Greg Ball

Staff Writer

Greg Lucker's afternoon job will never compare to his daytime gig.

Murrieta Calvary Chapel's second-year cross country coach enjoys guiding runners in his spare time, but spends his mornings directing airplanes over Southern California airspace.

Lucker works as an air-traffic controller for the San Diego-based Southern California Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON), a radar facility that guides planes in conjunction with a number of local airports.

Tuesday morning, he had just arrived at work when he received the shocking news that the first of four hijacked planes had crashed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City.

"My reaction was just pure shock," Lucker remembered. "That's what I do. I deal with those planes all the time.

"One guy had already made a comment about the first plane hitting. I went into the break room and saw it on TV, and thought, 'Gosh, how could that possibly happen?' I went back in the radar room and someone came out and said that another plane had hit the building. That's when the sense of urgency came over us.'

What came next was something he hadn't seen, experienced or even considered during his 20 years in the business. The order came down from the FAA to halt all air traffic over the United States.

"We have a screen in our traffic management room that shows all airline traffic nationwide," Lucker explained. "There's a map of the United States and little airplane symbols for each flight. Normally, there are so many flights that all you can see is the U.S. outline. Within a very short time, it was completely blank."

Lucker said he's always been completely comfortable traveling on airplanes, but Tuesday morning immediately recalled a recent experience that he makes him a proponent of increased security.

The weekend before the attacks, he entered an airport in Seattle and approached the standard security checkpoint en route to his gate. He informed the security personnel that the boots he wore, with their metal eyelets, routinely set off the metal detectors. They did, and he continued on his way without incident. No questions, no search, no further inspection.

"I just walked away, and it didn't really register then," Lucker said. "But the day of the attack, I sat back and remembered. I thought how easy it was. I've seen pilots go through and they run the scanners on them. It's kind of scary looking back on it."

National champs

Two Valley athletes -- Chaparral junior Jessica Garnett and Temescal Canyon junior Eliizabeth Buck -- were members of the U-16 American Softball Association national champion Case Batbusters, which is based in Orange County.

Garnett, an outfielder and pitcher, and Buck, a catcher, helped the Case Batbusters win nine straight games Aug. 7-12 in Normal, Ill. to win the championship. There were 107 colleges scouting the tournament.

Staff writer Adrian Pomery contributed to the Prep Notebook which appears every Tuesday in The Californian.

9/18/01