Fresh Loaf

For the last 10 years, Reed has overseen historic Oakland Cemetery’s operations, including the digging of graves for funeral services. The West Virginia native can usually be found talking with visitors and giving tours.

How did you get started working in Oakland Cemetery?
I was working as a funeral director at a local funeral home at Murray Brothers and this job came open. Someone called me and said they had a job open at Oakland Cemetery as the Sexton [and said], would you be interested? And I said yeah, because I need some benefits. At these private funeral homes you don’t have benefits.

How did you get started working in a funeral home?
I knew in the first grade I was going to be a mortician. I remember my first grade teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and at that time I we called them “undertakers.” So I said “I’m gonna be an undertaker,” and everybody laughed. But I knew that was my special calling.

Why is that?
I was always fascinated with how people look when they lay them out in a casket at a funeral home, especially when you hear that they were hit by a car or hit by a train. Then, when you get there, you see this beautiful person laying there, just looking at peace. And I wanted to understand that. I wanted to understand how they do that.

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Number of pounds of methamphetamine seized in a Duluth drug bust last week: 351

Wholesale value of the meth seized: $6 million

Number of people arrested during the busts: 4

Number of other meth busts in eastern United States larger than that: 0

Number of times between January 2005 and August 2006 metro Atlanta broke the record for largest meth busts in eastern United States: 4

Number of people arrested last week in Cobb County in what authorities think could have been a “rolling” meth lab: 3

Number of inmates serving time in Georgia corrections system for methamphetamine possession: 848

Percentage of those inmates who are white: 95

Number of meth labs discovered by local, state and federal authorities in Georgia in 2008: 78

Cost to clean up a smaller-sized meth lab: $2,000-$4,000

Sources: ajc.com, usdoj.org, dcor.state.ga.us

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When not defending his 4-1 record in the ring, Boudreaux can be found instructing classes or training with other fighters at Unit 2 Fitness on Ponce de Leon Avenue.

How did you get started in MMA and how long have you been with the Unit 2 Fitness Fight Team?
I’ve been with Unit 2 Fitness Fight Team about two years now and that’s pretty much my career in MMA. I wrestled pretty much my whole life. Once I finished wrestling in high school I did a little bit of college and went into the military. After the military I went and played a little football at West Georgia, so I’ve always been pretty active.

I took a long time off from wrestling and was actually looking in to getting back into it when a friend of mine had been training with Roberto Traven [Unit 2's head coach]. He told me ‘it’s not wrestling but you’ll fit in real well with it with your wrestling background.’

I came out here, trained with Traven, loved him as a coach and as a person and just loved the sport. That was my first class and I just took straight to it right away.

How were you selected to be on the Fight Team?
I started training with Traven, and from there, it’s the same with anybody up here. It’s Traven’s call. Once he sees you’re excelling, he invites you to start training with the MMA Team.

How is the Fight Team different from other classes?
We’ll jump into some of the normal classes, but we have separate MMA training. We have general training every single day for about two to three hours a day, then we also have training for individuals who have fights coming up. So the classes are still normal classes and we still do those, but we have separate training for ourselves and for the team in general.

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Traici Sexton is a private investigator and bounty hunter who will take pretty much any job that involves “sniffin ‘em out and trackin ‘em down”— you name it. She got her start when her now ex-husband hired her as an intel analyst. Along with her ex, she opened her first company, Covert Operations, in 2003, and they ran it together until their divorce in 2007. Sexton then opened her own company, Blue Dog Investigations & Services, in Acworth.

As a bounty hunter, you deal with the bondsman. You market yourself to bondsmen, you’re working for bondsmen, you go and collect your check from bondsmen. You keep bondsmen happy. On the P.I. side, your clients are the general public and attorneys.

Continue reading First Person.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Number of confirmed cases of swine flu in the United States, as of April 30: 109

Number of U.S. states with confirmed cases of swine flu, as of April 30: 13

Number of confirmed human cases in Mexico, where the unknown strain originated, as of April 30: 97

Number of cases in Georgia as of April 30: 1

Number of confirmed deaths in Mexico from swine flu as of April 30: 7

Number of confirmed deaths in U.S., as of April 30: 1

Number of Tamiflu courses the federal government has released in response to the outbreak: 12.5 million

Total number of Tamiflu courses the federal government has stockpiled: 50 million

Number of people who died from swine flu during a 1976 outbreak: 1

Sources: ajc.com, cdc.gov, who.int, abcnews.go.com, The Associated Press

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Angie Fuller, a forensic technician assistant supervisor, has worked at the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office for nine years. She and her team are responsible for collecting and preserving evidence from the body. She receives an average of four to five bodies a day.

How did you get to be involved with the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office?

I went to school at Gupton-Jones College of Mortuary Science in Decatur. But I was not a good embalmer. I could never find the vessels! So I came to the Medical Examiner’s Office and asked them if I could volunteer, so I could see the anatomy from the inside the body. I was such a good cleaner that they decided to hire me six months later. That’s how I got started. I was a good cleaner!

What is the biggest misconception people have about what you do?

That we have cold hands, and that everyone who is dead is cold. While that may be true in some cases, sometimes we’ll get people who die right on the scene and we get the body four hours later. So it’s still kind of warm. But that’s a basic misconception — that any anyone who works in the morgue or autopsy room has cold hands. One thing for sure: [Our work] is not what you see on “CSI.”

It would take more than a day for us to get the lab results back to solve one case. And we don’t do autopsies in the dark!

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Helene Frisch is a fourth-generation psychic. Her great- grandmother was the personal psychic of the Russian Royal family, and they both share similar attributes. Like her great-grandmother, she specializes in personal and intricate feelings. She now receives 15-20 phone calls and e-mails a week and gives three to four readings a day, some lasting as long as two hours. She also gives what she calls “mini-readings” at corporate events, fundraisers and other festivals.

Could you elaborate on the feeling you got when you first became aware of your abilities?

Well, it was when I was four. It was very simplistic. That’s just how it is, but it’s the truth. I was sitting in the back of my dad’s station wagon and we were coming back from my grandmother’s house and I don’t know what hit me, but this feeling just came over me. It sounds corny, but from that moment on, I knew that I was protected and I knew that I was okay. I just stated to know things, and from there, it just became second nature.

So could you start predicting different things about people at that point?

Yes. I knew things, but even though you’re four, you have a sense of what you should tell people and what you should not. Even though I was getting this information, a lot of it I kept quiet. Of course, I did let it rip occasionally!

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Amount, in percentage, total taxes and other revenues decreased in March 2009 compared to March 2008: 14.5

Amount, in percentage, individual income tax revenue declined in March 2009 compared to March 2008: 18.8

Amount, in percentage, sales tax revenue declined in March 2009 compared to March 2008: 5.9

Amount, in percentage, gas tax revenue declined in March 2009 compared to March 2008: 28.6

Amount, in percentage, alcoholic beverage tax revenue increased as of March 2009: 8

Estimated amount of money, in sales tax, Sunday beer and wine sales could generate: $3.3 million

Number of states other than Georgia that ban alcohol sales in stores on Sunday: 2

Number of times in the last three years state lawmakers have tried to pass a bill allowing Sunday sales: 3

Percentage of Georgians in a 2008 poll who support Sunday sales: 65

Sources: ajc.com, Georgia Department of Revenue, AJC/Mason Dixon poll

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Number of state employees laid off this fiscal year: 345

Number of state employees who were furloughed in late February: 24,969

Percentage by which the number of furloughed employees has increased since then: 27

Total number of employees in the state Department of Corrections: 13,500

Number of days Department of Corrections employees are required to take as unpaid leave in the first half of 2009: 2

Total number of employees in the state Department of Transportation: 6,000

Number of days DOT employees are required to take as unpaid leave in the first half of 2009: 1

Total number of employees in the University System of Georgia: 40,000

Number of days that University System employees are required to take as unpaid leave: 0

Sources: AJC.com, www.macon.com, www.dot.state.ga.us, www.usg.edu

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If you’ve ever ridden MARTA Route 115, chances are Oliver Hook has been your driver. For more than two decades, he’s shuttled riders to and fro, helping them deal with such issues as divorce, depression and — no joke — childbirth.

What is a typical day like for you?

A typical day for me is to be prepared for whatever you may meet. Being a bus operator, you have to be a doctor, a psychiatrist and a counselor. You have to be everything being a bus operator. You have to be prepared for everything physically and mentally.

There have been a lot of times where people will get on with different things. You may have a male or female talking about their divorce. Sometimes, they may be talking about killing themselves. As bus operators, we’re all trained to be able to talk to them and they get off the bus feeling much better.

We like to be called bus operators. Anybody can drive, but it takes a special type of person to operate the vehicle that we operate and keep up with the constant demand.

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Number of cities in the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller housing index: 20

Number of cities in the report that showed monthly and annual home price declines: 20

Amount, in percentage, home prices dropped nationally since January 2008, their largest decline: 19

Amount, in percentage, metro Atlanta home prices dropped since January 2008: 14.5

Amount, in percentage, that Phoenix home prices dropped: 35

Percentage of Atlanta’s population affected by property crimes and violent crime, respectively: 6.6, 1.6

Percentage of Phoenix’s population affected by property crimes and violent crime, respectively: 5.9, .74

Percentage increase in the average home price in Inman Park in early 2009 vs. early 2008, according to Trulia.com: 20

Percentage decrease in the average home price in Old Fourth Ward, over the same time period: 28

Sources: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Standard & Poor’s, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Trulia.com

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Tom Thomas is a partner with the HTW&W, one of the largest criminal defense firms in Georgia. He specializes in DUI law and says that drivers pulled over for suspicion of DUI rarely know their rights.

What is a common misconception people have about your clients?

That they are strictly alcoholics and degenerates. They are actually very run-of-the-mill people. They come from different backgrounds — lawyers, doctors, accountants and people from all over the place. They are not your stereotypical criminals.

What’s one thing people should know about their rights during a traffic stop?

You don’t have to discuss where you’ve been or what you’ve done, or give any other information other than your name and license number and other identification. You don’t have to explain anything else, but people always launch into an explanation of why they were speeding or why they were swerving. If they want to check your license to make sure you’re not wanted anywhere, that’s fine, but you certainly don’t need to give any other information. You can respectfully decline.

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Number of counties in Georgia: 159

Number of Georgia counties with an unemployment rate in the double digits, as of March 25: 87

Percentage of working-age Americans who are jobless: 8.1

Percentage of working-age Georgians who are jobless: 9.3

Percentage of working-age Georgians who were jobless this time last year: 5.4

Number of consecutive months Georgia’s unemployment rate has been higher than the national average: 16

Jenkins County’s jobless rate (in percentage), the state’s highest: 21.3

Oconee County’s jobless rate, the state’s lowest: 6

Number of Georgians unemployed and looking for work: 445,500

Sources: Georgia Department of Labor, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, Capitol Impact

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After tattooing for eight years in New York and Atlanta, Danielle Distefano recently opened her own tattoo shop, Only You Tattoo, in Grant Park.

How long have you been a tattoo artist?
Eight years, professionally. I was an apprentice for a year and a half before.

What was the first tattoo you gave?
It was a little anchor with a shield that I never finished, because my machine stopped working and I didn’t know how to fix it. That was before I was an apprentice. I got a machine from a friend and was playing around with it.

What’s the strangest tattoo you’ve ever drawn before?
[laughs]. That’s a tough question. I guess a unicorn puking up a rainbow, jumping out of someone’s skin. With lightning bolts coming out of its horns.

How would you describe your style?
It’s based in American traditional classic “tough guy” with Japanese influence. Kind of like sailor tattoos mixed with a Japanese style.

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An usher for the Braves since 1966, Banks is a well-known personality at Turner Field. He’s legendary among fellow attendants for his extensive knowledge of numbers and baseball, as well as for his humble personality.

What is a typical day like for you?

I try to give the fans a real Braves experience — making them feel welcome, talking to them, and just making them feel at home. [Depending on] the way they’re treated, there’s a chance they’ll bring somebody back with them, and then that person will bring somebody back. A real Braves experience is just rolling the red carpet out and making them feel at home.

Can you describe what happened when Hank Aaron set the record?

Of all the big events I’ve witnessed, that was one of the biggest. That was a centerpiece of the Braves franchise. On every aisle seat, there’s a logo of Hank Aaron.

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While in his native Togo, Bayor was a leader in the Union Force for Change, an underground movement that challenged then-dictator Gnassingbé Eyadema. Before becoming involved with the UFC, he was a doctor. During an attack on his village, Bayor was warned by one of his former patients that the government was planning to kill him. He fled to Ghana, where he stayed for eight years. Bayor came to Atlanta in 2001 and has since worked for MedShare International, a nonprofit organization that collects surplus medical supplies from hospitals and redistributes them to developing countries. Bayor says his work is a source of “great joy, because I know I am helping a lot of people.”

The main reason we got involved [in the UFC] was because there was no liberty in the country. There was a dictatorship, and no one was doing anything to change it. Any changes we wanted, [Eyadema] refused – any liberty of expression, or anything that happens in a normal democracy.

All of this began when there was the wind of democracy flying over Africa in 1990. Before that, I was part of an underground movement trying to push change for my country.

Continue reading “First Person: Moctar Bayor” …

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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