Their names and stories are thrust before you, then all too often they disappear. Here's a glimpse of what happened to some of the people you met through the Pioneer Press in the past year, and what lies ahead for them.
MARTY JOHNSON
This time next year, Marty Johnson dreams, he'll be celebrating the holidays with his family in Africa.
The Eagan man couldn't make it for Christmas this year but is working to bring his wife and two children in 2006 to Aboh, a small village in Nigeria where he is prince and first in line to become chief.
In the meantime, he and his family are settling down in the wake of a whirlwind year of media attention surrounding Johnson's 2004 trip to meet his birth father, John Ogike, the chief of Aboh.
The magazine GQ chronicled Johnson's trip in its June 2005 edition. In June, ABC's "Good Morning America" flew the mortgage banker and his family to New York City for an interview.
"It seemed like a little more than 15 minutes of fame, but being in the spotlight really hasn't changed anything at all for us," he said.
Finding his birth parents did, however. The man who at age 4 was adopted in Nebraska now has three families stretched across the globe. His sibling count has jumped from one to nine, with two new sisters on his birth mother's side and six siblings on his father's.
"We send out lots of e-mails and try to call as many people as possible to let them know we are thinking of them," Johnson said. "It's hard to get a good line to Nigeria, though."
Johnson's birth mother, Kathleen O'Connor Wang of Long Beach, Calif., contacted him through Catholic Charities in 2001.
She had been with her family in Cedar Falls, Iowa, in 1963 when she befriended Ogike, a graduate exchange student at the University of Northern Iowa. After Wang became pregnant, she went to a Catholic home in St. Paul for unwed mothers and put the baby up for adoption; Ogike moved back to Nigeria.
Johnson, 41, has stayed close with his adoptive family but now keeps in close contact with both birth parents. He's working on putting together a presentation of his "big journey," as he calls it, to give talks at churches and schools.
"It would be like a mini-speaking tour, just going around and telling this story," he said.
— Meggen Lindsay
STEPHEN P. DOYLE
Stephen P. Doyle, a Wayzata commercial litigator, became an international media star in October when he revealed sordid details of an alleged sex cruise by Minnesota Vikings players.
Doyle, 59, emerged as the go-to source for information about an Oct. 6 cruise on Lake Minnetonka that allegedly involved open nudity and sex acts, and his motives for speaking so candidly were immediately questioned. But from the start, Doyle said he wanted the case out in the open to keep his clients, Al & Alma's Supper Club and Charter Cruises, from being mobbed by a press seeking prurient details.
It wasn't until mid-December that four players were charged with misdemeanors involving public indecency.
But while he had been working quietly as a business lawyer for the past few years, Doyle, 59, is no stranger to the limelight.
In the mid-1980s, he made headlines and became a local talk-show regular when he represented his former wife, Scott County Attorney Kathleen Morris. She was accused of mishandling a spectacular child-abuse case in Jordan, Minn., that was later compared to the Salem witch trials.
Almost a decade earlier, as a rising young defense attorney with a degree from St. Paul's William Mitchell College of Law, Doyle ran for mayor of Minneapolis. He was soundly trounced at the DFL convention that ultimately backed incumbent Al Hofstede.
From the start of the Vikings scandal, observers wondered whether Doyle planned to file civil lawsuits in the scandal. He repeatedly denied that a civil action was being contemplated.
If the charges result in trials, the Vikings scandal is likely to become one of the biggest local news events of 2006. Doyle could return to his quiet suburban law practice or be back in the limelight again. Stay tuned.
— David Hawley
REGINA NICOLOSI
The answer to a holy call? Or apostasy?
In July, Regina Nicolosi of Red Wing, Minn., joined eight other women in what they called an ordination ceremony to become Catholic deacons and priests.
The ordination — not recognized by church officials — took place aboard a tour boat on the St. Lawrence Seaway south of Ottawa, Canada. Nicolosi, 63, was declared a deacon, the precursor to a priest.
For the native German who considers herself a devout Catholic, the ordination was an answer to God's call to ministry. It was also a statement against what she sees as an unjust church hierarchy that does not permit women equal rights.
But for church officials, her action was a repudiation of basic church teaching.
"The Roman Catholic Church continues to hold, as we have for centuries, that only men may be ordained to the priesthood," the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis declared in a written statement at the time.
Nicolosi knew that excommunication was a distinct possibility, especially after she was called to a tense meeting with Archbishop Harry J. Flynn in October. As of this week, however, nothing has happened, she said.
The archdiocese said through a spokesman this week that a "letter of warning" sent to Nicolosi was forwarded to Rome, and that the excommunication process "is continuing."
Nicolosi will proceed to the priesthood, she said. The ceremony will take place June 25 on Lake Constance in Switzerland, led by the same three female bishops who performed the Canada ceremony.
— Emily Gurnon
JENNIFER SILVERA
What finally made it real that her husband was gone forever was a trip earlier this month to a dusty town in Honduras, where the couple had worked as Peace Corps volunteers.
There, she learned of all the people who had come to the town church to say goodbye to Shawn Silvera. She heard, too, of their work for a monument to the slain Lino Lakes police officer that would be erected near a new filtration system that cleans the water trickling down from the mountains.
The realization that he was mourned even in that small corner of the world hit home.
"I think part of me was secretly hoping to find Shawn," said Jennifer Silvera. "And Shawn is not in Honduras and he's not in Minnesota. I can search the world over and he's not here."
The Forest Lake resident is trying to piece the days together, learning to throw birthday parties for her children without Shawn. Three months after he was killed trying to stop a fleeing suspect, things aren't much easier for the family he left behind.
The couple had two children. Madelynn is 8 months old. Jordan, whose conception caused them to leave Honduras before their tour was up, turned 2 on Dec. 18.
His birthday "was kind of a quiet day together. The day was going pretty well, but as it lingered on, it was more difficult to not have Shawn to share that moment with," Silvera said.
"I go in waves," she explained. "I can be totally fine one moment and then the next. … It can be the smallest thing that brings me to tears, some kind of remembrance that brings me to the loss."
Her sister and her mother visit several times a week. They help, as do the neighbors who bring over small gifts. She hopes her faith one day brings her contentment. Not happiness necessarily but acceptance.
This month, she took her two children to Honduras, flying to the capital and taking an eight-hour bus ride to Concepcion de Maria for what she called a "pilgrimage for my mind."
"One of my big realizations is that some questions don't have answers," Silvera said.
Over the Christmas break, Silvera said, she will take Jordan and Madelynn to visit Shawn's grave. She will leave white roses there and get through the day, one more step toward finding peace.
— Jason Hoppin
GREG 'GREASE' LEHMAN
Grease is on the skids.
Greg "Grease" Lehman, the tattoo artist who, thanks to the city of St. Paul, lost a business he wanted and owns a house he does not want, says he now is out of business.
This year, Lehman's White Bear Avenue tattoo parlor was closed after the city claimed it through eminent domain for a street-widening project. He bought a former beauty parlor on Clifton Street on the other end of town after a city planner told him he could relocate there. Turns out, he couldn't.
Trying to make lemons into lemonade, Lehman proposed instead opening a tattoo school at the old beauty shop. That made neighbors mad. They pointed out that a sign for the proposed school was spelled "Skool" and wondered how long it would be before drugs and violence would flood the nearby neighborhood.
"That's pathetic," Lehman said.
The city denied his request to open a school, though the two sides differ as to why. The city wanted him to agree to use synthetic, not human, skin, and that Lehman would not agree.
Lehman maintains he did agree and that he submitted a business plan saying exactly that. Lehman said the city also refused to let him open up his shop, called Tattoos From Grease, at his home, where it was before he moved to White Bear Avenue. Now, Lehman says, he's done.
"I'll never open up a business in St. Paul again," Lehman said. "Never again."
— Jason Hoppin
JUDY FRIESE
Judy Friese still is reeling almost seven months after her husband's death from a heart attack.
"The summer was mostly a blur; deer season came and went," she said on a recent morning, speaking over the sound of laughter from her coffee crowd at the Home Base Bar in Amery Wis.
"It's not the same, but thank God for customers, friends and family," she said. "He's the one that kept the doors swinging."
When Ron Friese died May 25, he left a wife, three grown sons and a bar that he had built into an Amery institution.
After closing for a week, the family stepped up and started serving beer and burgers to customers who had been loyal for almost 25 years.
Judy and Bim and Thumper, the two sons who are working the Home Base, try to make things as normal as they can for customers — and themselves.
During the fall hunt, Judy Friese cooked up 45 gallons of free chili for hunters. She has done it for 25 years.
For the holidays, she has whipped out the homemade Tom and Jerry's. The batter recipe is a secret.
But the family always is aware of Ron Friese's absence.
"There's so much reminiscing all the time," Judy Friese said. "I just always have so many questions to ask him."
Ron and Judy Friese used to spend a few months during the winter at their place in Arizona, but not this year.
"It's just more comfortable being here," she said.
Is life at the Home Base always going to be different?
"That's a tough one. It's not the same because he was the action here. You know, we still do the same things. We try to keep the same promotions going," she said. "You know, you keep waiting for him to come flying through the door."
— John Brewer
JASON ANDERSON
Army mechanic Jason Anderson was serving in Iraq in January, but he didn't let that keep him from searching for the medallion in the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt.
The sergeant read clues posted online and sent location tips to his wife in Rosemount. When another group of hunters found out about his search from afar, they made a cardboard cutout of him and toted it along.
"It was kind of unreal. Especially where I was at," Anderson said of seeing his cardboard double "Zephy" making the Winter Carnival scene: with the Vulcans, Klondike Kate and the Cooler Crew hunters. "I looked at that as a representation of everybody who was over there. When I was there, I never really sat and thought I could blow up at anytime. It was good to know that the people at home were thinking about us."
Anderson, 31, returned home to his wife, Stacy, 29, and three elementary-age children in September. Other than a short leave, he had been gone 18 months.
"It's like he never left," Stacy Anderson said. "It's different for everybody. It was emotional when he left. But I had so much to focus on. You can't shut down; you just keep on going. Before I knew it, he was home."
Jason Anderson said the adjustment between war and home was made easier by his almost daily online instant messaging with his wife. He had a hard time adjusting to driving on bomb-free streets in Minnesota and sometimes thinks "last year" means 2003, the year before he left.
He's working full time now as a National Guard mechanic in Rosemount, and he says there is always a chance his unit could be redeployed.
Regardless, this winter he'll be back in the hunt — in person.
As for Zephy, it will be loaned to a touring Winter Carnival museum in the Landmark Center.
"I guess I'm on display this year," Anderson said.
— John Brewer
While Jason Anderson was serving in Iraq, he was still a presence at St. Paul's Winter Carnival — as a cardboard cutout. The Army mechanic was deployed in January, but he read clues for the Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt online and sent his wife, Stacy, tips on finding the medallion. Another group of treasure hunters learned of his search and began toting along this cardboard double of Anderson. Anderson is now home and plans to hunt for the medallion in person this winter.
St. Paul seized Greg "Grease" Lehman's tattoo business on White Bear Avenue through eminent domain, and a city planner told him he could relocate to Clifton Street. The planner was wrong. The city then denied his request to open a tattoo school or to let him open up a tattoo shop from his home. "I'll never open up a business in St. Paul again," Lehman says. "Never again." Copyright 2005 Pioneer Press.
Copyright 2005 Pioneer Press.