COPS WITH HEART: The UW Police had a serious case on their hands on Saturday when UW staffer Virginia Towne’s grandson lost his “pet” on campus. Towne, a senior application systems engineer, brought her grandsons here to take part in “Spring Fling.” One of them brought along Pikachu, his electronic stuffed toy, and lost it somewhere along the way.

“We looked everywhere,” Towne reported. “Finally we went to the police to file a missing Pikachu report so that we could quit searching and leave and know that the search went on. My grandson was devastated!”

Towne went on to say that the police took their problem seriously and promised to notify the family if the missing pet showed up. Then, when Towne called later, they told her that Pikachu had been found and brought the pet all the way to her house near Renton, where they gave it to an “exhausted and almost inarticulate” little boy.

“My grandson commented that the police really know how to clean up toys, as Pikachu now had a clean nose,” Towne said.

What she didn’t know was that the police on the night shift had not found the pet and instead had chipped in to buy a new one. But she was grateful nonetheless. “I would like to compliment the police department here at the University,” she said. “It is nice to know such wonderful people exist.”

KUDOS: Cheryl Nyberg, reference librarian at the Gallagher Law Library at the UW Law School, has been selected to receive the 2001 Marta Lange/Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Award. Established in 1996 by the ACRL Law and Political Science Section (LPSS) to commemorate the life and career of Marta Lange, the award honors an academic or law librarian who has made distinguished contributions to bibliography and information service in law or political science . . . College of Education Dean Patricia Wasley has been named to the Professional Educator Standards Board. The board was created last year to advise the governor, the legislature, the superintendent of public instruction and the state Board of Education on issues affecting education professionals . . . Geneva Gay, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education was recently recognized with an Outstanding Writing Award by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). Gay earned the award for her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice.