Lisa Heyamoto: City's finest serve on the soda squad for Special Olympics

When your car gets broken into, call the cops. But when you need a refill on your root beer? It's not the fuzz's usual beat.

And yet, there was Officer Beth Glynn at the Natomas Applebee's, bearing both a beverage and her badge.

She was one of a handful of cops-turned-waiters taking orders at the restaurant Thursday, ferrying food and drinks from kitchen to table in exchange for tips that will be donated to the Special Olympics.

Glynn volunteered for the annual Tip-A-Cop program for a chance to get out in the community she serves, and if it meant a temporary return to her post-college table-waiting days, hey, she could balance a tray with the best of them.

"It's just kind of a neat thing for people to see us in a different light," she said.

Her team's three-hour stint earned about $800 for the Special Olympics, a sum she's pleased to report beat out the similar efforts of her husband's colleagues at the Roseville PD.

It takes restaurant patrons a minute to get past the specter of all those squad cars in the parking lot, she said, but once they see what's going on, they love the idea of a cop bringing them lunch.

They're sworn to protect and, yes, to serve.

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Professor Art Shapiro has spent the last three decades studying the timing of biological events, and if he's learned anything about the human graduate student, it's that the species is particularly partial to motivational beer.

Since he came to UC Davis in the early '70s, Shapiro has offered a pitcher of suds to the first student who could catch and produce the first cabbage butterfly of the season before he does.

The creatures are both extremely common and a good indicator of the interplay of day length and temperature in predicting life-cycle events.

Only thing is, no one seems to be as good at predicting exactly when they'll emerge as he is.

In the 36 years since the contest's debut, Shapiro has lost just five times – none of them in recent memory.

It's not for lack of trying on the grad students' part. They're out there each year with determination and a net, but – as he did on Jan. 19 this year – Shapiro just seems to have a knack for knowing when the winter pupae will decide to hatch, which, by the way, is earlier every year thanks to global warming.

"The minute I walked out of the house (that morning), I said, 'Today's the day,' " he said.

As for the beer, Shapiro isn't stingy with it, either sharing his spoils or offering a second-place prize, which pretty much sounds like a win-win for everyone.

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Speaking of springtime arrivals, Jude Lamare spied a heartening one outside her 14th-floor midtown apartment recently.

Lamare, president of the Friends of Swainson's Hawk, is always on the lookout for the beloved bird, whose numbers are declining due to loss of habitat. So it was a good sign for both the hawk population and Lamare's efforts to preserve it that Nacho came back to town.

So named for the distinct notch in his left wing, Nacho took up residence by the Port of Sacramento last year before flying south for the winter. Now that he's back – and with a lady-friend to boot – odds are good that a batch of Nachitos is well on its way.

We're still talking about a population in decline, Lamare says, but for now, there's nothing wrong about celebrating Nacho, libre.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Lisa Heyamoto, (916) 321-1261.