By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Walter Wright, the classic police reporter, has the best reason for retiring I've heard in a long time. He said he had a dream that he was driving along the freeway with Mike Leidemann, who occupies the next desk in the newsroom, and an unidentified legislator.

They exited the freeway and drove through Waipahu, or maybe Hilo, took a left and suddenly right there in front of him was a breathtakingly beautiful scene.

Wright said to himself, "I was born in Kapa'au on the Big Island, came back here after Berkeley to work. I've been at The Advertiser since 1976 and I've never seen this place. It's time I found out how many places there are like this in Hawai'i."

On Wednesday, when he retires, he'll start looking.

All of which may be the Right Stuff for Wright but it leaves us without a classic police reporter.

There should be a classic police reporter on every newspaper. They aren't easy to find anymore.

More important, a classic police reporter must be able to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. He must be able to go out into the sordid world of crime and come back with a story that tugs at the heart, then bang it out in half an hour before deadline.

He should be a grumbler and cynic and a galahad and a dreamer at the same time.

He's got to get the drama of a story into the first paragraphs, like when three police officers boarded City Bus 617 with guns drawn to capture the most notorious prison escapee of the decade. Which passenger was he?

At that moment, an officer's radio crackled, "Suspect is wearing orange shirt and black shorts." There, sitting right in front, with his stocking cap pulled down, was their man. Wright got it all into 78 words.

Only Wright could make high drama out of a class on how to handle cuddly pet rabbits. He immediately picked up on the way Snuggles, a 2-pound male, sank his teeth into a Netherlands dwarf in a no-holds-barred struggle for dominance.

The moral of the story came in the fifth paragraph: "And that is why we recommend that all rabbits be spayed or neutered."

Wright found tenderness amid the murder of a Waikiki shop owner during a robbery. A former employee was in Japan when he heard of the shooting. He returned to help his friend.

"She always showed kindness, no matter how hard it was for her," he said.

One of Wright's finest hours came when he reported the search for Hokget, a Taiwanese skipper's dog that had been left behind on a deserted oil tanker drifting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But fishermen who went on board couldn't catch her at first.

The president of the humane society explained that "the dog was raised speaking Mandarin and the fishermen speak English."

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.