Volunteer Honored

Bill Miseska knows cars.
He grew up in a mechanic shop watching his father work on relics such as Model As, Model Ts, Pierce Arrows. He could take apart a crankshaft before he learned to hold a baseball bat.
He gained more experience reassembling engines as a teen-ager on the Chicago circuit of "job shops." In 1957 he struck out on his own and opened a mechanic shop in Rolling Meadows, Ill.
Nowadays there are "technicians" under the hood, Miseska said, but his shop was staffed by hard-working mechanics. They not only diagnosed the problem, but rolled up their sleeves and fixed it.
Tired of the cold, Miseska retired to Florida in 1987. He's 80 now, but nimble, colorful, sharp. He can comfortably brag his score with the Elks Club Bowling League is never below 180. Cars remain his passion, though, and that's been to the benefit of the Clover Leaf Crime Watch.
Clover Leaf, a mobile home community north of downtown Brooksville, has one of the oldest crime watches in the county at 22 years old. Kendal Harper is a charter member and he can remember the early days when volunteers drove their own cars with a magnetic yellow bubble light on the top.
Later, the sheriff's office began selling them a used patrol car. Purchase price was typically $1, but it took several hundred more dollars to retool and repaint the car for civilian use.
Crime watch is far less demanding on its cars than a marked unit's life of high-speed chases and off-road jaunts. But even tooling along at a near-constant 15 mph on a road shared by golf carts can eventually tear up a transmission. And every car suffers the normal wear-and-tear of faulty alternators and worn brake pads.
Here's where Miseska steps in. Any other crime watch could expect to shell out even more money to quiet the knocks in the engine. But Miseska has contributed his time and talents to the Cloverleaf motor pool free of charge for the past 20 years.
Why?
"I just wanted to be a nice guy," Miseska said.
On Wednesday, Sheriff Richard Nugent will present Miseska with a plaque on behalf of the Clover Leaf Crime Watch honoring his contributions. The ceremony will be held at 1:30 p.m. in the Heather House.