One of the things I get to do each day is second-guess myself in terms of that day’s paper, in particular how stories get played.

I’m doing it again this morning.

I’ve known Rose Quinn for about 30 years. She’s a crackerjack police reporter. Every Thursday she and Cindy Scharr do a column on police and firefighters, often focusing on things that don’t normally make it into their police stories. So when she stopped in my office yesterday afternoon and mentioned how moved she was by what she had just witnessed, I paid attention.

What she saw was a homecoming for a state trooper who had been serving in Iraq. He visited his kids’ classrooms as a special holiday surprise.
You can read her story here.

There’s a photo of Trooper Mike Suter being hugged by his kids. We used it on Page One as one of our “teasers.”

We should have run it as our entire front page.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

Thanks, Mike, for your service. Here’s wishing your family a great holiday season, but I think they already got what they wanted for Christmas.