Sergeant

When Baltimore police forced their way inside a rowhouse on North Luzerne Avenue, they were acting on a tip that occupants were selling drugs. The bust was based, a department spokesman said, "on community intelligence." Police charging documents filed this week say detectives found what they were looking for: •A blue shoe box inside a tall dresser in a basement bedroom that contained a digital scale, a cell phone, large and small plastic bags containing up to a half-pound of suspected marijuana and two bags containing suspected drug residue, each filled with cash - $100 in one, $325 in another.

The 21-year-old son of a Baltimore police sergeant was arrested Thursday night after officers raided the family's rowhouse in the 1000 block of N. Luzerne Ave. and found a half-pound of marijuana, the department's chief spokesman said. The sergeant, who was not identified but is assigned to the Northern District, has been placed on desk duty. Spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said an internal investigation is being conducted to determine whether the officer knew about the drugs and whether drugs were being dealt from the house.

A couple of weeks ago, TV news was full of accounts about the Medal of Honor awarded to Sergeant First Class Jared C. Monti. As the mother of a soldier who was deployed to Afghanistan around the same time that Sergeant Monti was killed there, it was painful to watch his parents try to help the rest of us understand who their son was and what it means to the world to have lost him. My heart was filled with: "That could have been my son. That could have...

It's said that the first step toward fixing a problem is recognizing you have one. So when the producers of the TV show "Making Over America" needed a subject for an August episode, they stumbled upon gold in LaShunda Rodgers, an Army staff sergeant and self-described "crazy person" based at Fort Meade. The cheerful Rodgers, who was getting ready to turn 30 this year, had a feeling her style of dress was less than appropriate for her status as a maturing single mother. The show "sent an e-mail to every female stationed at Fort Meade, asking us to describe our style problems, what was in our closets and other things," says Rodgers, an Iraq war veteran who teaches multimedia illustration on the base.

He was a cross-country star in high school, an incurable optimist and a young man who wanted to be a Marine so badly that he signed up when he was 16, two years before they could take him in. Now Michael W. Heede of Edgewood, a combat engineer on his third tour of duty overseas, has become one of the latest casualties in the increasingly deadly U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. "I'm now a member of a club I never thought I'd join - mothers of young people killed in the war," his mother, Gloria Crothers, said Wednesday.

M ike Alarcon is a lifelong hunter who hasn't had much time for his favorite hobby in recent years. That's what happens when an Army career leads to multiple tours of duty in Iraq. And after his Humvee struck an IED on Jan. 28, breaking his neck and injuring his back, the sergeant from Minnesota wasn't sure whether he would ever go turkey hunting again. On May 7, members of the Central Maryland Chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation and the Meade Natural Heritage Association teamed up with the Wounded Warrior Project to get Alarcon out in the field.

The grandmother of Olney native Sgt. James R. McIlvaine, killed Thursday in Iraq, characterized him as a man who longed to please his father, which is exactly what he did when became a Marine in 2001. Sergeant McIlvaine joined the Marines after attending Sherwood High School and graduating from a military school in Virginia. "His father was very patriotic, loved the flag and country," said Patty DeSimone, Sergeant McIlvaine's paternal grandmother, who said her grandson died in combat in Al Anbar province.

The charter bus was parked on Barclay Street, its engine running, as members of the large Kelly-Davis family piled in for a trip like none they had ever taken together. Felicia Kelly-Crum was outside counting heads in the frigid air. "Where's Bernard?" she asked. "Where's Bernard?" A rueful smile crossed her face. This was usually the job of her brother, Anthony Davis, who was so good at rounding up the family for an adventure. But two weeks ago, Davis, father of five and master sergeant in the Army, had been killed in Iraq.

City officials will send out fresh letters to 335 police officers today, informing them that scores on the most recent sergeants' test were put in the wrong order because of a rounding error. That rendered all but the top 10 rankings incorrect. That list, which came out yesterday, is used by the police commissioner to determine promotions. Eighty officers were promoted from the last list, and there are 20 vacancies for sergeants. "It is a real inconvenience," said Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the city Police Department.

A Baltimore police sergeant who told The Baltimore Sun that she was unfairly punished by the department last year was hit with new charges last week - this time for speaking to the news media. Sgt. Carrie Everett, who works out of the department's Southwestern District, received a letter from the internal investigations division informing her of the charges, which accuse her of improperly speaking to a reporter "on or about Sept. 25" for an Oct. 3 article without clearing it through the public affairs office.