I was the editor of a busy commercial website for law enforcement, and on my way to a police training conference. When we landed in Chicago, I turned on my cell phone (a Treo 650, then), and saw I had four voice mails from my boss. While I was in the air and incommunicado, Seung Hui Cho went on a rampage at Virginia Tech University, killing 32 people and wounding 17 more. My boss wanted to know why I hadn't been posting updates to the story and assigning some of our contributing expert writers to produce commentary. He was only slightly mollified by my explanation that I had been sealed in a big aluminum tube for the previous three hours. I got things rolling while I was in transit from the airport to my hotel.

The most memorable part of the reporting was in a press conference with the chief of the Virginia Tech campus police. On the whole, college police departments don't handle as many major critical incidents as local city, county, and state police agencies do, but they have their moments. One reporter asked the chief, "Isn't this sort of incident unusual for a department of your size?" The chief replied with a world-weary expression, "This type of incident is unusual for a police agency of any size."