Catching Up

Jeff Klinkenberg: Heather Green drives with a camera on her lap. If something wild scampers across the highway or flies out of the trees, she won't be fumble-fingered with surprise. She remembers the time she encountered a crested caracara nibbling on a dead-on-the-road opossum. Click, click, click. She got the photo an instant before the rare falcon flew into the trees.

She lives near Lake Okeechobee and works at her husband's furniture business in Fort Myers. During her commute, she doesn't text her peeps or listen to Metallica. An optimist, she expects to see a deer in the next meadow or a barred owl in the oaks.

"In Florida," she says, "anything can happen."

Lane DeGregory: GULFPORT — In the dark high school theater, the leading actor sat alone in the front row. Tapping his left loafer. Drumming his long fingers on the battered leather briefcase in his lap.

All the other students were backstage taking a break.

But Corey Kramer was deep inside his own mind.

"Corey?" called the drama teacher. "You ready, Corey?"

Corey didn't answer. He was focused on becoming George.

Being someone else is much easier than being himself.

Alex Zayas: TAMPA — He was here with her overnight last year. She'd fallen asleep in the bounce house while music blared and kids circled the track.

Army Col. Parker Schenecker had walked until the sun rose in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. This year, he would do it without her.

Saturday night, candles lined the track that his 16-year-old daughter Calyx once ran with her King High School team. Some burned for Calyx and her 13-year-old brother Beau, illuminating their father's journey.

It had been 50 days since the colonel got the news that his two children had been murdered and that his wife had confessed to pulling the trigger.