or two in a gurney.
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