Abby and the Dreamboat

A Girl with Cancer and Her 'Twilight' Weekend 

By Joe Kovac Jr.  / Originally published May 8, 2011 

On the last day of April, a dark-haired teen named Abby woke up early. She had gone to sleep late the night before aglow in Hollywood magic. It was almost as if her life had become a movie.

Beau Cabell / The Telegraph

Now it was daybreak Saturday and a dreamy span of 24 hours was about to enter its climactic act. Less than nine hours earlier, she’d had dinner with a teenage heartthrob. And oh her goshness, as she might say, on a dare and in front of said hunk, Abby nibbled on someone’s snail appetizer. It was just half a snail. Still, she tried it. She chewed and chewed and, gulp, kept the morsel down.

Now here she was on her way to meet the fellow again, to squeeze in next to him on the set of a morning newscast and do one of the coolest things a girl who has just turned 13 could ever do: squeeze in next to a 17-year-old actor and his TMZ-approved abs. Abs that on this morning were being covered up by a T-shirt with Abby’s name on it.

Getting Your Mind Right for War

Soldiers on the Eve of the Unknown  

By Joe Kovac Jr.  / Originally published June 7, 2009

The silver wedding ring will not be going to Afghanistan. The bride who wears it will. So will the real-estate man. He signed up for the free schooling. Wants to be a physical therapist. He doesn't much believe in amulets — coins, necklaces, certain underwear. He considers himself lucky already, fortunate to be going to a land on the other side of Iran.

The guy from the nuclear power plant is shipping out, too. Within the month, when he and his fellow National Guardsmen are, as the soldiers put it, "boots on the ground" in the eastern reaches of the Middle East, the father of three says he will be "locked, cocked and ready to rock."

Always Bobby Cox, Always

The grandfatherly field boss of the Atlanta Braves has long been known as a players’ guy. He always seems to be in their corner. He always seems to have their backs. He always says so, too. Or so it always seems.


By Joe Kovac Jr.  / Originally published April 10, 2009
Before long, Robert Joe Cox, a 67-year-old native Oklahoman and four-time Manager of the Year, will be the subject of fond farewells. Those retrospectives, however, won't likely paint as clear a portrait as his own words already have. His genius, at least in part, is his trophy-for-all-participants knack for saying something that sounds genuine enough without necessarily saying a thing.

‘When You’re Had, You’re Had’

Jason Vorhees / The Telegraph

Cops’ Checkpoint Ruse at Sleepy I-16 Exit Makes Freeway a Shortcut to Jail

By Joe Kovac Jr.  / Originally published March 27, 2011 

The big-city gal had just spent her Friday night in the Twiggs County jail. Saturday morning found her out on bail, on the phone with the tow-truck folks who’d hauled her car to wherever they haul cars in this God-knows-where Podunk. 

At dusk the evening before, she and three passengers heading east in a late-model Dodge Charger bearing Massachusetts plates, a rental from up Atlanta way, had, for reasons known only to them, pulled off Interstate 16 at a sleepy exit. The exit is home to a few farm houses, hay fields, a distant Baptist church and its cemetery, but nary a store or street light. It is a good bet that the Savannah-bound travelers' choice of off-ramp had been influenced by the flashing signs near the exit that declared, “License Check” and “DUI Checkpoint Ahead.” That and perhaps the 2 pounds of marijuana in their trunk.

Yolanda and the Cows

An Immigrant's Journey to Georgia  
By Joe Kovac Jr.  / Originally published May 16, 2004 
A little Mexican girl rode into the United States in style, in a green Chevy Monte Carlo. The driver stopped at a restaurant near Los Angeles for what would be the girl's first taste of America: fried chicken and mashed potatoes. For a child who had survived most of her eight years on beans, hand-ground tortillas and the occasional nibble of heaven she called huevos — eggs — the idea of eating in an honest-to-goodness restaurant was more mythical than the borrowed birth certificate that had delivered her across the border.

A Gunman Who Had No Bullets

He was high on crack the morning he smashed a stolen car into the Macon Mall and took a woman hostage. After a decade in prison, he wonders if anyone will trust him again. Because for six hours in July 1993, he was a spectacle of the rarest order. He was . . .

   A Gunman Who Had No Bullets

By Joe Kovac Jr.  / Originally published Oct. 26, 2003

Lafayette Hall didn't need bullets. He had a four-door Hyundai. The morning he used it, he had crack in his pocket and the police on his tail. The morning he aimed it at a Sears and gunned it into the shoe department, glass shattered and people cried.

The Miracles of Loss

On the first summer day of 1972, you waited and waited for a ride home. But your sister never came. Years would pass. Only then would you discover . . . 

           The Miracles of Loss 
                        Part One: Goodbye

By Joe Kovac Jr.  / Originally published July 11 & 13, 1999

It was you who found the Pontiac station wagon. Dumbest luck, you. Your folks forget that now. But they had a lot to remember. Your sister for one. So it is understandable it slipped their minds that it was you, little Joanette, two weeks before your 15th birthday, who spotted the car.

The police were looking for it, but you, you couldn't miss it. You'd waited for it all afternoon. And then there it was, parked across from the Krispy Kreme, your ride, long and ghost-white at 1:45 in the morning.