Wednesday night my wife was watching ABC’s Channel 7 10 O’clock News and called to me,

“Don Manzullo is on the news!”

It is so rare for Chicago media to recognize that Chicagoland has a congressman who lives south of Rockford that this story seems newsworthy in and of itself.

But the content, promoted at six o’clock by reporter Chuck Goudie as a story about stolen manhole covers in Beijing and people getting killed falling into them, was more interesting.

While I got photos of the story, I didn’t get the details.

Congressman Manzullo’s Press Secretary Rich Carter supplied these details:

Her name is Ann DeWaters, and she was an intern in the Congressman’s Washington office in the summer of 2006.

Ann graduated from Boylan High School in Rockford in 2001 and earned her Bachelor and Master’s degrees from Marquette University (Congressman Manzullo earned his law degree from Marquette).

She spent the last year and a half working for the AmeriCorps program. She spent 6 months tutoring troubled youngsters in reading through the Literacy Volunteers of Illinois and the past year working for Habitat for Humanity. She was obviously deeply involved in public service.

She signed up with an organization called Community Collaborations International www.communitycollaborations.org to volunteer her time to help people attending the Olympic Games in Beijing.

She was walking back to her hotel on Aug. 4 when she accidentally fell to her death through an open manhole cover. Her parents were notified that evening of her death, and called us the next day to assist in expediting her return to the states, which we did. The services begin tomorrow in Chicago.

You can see the ABC 7 report from last night here.