RandyTravis' Blog

I took the bus to work the other day, a major accomplishment since I don't live anywhere near a bus line.

It happened on a recent Friday, not because gas is $4 a gallon, but because I wanted my daughter to meet me later in Atlanta for a Braves game without having to worry about two cars. OK, maybe the $4 a gallon part had a little to do with it, too.

I live in Gwinnett County, a place that when I first moved there 18 years ago refused to even consider accepting MARTA as an alternative to driving. I think the vote was 70-30 against the idea that year. Next week, Gwinnett voters get another chance in a non-binding vote to decide whether they want to spend an extra penny in sales tax to fund a MARTA rail line from Doraville to Gwinnett Place Mall, with stops on Jimmy Carter and Indian Trail.

Here's my safe prediction: the vote won't be 70-30 this time. I've actually taken the GRTA bus a few times from the Discover Mills lot, meeting my photographer at a MARTA station and then on to our story. I always counted about a hundred cars in the Discover Mills lot. This last time? At least 500 I would guess. It took me a while to even find a spot to park my car.

Obviously, the $4 monster has affected some commuters and the way they're choosing to get into town. I think the frustrating traffic has also pushed some people over the mass transit edge.

For me, I had to meet my photographer for a surveillance we were doing near Jimmy Carter Blvd. But my bus only stopped at Indian Trail before heading into the city. So I got off and walked the remaining 1.7 miles that morning to meet the undercover van already in place.

I had a long time to think about $4 a gallon, public transportation, my car and my feet.

What makes a good father? In all the crime stories I've covered involving young people, I'd say many of them would have avoided trouble if they simply had a father around who cared about them.

 Raising teenagers is hard enough with two full-time parents in the house. I can't imagine what it would be like to be on my own with mine, especially for those crucial decisions like which hair-straightener to buy.

But seriously, what if you knew for sure you wouldn't be around to answer the real important questions? Would you do what Randy Pausch has done?

For those who haven't heard, Mr. Pausch is a Carnegie Mellon professor who is dying from pancreatic cancer. He gave his last lecture at the university in September, 2007. That talk has led to a best selling book, "The Last Lecture." It's a quick, easy read about a man who has his priorities straight. It's his way of leaving a time capsule for his three young children so they'll understand what their father was like, long after he's gone.

Here's a link to the video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Sunday will be Mr. Pausch's last Father's Day. But thanks to his foresight, his children will always know they had a dad who cared deeply about what will happen to them for the rest of their lives.

     Part one of our investigation profiled Evelyn Nelson, a longtime Toccoa pet store owner who happens to have a criminal record. Twice in three years a judge convicted her on animal abuse-related charges. Yet the state of Georgia still gave her a new pet dealer license.

     State regulators told us they were unaware of the extent of abuse. After our story aired last night, Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin called Toccoa city marshal Ken Cox and said if he moved to arrest Ms. Nelson his department would support his decision.

     Trouble is, Mr. Cox isn't sure what to charge her with. He's been closely monitoring her pet store since he ordered it temporarily shut down last year for unsanitary conditions. He says that intense inspection has led to improved conditions, even though he's still upset the state didn't take away her license after her second criminal conviction.

     Our story also pointed out that Ms. Nelson didn't answer truthfully on her relicense applicaton when it asked whether she had been "found in violation of any law, rule, regulation or quarantine related to animals."

     Commissioner Irvin is suggesting she be arrested for perjury, but the city marshal says it's more of a case of making a false statement, something the state should pursue. State workers will be meeting with the marshal later this week to decide what to do.

     Meanwhile, the second part of our investigation profiles two other licensed breeders who got multiple chances from the state to straighten up. L&D Kennels in Nicholson was cited at least 35 times by state inspectors over the last couple of years, yet it still got a new license every year.

     In February of this year, Jackson County authorities charged the owners with multiple counts of animal abuse after a former employee tipped them off about outrageous conditions inside the kennel. The state revoked L&D's license. Why didn't the state do something earlier?

     Why did the state give Miniature Dachshunds of Georgia a probationary license, even though customers have successfully sued the breeder more than a dozen times? At issue, selling sick puppies... or not providing the proper AKC papers. The state even caught Miniature Dachshunds of Georgia selling puppies after the owners let their license lapse. Instead of shutting them down, the state allowed the breeder to stay in business.

     When we showed up unannounced, the co-owner wouldn't let us down to see where the dogs are actually housed. He said he hadn't started cleaning up, even though we showed up around lunchtime.

     So how do you make sure you're not buying a puppy... from a puppy mill? Here are some suggestions I've gathered from various sources and my own observations.

      * Be suspicious of everyone. That means asking a lot of questions, even if the breeder seems to be a nice elderly woman living out in the country. Two of the three breeders we investigated in our series fall into that category.

     * Avoid flea markets and people who want to meet you in a parking lot somewhere to show you the puppies. Demand to see where the puppies have been raised, including where the parents are housed. If they have an excuse for why you can't visit, that's your reason to look somewhere else.

     * Puppies should be at least eight weeks before they're taken from their mother. Avoid breeders who want to sell you one earlier.

     * Ask to see vet records. Then call the vet to confirm.

     * Don't be fooled by "registered" puppies. Some of the kennel club registrations really don't mean anything. One of the breeders in our investigation was routinely sued for not providing the promised AKC registration.

     * Don't always shop by price. Puppy mills often offer great deals because they don't put a lot of money into vet care and housing.

     * Remember, demand keeps puppy mills in business. If you look for a puppy at your local animal shelter rather than a breeder, you'll save a life and avoid feeding the problem. A lot of shelters have purebreds, too. So do rescue groups. Go on-line to find the one closest to you.

     * And as our series discovered, just because a breeder is licensed by the Georgia Department of Agriculture doesn't mean they're problem-free.

     Sad, but true.

            Back in my print media days our city editor had a motto: kids and dogs sell papers. In other words, put a picture of a child or dog (or, if possible, both) on the front page of the paper and chances are your street sales would increase. Readers have always been drawn to stories about children and pets. Sometimes more of the second than the first.

            Over the years I’ve investigated stories of child abuse… and stories of animal abuse. The animal stories always get the most reaction. Not sure why, except that maybe more people feel they have a better chance to do something about animal abuse. The system, they think, is set up to help them weed out the troublemakers. All they have to do is complain to a government agency and the animal abusers are shut down.

            If that really is their thinking, our latest investigation will make them think again. Coming up Monday at 6 and 10, we examine the way the Georgia Department of Agriculture treats licensed animal breeders who repeatedly break the rules. We found one licensed breeder who had been twice convicted of animal abuse-related charges. Twice in three years. Yet, the state still gave her a new license to sell dogs and cats to the public. We found another repeat offender who got a new license… only to abuse their animals even more. And what did the state do to a breeder who’d been successfully sued so many times the judge even complained about them? Yep, that one got a license, too.

            So what’s going on? We ask the tough questions. Feel free to add your own and we’ll pass them along, too.

State agriculture commissioner Tommy Irvin doesn't usually surf the net, but the 79-year-old politician has a problem with Snopes.com.

Snopes is the website you go to when you want to know whether something is an urban legend... or a true story.

This month Snopes posted a story "Cheating at Gas Pumps." It details how a Cartersville, GA gas station set its pumps to show more gas had been delivered than a person actually got.  click here

Mr. Irvin says they checked that station... plus the 686 others they've received complaints about between January and April of this year. He says not one was found out of compliance.

Last year he says they investigated 1415 complaints about quality and possible gas shorting. He says 5% of those complaints were valid.

Overall, they inspected 119,012 pumps in 2007 across the state, most during regular inspection rounds. He says 5,590 pumps were actually out of tolerance, but at least half of those were dispensing MORE gas than they claimed.

The state will send an inspector out for every complaint, but if you suspect a problem make sure you give them the correct address, gas station brand and pump number. Here's the number that can be found on every pump in Georgia: 1-800-282-5852.

As the price of gas rises, complaints like these are sure to rise even faster.

Over the last few years, television stations and newspapers across the country have caught restaurants serving fish inferior to what's actually listed on the menu. In every report I've seen, the restaurant has insisted they were fooled too... fooled by the wholesaler who they claimed delivered the wrong fish. The restaurant argued they unwittingly passed along the false fish to the customer.

But executive chef Michael Hoffman says at one restaurant chain where he briefly worked, the owner knew exactly the deception being perpetrated on the customer.

Mr. Hoffman brought his concerns to us about Chicago's, a group that had three restaurants in metro Atlanta when he worked there earlier this year. The career chef says the restaurant owner, David Howard, told him to continue the company's tradition of serving customers asian catfish when they thought they were getting grouper. Mr. Hoffman says he even tried to order grouper on his own. A few months later, he was fired.

A month after he left, the I-Team checked out the grouper at the two Chicago's locations in Cobb County. One of the restaurants even had grouper as their "catch of the day." We ordered that, too, then sent the samples off to Therion Laboratories for DNA analysis. www.theriondna.com

All of our samples came back negative for grouper, positive for asian catfish.

Keep in mind, asian catfish sells for as low as $3 pound, compared to $12 pound for red grouper. Chicago's sold their "almond crusted grouper" for $18.95.

Owner David Howard claimed the asian catfish was a mystery to him. But when we told him we had already interviewed his former executive chef, the owner pulled off his mike and ultimately walked away from our interview.

For the restaurants that are caught serving false fish, how often do you think they're actually involved in the deception rather than fooled by their supplier?

And how do you make sure you're really getting the fish you pay for?

When it comes to sushi in the United States, you either love it or you think it's yesterday's bait. No matter how you feel, though, you expect a sushi restaurant to serve you what it says on the menu.

Ever heard of "bait and switch?" Consider this one "switch the bait."

We randomly selected seven sushi restaurants that advertised red snapper on the menu. Then we sent a sample of our sushi to Therion International, a Saratoga Springs, NY lab that specializes in DNA testing. (www.theriondna.com)

The results we got would put a shiver in the best of sushi aficionados. Not one of the seven actually served us red snapper.

Two of the restaurants gave us red sea bream. It's not in the red snapper family, but sea bream is sometimes known as Japanese red snapper so we'll give those two restaurants the benefit of the doubt.

However, the other five restaurants, 71% of the ones we tested, actually gave us tilapia instead of red snapper. Tilapia is a fresh water, rather than salt water fish. It's also a lot cheaper for a restaurant to buy than red snapper.

Some restaurant owners insisted they really were serving red snapper... until we asked them to produce the shipping package. For two of the restaurants, it clearly said tilapia on the label.

Another restaurant insisted they had invoices showing they ordered red snapper. But when we asked to see those invoices, the manager put his hand in front of the camera and insisted we leave.

You can see a list of the restaurants tested here.

When it comes to sushi, do you think it makes any difference what raw fish you're eating?

So you're not happy with the prospect of paying $4 a gallon for gas this summer?

Well, some are suggesting a way to immediately lower that price. It involves talking. That's right. Just talking. Sitting down and having a conversation.

So what's the problem? The conversation would have to be with some of our sworn enemies.

Oil is at $115 dollars a barrel not because the dictators of Iran and Venezuela decided to set the price that high. Oil is a publically traded commodity. Our biggest supplier of oil is actually Canada, not the Middle East. But because the market sets the price of oil, the market can be influenced by fear that the supply will be interrupted. And that brings us back to talking.

Sure, China's gluttonous demand for oil is driving the price high, but there's another big factor, too. Fear. Some pundits suggest that if this country simply agrees to directly talk to Iran about some of the issues that divide us, oil prices would fall rapidly. That's because the oil traders would believe it less likely that our two countries would go to war. War is bad for oil, especially if it takes place in the country that holds the world's second largest oil reserves.

Even better, lower oil prices would also reduce the amount of money flowing into Iran's coffers, money that country could be using the fuel the sectarian war in Iraq right now.

But talking with Iran would involve the Bush Administration admitting it made a mistake in isolating that country... rather than trying direct negotiations. Some worry it will also make us look weak in the eyes of our other enemies.

What do you think?

From the first time I met him, Herschel Walker has always confused me.

It was January, 1980, and I was working as a part-time sportswriter for the Athens Banner-Herald newspaper while attending UGA. The school football team was coming off a losing season, and everyone was talking about this stud running back from middle Georgia and where he might sign to play college football.

Since no reporter in Athens had ever interviewed Herschel, I called up his Johnson County High School coach to see whether Herschel might meet with me. I was told he'd love to.

So a few days later, I made the two-hour drive south. I walked into the high school gym and found Herschel playing basketball after school. He was good at that, too. And he had no desire to talk to a teenage sportswriter from Athens.

"Come on Herschel," his coach said. "You know what you promised your mama. You said you'd talk to this young fellow."

After some cajoling, Herschel and I went off to the coach's office and I got my exclusive interview. I still have the audiotape in a box somewhere. Three months later, on Easter Sunday, he agreed to play football for the Georgia Bulldogs. The school's football program has never been better than those three years he attended UGA.

Today, Herschel (all of us UGA grads are on a first-name basis with Mr. Walker) now says he's suffered for years from dissociative identity disorder. That bothers me. If it's true, it's sad that he's had to suffer with this untreated for so long. Clearly, he's had domestic problems with his now ex-wife, including threatening to kill her. But I really wonder whether it's due to something called dissociative identity disorder.

The diagnosis itself is controversial. Some in the medical field call it junk psychotheraphy. Some believe the idea of dissociative identity disorder can be planted in someone who has a very suggestive personality.

I think that could apply to Herschel. It seemed like every week when he was in school there was a controversial moment that required his own press conference. One day he was going to leave school and play Canadian football in Montreal after talking to the team owner. That didn't happen. Another day he announced that he had actually flipped a coin to decide between Clemson and Georgia, then used prayer to help make his decision. This came after he talked to Guideposts, a religious magazine.

There were lots of other odd moments, but we all figured this was typical of a kid from rural Georgia suddenly thrust into the limelight of big-time, national championship college football.

Maybe it was. Or maybe it was the first sign of a disorder no one had heard about it. I still lean toward the first, but it saddens me to think that it's possible someone else may once again be trying to take advantage of this humble hero.

When we last saw Ernest Rieux, he was pretending to be a cop, parking his Mercedes along a street at Atlantic Station and making sure his police sign and APD patch were clearly visible in the windshield.

The Westwood College criminal justice professor thought he had everyone fooled. For months he told students and fellow teachers he was a career cop from New Orleans who had to move here to Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina. He even had the police badges to back up his claims.

Only trouble, his students weren't as gullible as he thought. Some brought their suspicions to us. They also told us Mr. Rieux repeatedly used vulgar language in class, even though he claimed to be a minister.

One of the students agreed to take a hidden camera into class. We hoped to capture some of that salty language for our story. We were as surprised as the students when their teacher walked into class that day with a real gun on his hip. Even more shocking, he took the gun off and left it unsecured during the entire class period, even sticking his head outside the classroom to talk to other school employees.

Atlanta Police investigated, but I don't think they ever seriously pursued this case even though we had videotape of a man bringing a gun into a classroom. That's considered a crime in Georgia.

A few months later, we started getting calls from other people: Mr. Rieux was working for a private probation service in DeKalb County. Someone recognized him and alerted their superiors. He lost that job.

But the most outrageous sighting we got was last week, when we discovered this fake cop working as a real probation officer for the Georgia Department of Corrections in downtown Atlanta.

How could the state have hired someone without thoroughly checking out his claims? That's what the Department of Corrections wants to determine. A spokesman says Mr. Riuex never claimed to be a cop when he was hired, and his bachelor's degree checked out.

He was quickly fired for leaving out sections of his resume, like his entire employment at Westwood College. Later this month, Mr. Rieux was scheduled to repeat his probation officer training program because he failed one of the most basic parts of the class.

Yes... he couldn't pass the firearms test.

As an investigative reporter, story endings don't get any better than that.

You've got to hand it to Barbara Waters and Bobbie Gilleland. When they get something in the mail from the government, they actually read it.

So when the two Alpharetta women read their quarterly Medicare statement, they noticed some bizarre charges on there for their husbands: more than $180,000 in charges from a Stockbridge doctor. Never mind they've never been to this doctor. The strangest part was the fact the doctor their husbands supposedly saw was a gynocologist.

Medical miracles aside, the two ladies had come across the tip of a massive Medicare fraud operation here in metro Atlanta.

According to a federal indictment, three Cuban immigrants from Miami came to Atlanta and set up fake offices around town. Then they started billing Medicare using stolen provider and beneficiary numbers. Operating under names like Rainbow Group Services, Orion Group Services, Prime Care and Draco, the three men are accused of billing a total of nearly $7 million. The US government paid more than $3 million of those claims before someone got suspicious.

Federal agents caught one suspect, Alain Jose Amador, aka "Carlos Garcia" and "Peter Rodriguez." They're still looking for Jesus Manuel Losa and Jean Santana Ramirez. If you've got information that might help, contact the Atlanta FBI field office at 404-879-9000.

The FBI and the office of inspector general for the Health and Human Services urge providers and patients to guard their numbers carefully and always double check their statements. If they see something odd, call this number: 1-800-HHS-TIPS (1-800-447-8477). You can also email them at HHSTips@oig.hhs.gov

What bothered me the most on this story is how easy it seemed to pull this off. Authorities say once the suspects obtained patient and provider numbers, they simply matched the two together and started billing. When we visited the offices, the landlords said the only item in the room was a working fax machine. One landlord said the suspects paid in cash, then with a check that bounced. This clearly wasn't a sophisticated operation, but one that clearly paid off... at least short term.

Watching Elliot Spitzer resign from his job as New York governor reminded me of many other stories I've covered involving politicians who couldn't resist temptation. They didn't always turn out the way you might imagine.

When I worked in Memphis in the late 1980s, the school board superintendent got into a nasty sex scandal involving a teacher. He survived. In fact, he eventually became the mayor of Memphis.

President Bill Clinton not only survived his Monica scandal; the more Republicans pushed for his impeachment the more his poll numbers went up.

But if nothing else, Spitzer had to resign for one reason: he set himself up as the White Knight, the arbiter of honesty and respect for the law.

Will what happened to him make politicians more honest? More careful? Or will it make them less likely to take a moral stand?

Now that Congress has decided to refer the Roger Clemens case to the Justice Department for possible false testimony, I thought I'd share with you a great piece of writing I found on another blog a few weeks ago. I wish I knew who originally wrote this. I wish I had thought of it.

This is for all you "A Few Good Men" movie fans.

------------------------------------------------p>

Roger Clemens (as played by Jack Nicholson) Clemens: You want answers?

Congressman: I think I’m entitled to them.

Clemens: You want answers?

Congressman: I want the truth!

Clemens: You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has baseballs. And those balls have to be hit by men with bats. Who’s gonna do it? You? You,Congressman? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for steroids and you curse HGH. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that HGH, while illegal, probably sells tickets. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, sells tickets…You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that mound. You need me on that mound. We use words like fastball, slider, splitfinger…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent playing a sport. You use ‘em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and falls asleep to the Sportscenter clips I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a bat and dig in. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!

Congressman: Did you order the HGH?

Clemens: (quietly) I did the job you sent me to do.

Congressman: Did you order the HGH?

Clemens: You’re g* right I did!!

We still don't know her name. Back in 2006, someone dropped off a box of home videotapes here at the Fox5 Studios. When members of the I-Team watched the tapes, we discovered it was actually a collection of sex tapes, showing unconscious women being assaulted by the same man. One of the tapes had a sticky note on it saying "watch first." That tape showed a woman so out of it one of us openly wondered whether she might be dead.

Some documentation inside the box indicated the man was from Douglas County. So we brought the tapes to the district attorney's office there. They turned it over the Douglas County Sheriff's Department. Investigator Rodney Hendrix and Sgt. Jesse Hambrick spent months searching for the women on the tape, ultimately identifying one of them by a tattoo they spotted on the videotape.

They also identified the man on the tape: John Schuehrer, a former nightclub bouncer. They accused him of using GHB, the so-called date rape drug, to make his victims lose consciousness. The tapes show him repeatedly sexually assaulting these women, sometimes with a stick, a beer bottle... even a can of Red Bull. All three women had previously been involved in a relationship with Mr. Schuehrer, but they had no memory of these things happening to them. They also say they didn't know Mr. Schuehrer was videotaping them.

Two years later, Mr. Schuehrer pled guilty to some of the 28 counts of sexual assault. He got a 30-year sentence, with a guarantee of spending at least 15 years behind bars. He could have received several life sentences if convicted on all counts, but prosecutors decided to spare the victims the pain of having the videotapes played before a jury in open court.

After the plea, assistant DA Eddie Barker told me who dropped the tapes off here at Fox5. He didn't name her, but he said it was one of the three victims. Turns out she found the tapes after deciding to move out of the house she shared with Mr. Schuehrer. That's when she discovered what happened to her... and the other women. Mr. Barker says she hoped Fox5 would track down the other women and urge them to come forward.

If there had been more information on the tapes, we might have been able to find these women. But with little else to go on, we made the call to turn over the tapes to the authorities.

When it was all over, our anonymous source got exactly what she wanted. And a serial rapist will be gone for a long time.

The state of Georgia acted quickly when we disclosed the results of an I-Team investigation into a local elevator maintenance company and its contract with DeKalb County government.

The Georgia Department of Labor licenses elevator maintenance companies. It also inspects elevators after the maintenance company supposedly does a comprehensive safety test. The company proves they did the test by leaving behind a little metal test tag attached to the guts of the elevator system.

But we heard from a former employee of Advantage Mobility and Elevator Solutions that the boss wanted his employees to put tags on certain county elevators without actually doing the tests, thus fooling the state inspectors.

In our surveillance audio, the boss is heard saying "we don't want to cause ourselves no problems. I believe a lot of these cars haven't been tested in a long time. We f*** around trying to do it right, we're going to f*** ourselves."

The state issued a cessation order for the company, ordering them not to work on any more elevators until a hearing can be scheduled.

A California company called Elevator Load Test www.elevatorloadtest.com says that some companies don't like to properly test elevators because it involves heavy weights and takes hours for each elevator.

But Ron Creak, a nationally known elevator expert, www.creak-moskal.com says he prefers the way testing is done in states like Texas and Florida. They certify private individuals to witness the testing take place, rather than take the maintenance company's word for it. He flew to Georgia to examine DeKalb County's troubled government elevators.

What do you think? Do you like Georgia's way of inspecting elevators? Have you ever had an issue on an elevator that left you concerned about your safety?