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From: motcid!segal@uunet.uu.net (Gary Segal)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Irnalee Stohrs; The Rest of the Story
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Date: 5 Sep 90 04:07:54 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 621, Message 8 of 12


Reprinted from {The Philadelphia Inquirer}, Tuesday, September 4, 1990

"The Scene, In the Nation and the World" (News blips from allover).

"Directory Unassistance"

They'll be talking about Irnaless Stohrs in Portland, Ore., for some
time to come.

Her story combines all the elements of a true saga: an underdog
(Irnalee), a cold unfeeling bureaurcacy (Portland's county court
system); a provocateur (a local newspaper columnist) and hudreds, if
not thousands, of sympathetic telephone callers (you, the teeming
masses).

Our story begins in 1959, when Irnalee got her telephone number.

Several months ago, however, someone ordered new offical summonses for
the county court system and put Irnalee's 31-year-old telephone number
on it, right next to the words, "For more information".

"The phone started ringing of the hook," Irnaleee recalled.  Nearly
everybody wanted to speak to somebody in the courthouse.

When Irnalee called to complain, an operator gave her the run-around,
refusing to even connect Irnalee to any officals.

Irnalee continued to answer the phone each time it rang because she
never knew whether it would be a friend or someone from her church.

In desperation, she called Margie Boule, a columnist for the Sunday
Oregonian.  The columnist got nowhere with the county bureaucracy
either.

But Boule wrote about Irnalee's plight in her August 26 column.
"Let's all pick up our phones Monday morning and call the correct
number...  Only when they answer, let's ask for Irnalee Stohrs."

A nationwide computer file, called TELECOM Digest, put the story out,
motivating hundreds of computer hackers from across the nation to do
their part, too.

Well, as you can imagine, by 8:30 Monday morning the calls were so
heavy that the juvenile court's phone system quickly broke down.

The chief judge sent Irnalee an apology.  They're going to print new
summonses, and Irnalee got a temporary number until she can get her
old number back.

"I'm as happy as can be," Irnalee said.


Gary Segal	...!uunet!motcid!segal		+1-708-632-2354
Motorola INC., 1501 W. Shure Drive, Arlington Heights IL, 60004
The opinions expressed above are those of the author, and do not consititue
the opinions of Motorola INC.