Excerpt from "What God Can Do" by Deborah Mathis

[...] "As their guide and consultant through the dangerous, turbulent gang zones, the HBO crew chose Steve Nawojczyk, the longtime coroner of Pulaski County, which encompassed several of these zones. Having run the state crime lab for two years and then served as coroner for ten, Steve Nawojczyk knew the body count firsthand. He had seen them all: the gang banger gunned down on a street corner; the grandmother felled in her garden during a drive-by; the suspected “snitch” tendered unrecognizable by gunshots to the face; the baby with scraps from her receiving blanket lodged in her back.

Nawojczyk did his job promptly and efficiently, but not dispassionately. Try as he might, he could not “numb out.” In his own way, the gangs were killing him, too, slowly and invisibly. When it got to be too much, he put his investigative skills to work to track down the “why” and get to the bottom of an epidemic that was only worsening with time.

In between responses to death scenes, Nawojczyk started hanging out with gang members “to learn why kids were killing one another over something as simple as a stare down.”

In short order, Nawojczyk became a fixture in the danger zone. Though some gang members were convinced that he was a narc and a spy for police, others warmed up to him. Even if they didn’t trust him, they respected his fearlessness in strolling into areas that most people would not even drive near. In the process, he came to know the culture. He became an expert in their slang, their slogans, their symbols, their code. He learned to read and interpret their graffiti and their hand signals. He understood the significance of certain colors, tattoos, body branding, and hairstyles." [...]

The above is an excerpt from a very inspirational book by Deborah Mathis. (click on title of this message to see the book listed at Amazon) I was humbled to find myself included. There are people much more worthy of a mention, and I appreciate all of them. Steve