Steve & Natali Off The Air: Norm Frink | Law, Justice & the Tonya Harding Case

For decades, Norm Frink has helped shape Portland’s business community through leadership, mentorship, and a commitment to civic engagement. Best known in part for serving as a prosecutor during the Tonya Harding saga, he reflects on the relationships, values, and community partnerships that have driven his success, and shares his perspective on what makes Portland a place where people and businesses can thrive.

-------------------- 

The ideas expressed in this program are those of the hosts and guests, not of the PNC Live Studio.

Follow along at KXL.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:03

Hi again, everybody. Steve Dunn along with Natalie Marmian, and here we go again. How are you? How are things?

SPEAKER_01 0:09

I'm good. How are you? It's been a busy weekend, busy week, heading into the holiday weekend. Yes, it's warming up out there.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

I'm feeling pretty good about it. So glad already. Last week I was like sweats and little cat.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I was a little offended. Never know. No, but you do like every time because you're going somewhere special after this, you must be.

SPEAKER_03 0:30

This is something special. All right. I I can speak to you.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

I miss so much. I'm sure you do.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

We have a speaking of special. We have a special guest today. This guy has seen a lot of things in his lifetime and in this this county as well. But for we're this is all going to tie in, by the way, but I want to talk to you about your years in broadcasting and some of the bigger stories that you covered. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Don't people ask you, they won't always put a note. What do you remember? What about the big stories? Do you ever get emotional on the set? Does it does it affect you? Um, from the happiest stories to the really difficult um stories that we lose sleep over every night. We learn to lock our doors and lock our house up a little bit better after some of the things that we see and hear. And yeah, you know what? We do cry on the set once the show is over sometimes because this stuff does affect us. But always the things that involve that were devastating for families and kids and school shooting, you know, the Kip Kinkles of the world, Kyron Horman's, the boys who disappear, uh Ward Weaver. I know we have so many of the same big stories that we can talk through, but um a lot of stuff that has it certainly affects you through the years because we spend months, hours, days, months um writing these stories, reading these stories, let absorbing them and then sharing them. Um, it's really interesting how it it can affect you.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

And affects you for a long time, too.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

You know, we're still thinking about so many of these.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

I still think about the Ward Waiver case. Yeah. Of course, killed two young girls um in Oregon City. But also, you look back at the Tanya Harding story, of course, we'll never forget that one. We spent how many weeks on that one? Kyron Horman, uh, the young boy who is still missing to this day. George Floyd, 100 days of protests in Portland. We'll never forget that. And long-lasting effects from the George Floyd case as well. But all these stories, in one way or another, have a long-lasting effect on this community and what people think about it and how it's affected them through the years. We have someone with us today who has a close tie to at least a couple of those uh big stories. I want to bring in Mr. Norm Frink with us today. Give him a round of applause, Natalie.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

We'll absolutely do that. We're so glad you're here.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Thank you. He worked as a prosecutor in Multnomah County from 1977 to 2012. He worked on some very big cases uh in this county, one of them being Tanya Harding, another being Kyron Horman, and there's so many uh in between as well. So, Norm, thanks for being on the program today. We appreciate your time. Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Let's talk about, of course, if we're going on the streets right now and you asked people what are some of the bigger stories, many would name Tanya Harding as being one of the bigger ones. You were smack in the middle of that one. In fact, you were the guy who offered her the plea deal.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yes, the plea deal that I think uh local people appreciated, although some in the national media didn't. But uh Because they wanted the media circus to continue or well that to and also because they talked themselves into believing that she should go to prison. And it uh it would have been local people I think recognized that had there been a trial, and you know, if there had to be, there would be, but i it would have been a circus, as you say, and it just was much better resolved, and I think justice was still, for the most part, achieved in in a media environment uh that was frankly unbelievable. Thank God they didn't have social media back then.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Can you imagine?

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Well, we had we had a presiding judge, very nice, very nice person, but every single legal event was in his courtroom because he knew it would be live on CNN. Uh events that never would have, you know, actually had a courtroom appearance ordinarily. And I'm sure it won't surprise you to know, being in the business, that some people sometimes behave differently when they're on television.

SPEAKER_03 4:46

Natalie's one of them, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

She's a little wild sometimes. We have to calm her down.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

That's what keeps me calm, is when there's a camera rolling on me.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

You may recall that we didn't have one press conference during the entire event. Others did, to I think their ultimate chagrin.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

I just remember you walking through a giant throng of people through the streets and cameras everywhere. Yeah. Because you had become a big deal at that point, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:16

Well, or at least it appeared to be. It was a long story that I won't bore you with about how the case came to be ours uh when, of course, it occurred in Detroit. Uh but uh it it was good in some respects in that rather than having a press conference, if we really needed to get something uh out, all I had to do was go to Starbucks. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

You know, so that was uh But when it did land in your lap, did you think, holy smokes, no way? Or oh, this would be great.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

This will be Well, the first time I remember hearing about the case um was I was in Mike Schrunk's office with uh another prosecutor and we were laughing about it because we thought that it was going to be in Clackamas County, because that's where most of the people involved lived. And I still remember Mike's secretary coming in uh to the room and saying, Mike, uh Joe O'Leary, who was the Clackamas County DA at the time, is on the phone and he's laughing. You're getting it. And the reason was that the one uh place that was in Multnomah County was Sean Eckhart's, if you remember him, the big security guard, his parents' home, which is where actually the conspirators gathered to arrive at the plan, if you can call it a plan.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

So that's interesting though. It was was going to be Detroit and then Clackamas County. How common is that? Is that just uncommon?

SPEAKER_02 6:44

What happened was that the uh Detroit DA, the the U.S. Attorney's Office had been willing to do it because obviously uh you know it had interstate uh and international implications, and so it really would have made sense for them to do it. But the DA in um in uh Detroit thought it was gonna be a big media thing for him and that it would be very helpful to his political career. And also we found out later that his wife worked for the Detroit Free Press. Uh uh. And so we thought uh I'm sure he also thought, well, this will be great because she can go at all s sorts of inside information. Uh so he made such a jerk of himself that the uh uh the U.S. attorney just said, forget it. Uh and then he saw that it was gonna be a tough case. And he started, uh at least as to her, and he started backing away, and that's how we got it.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

That's how you got it. And Tanya, you worked out the deal where she got three years' probation, $100,000 fine, and she was banned from skating, right? At that point, competition.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Yeah, it uh you know, it wasn't a perfect deal in that, you know, she really deserved to serve some time. But I think people locally realized that the amount of resources that would have had to be committed to a trial, that it wasn't perfect justice, but it was the best judgment uh justice for the community as a whole.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

How does that come to be? Is that what happens as you sit in the office and you consider the resources it's gonna take, the penalties involved? How how do you guys decide as an office, let's propose a plea deal?

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Well, uh I mean, I think we just knew, certainly my boss knew the what a trial would mean. And fortunately, uh she had a very ethical attorney. We we never would have seen some of the evidence, uh, one critical piece of evidence that we got from the dumpster if she hadn't if she had had some other attorneys.

SPEAKER_03 8:50

And that was a that was the letter written by Tanya, correct?

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Well, it was uh notes she had written on an envelope and that she'd put in with her other garbage, and she'd used the dumpster of this restaurant to throw her garbage in, and the owner of the restaurant, the woman, had been trying to find uh who was dumping stuff in her uh garbage, and she went through and obviously recognized uh that was key. Oh, it was key. That was key. But she called Tanya's lawyer first, and some lawyers would have they wouldn't have told you about it. Yeah. Yeah. And uh he didn't tell us, but he just said, I can't. And he rightly said, I can't say anything. Wow. You just do what you have to do.

SPEAKER_03 9:39

You you have handled so many big cases through the years. Of course, we got to talk about Kyron Horman. Uh, the boy who uh was at Skyline School 16 years ago, in fact, and all of a sudden disappeared after the last person to see him was Terry Horman, of course, his his stepmom. What happened to Kyron Horman, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Well, and this is just my personal opinion, but I would assume that he was killed and that his body simply hasn't been recovered. Uh you know, people I don't think comprehend uh the situation with the landscape out there. And um, for example, about uh three or four weeks after this happened, we uh got notice that there were some human remains found in um the Mount Hood Forest. And we I initially I'm thinking, God, this so I went out there and uh Park Ranger had just happened upon it, and I got out there and I realized that it was just total coincidence. It could have been hundreds of years before these were ever found. Well, they turned out to be another murder victims, and we were able to solve that case based on those remains, but uh it it could have easily been never discovered. Uh and so I think in my view, uh, which I know is not shared by my mom and dad, but pro that's the probable situation. And it was a very frustrating case because you know, Portland public schools did not have real security. And uh so it was just hard to believe that that child could have left the school without anybody really seeing, but somehow that happened. And uh we were just we were close so many times, but uh didn't quite get there.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

When you say close so many times, because again, we talk about the amount of resources poured into something, we covered that nightly, daily, night, you know, 24 around the clock for months, and we saw the resources uh with volunteers and everything. So when you say we were so close, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Well, the resources, if I can focus on that part of the question first, were a double-edged sword. Uh because when I I wasn't the initial deputy out there, I for a variety of reasons I got involved about a week in. And when I went out there, uh there were just so many different agencies, and there wasn't one person in charge. And so the coordination, it it was good to have all the resources, but uh some of the resources were uh kind of tripping over each other on occasion. And when I say close, um, you know, we had uh just tantalizing uh I I'm not gonna go into some of the details because the uh as you may know, the current district attorney has uh promised to take another look at the case and and they're doing that. So I I don't want to step on uh individual uh evidence, but uh we we did feel very close at certain times and it just always proved elusive.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

Are you are you surprised there hasn't been an arrest at this point?

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Well I'm yes and no. I just come back to i in my view, there's only two ways the case probably ultimately gets solved. Either there are admissions made by the perpetrator or perpetrators to reliable sources, or uh remains are found and uh as with the one I mentioned in the Mount Hood Forest, uh the remains uh have significant evidentiary value. Whether any of those things will happen is unclear to me.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Were there ever any multiple s suspects? We all uh we know one person was mentioned often as a probable suspect.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Uh well again, I don't want to go into specifics, but there there was another uh uh significant suspect.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

Okay. Okay. I want to ask you about you worked in Mike Schrunk for years, right? You guys retired pretty much the same time, didn't you? Wasn't it pretty close?

SPEAKER_02 14:09

Yes, I retired right at the end of his term. He he had been he'd been uh chief deputy before immediately he had left, and I was hired actually to fill not the chief deputy slot actually, but the you know misdemeanor slot that occurred when he left in 1977. But then he came back in 1981, and so we were uh around for a together for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

I want to ask you about Nathan Vasquez, the current district attorney. Give me your thoughts on him.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Well, Nathan is, in my view, just doing a fantastic job. The prior district attorney was a disaster for four years, and so Nathan uh boy, his qualities are are I I just think he's excellent. I uh people locally couldn't be in better hands. I'm uh distressed to see that his budget is under assault uh by the current uh county chair, and I'm hopeful that uh I mean I know there are times of economic constraint, but I can see some of the other priorities that I I don't think are uh outweigh the priorities of the district attorney's office, which we've had finally had restored to sanity.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Did you go through that same thing where you they squeezed your budget a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Oh you know, Mike was master at uh counting to three and getting three votes. But we we had a few times that were tough over the years, but we didn't have them in the type of criminal justice environment that exists today. Uh we uh, you know, a number of things were done here uh that people forget in the late 1980s and the early 1990s that uh drove crime down. In the last four years of the Schrunk administration, the homicides in Mulnoma County were 20 some per year. And and now they think it's a victory when they're 60. Uh you know, it's the result of uh uh uh just bad choices in criminal justice policies over the last 12 years. Uh the the idea that you don't need to be punitive, that you don't need to incarcerate dangerous people, uh, that you, you know, allow people to use uh serious drugs publicly. I mean, it's just uh a mindset that uh has affected both the criminal justice side and the mental health side as witnessed by this episode with the Mac bomber that we've gone through.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah, share with us your experience with that. You you knew the person involved with this.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Yeah, I didn't know him personally as a as an employee of the Mac. I I may have encountered him, but I had no memory of it. But I became aware in 2020 of uh the Mac had put out an email concerning the things he was up to. And I was concerned because at that time Schmidt was DA and he wasn't going to do anything. And so I set up a line of communication between the Mac and between uh the DA's office to try and do something about him. But because of where we've gotten ourselves with the same type of anti-coercive, anti-incarceration impulses on the uh mental health side, uh uh we just weren't able to do anything. I mean, I mean there is no way Bruce Whitman shouldn't be alive today in a secure but uh reasonable mental health facility.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

We should tell people uh watching this and not familiar with that case that Bruce Whitman was a former employee of the Multnomah Athletic Club and had a lot of complaints after he was fired and at different times harassed members of the Multnomah athletic club, drove his car to the front door and the thing caught on fire and he died at that point. What more should have been done for him, do you think?

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Well, he he should have been uh he he was schizophrenic, and he had clearly demonstrated by his conduct, uh, just as the uh Jonathan Kroll, the uh person who Max Bernstein wrote an excellent series about in the Oregonian several months ago, he had clearly uh r demonstrated by his conduct that he was a danger to himself or others. He should have been in in a secure mental health facility taking medication and being forced to do so if necessary. Uh I mean he had uh it wasn't just a danger to others, it was a danger to himself. He he'd shot himself in the head in February. I I mean it i i i i uh yes, it is certainly true that in the 1940s and the 1950s and the early 1960s, we overly incarcerated the mentally ill and uh did other things. And organizations like disability rights in Oregon, you know, grew out of that. But but they've they haven't recognized that there's a new that we've swung the pendulum too far in the other direction, and that, you know, like when I was in the DA's office at one point, there were uh over 3,000 secure mental health beds where people could be held against their will if necessary and forced to take their money. Money they have now. We have now about seven to eight hundred. Wow, wow so and and that when they rebuilt the Oregon uh state hospital, it was a deliberate decision motivated by organizations like Disability Rights for Oregon to underbuild the, in my view, underbuild the facility, in their view, build it where it should have been. And that's the situation we find ourselves in today. And the current governor uh tries to tell people that she's done something about it by slightly lowering the standard uh for when you can be held. But that's really a mirage because she hasn't built new mental health secure facilities. She hasn't uh decreased the timelines by which people can be held when the standard is met. She hasn't done anything about the uh uh interpretation of HIPAA laws that keeps various law enforcement agencies from being able to know all the facts about individuals. So these are all things that she could do, but would be opposed by people who are part of her uh coalition.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

And so that's the hesitation on the part of the governor. Absolutely. She she gets so much opposition. You brought a book with you. I want you to to tell the folks what that's all about.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Well, this book kind of started me on this uh latest journey. It's called The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen, and it tells the story of uh a close friend of his from childhood that they grew up together and went to Yale, and he his friend developed uh schizophrenia, just like Bruce Whitman. And uh his friend was, despite uh the schizophrenia, able to go to Yale Law School and successfully graduate. But because after graduation, because uh there wasn't sufficient punitive oversight of him, uh part of as you know, part of being mentally ill is often believing that you are not mentally ill and you don't need to take your medication, uh he uh got staffed. His girlfriend to death thinking that she was a wound-up toy that was going to kill him. And I I think people don't recognize that uh in addition to what I said about the need to have a little more co coercion than we have right now, we really don't know despite all our medical advances, we don't know what causes illnesses like schizophrenia. We don't know uh why the drugs that sometimes work work. But even in that state of ignorance, there are further steps that we could take to avoid tragedies like this, tragedies like Kroll, tragedies like Bruce Whitman.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Let's talk about some of that though, because as you say, and we hear often uh we cannot incarcerate people for mental health illness or for drug addiction. But when people are being harassed, when laws are being broken, what what would you like to see happen? More beds, obviously, but what else?

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Well, uh I think the things I articulated that I think help, one, there's got to be more beds. Two, some of the time limitations on how long you can hold people once the standard is met have to be changed. And three, the interpretation of HIPAA laws. Uh f for example, uh in in a recent case, uh a district attorney in a county where they knew there was this dangerous mentally ill person couldn't get health care providers to provide the information to them so that they could actually go into court. So it's a multifateted uh uh approach. Nathan Vasco has has people in his office who were fully capable, uh if there's the political will of organizing in detail uh what needs to be done, and he's put stuff out on his website about it, and I encourage everybody to read it and and be involved.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

You do you get people coming to you saying you should run for office? Have you thought about it? Uh oh no, no, no. So you're thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

I can tell you're considering it.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

That will never happen.

SPEAKER_03 24:07

Seriously. You're done. So tell people what you're doing now, because you're still involved when it comes to criminal justice reform and so on. Talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

Well, we have a what's called a C3, which is a uh private organization uh under the tax laws uh called the Oregon Criminal Justice Truth Project. And we have uh an excellent uh uh board, including Jim Ferreris, a retired Woodburn chief of police. Great guy. And John Foote, a retired DA from Clackham's County. And most importantly, we have Kevin Neely, who used to be uh VP at uh Portland State, who's the executive director who does the real work. But we've had some successes in uh trying to uh uh uh change some of the policies that have been implemented in the last 12 years. And right now, we're uh engaged in an endeavor to try to use some of the money that isn't being used in the climate fund to hire more police in uh Portland. So uh a lot of it's baby steps, but that's my involvement.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

When you look we've we've lived and worked and raised our kids here for decades now, you have too. And when you look around the city and this county, um what do you still love? What breaks your heart? What's your hope for it?

SPEAKER_02 25:26

Well, uh the neighborhood that I'm in is great, and most of Portland's neighborhoods are great. Uh the uh there's uh a vibrant uh tradition. I mean, let's remember what the things that were done in this community in the 80s and the 90s that made it one of the nicest places to live in the country uh two decades ago. But what breaks my heart is when uh you know my wife's uh involved in the Chinese uh garden in uh northwest Portland, and it's a beautiful facility that has uh uh amazing activities on every day. And yet when you walk uh the emplo their employees walk from the garden to their parking lot, they step over people lying on the streets half clothed with needles coming out of their arms. That doesn't have to happen. That is a result of bad public policy, and there have been improvements, but boy, not enough. Not enough.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Do you see that changing though?

SPEAKER_02 26:33

I I think there's a change in that direction. I think the fact that uh Mike Schmidt was defeated and uh Nathan Vasquez was elected, uh I I think that that's a sign in the right direction. I I think that uh Julie Brim Edwards, if she is uh the new county chair, that that will be a vast improvement. So there's a lot of challenges ahead, but I just think that uh there's some signs, some hopeful signs.

SPEAKER_03 27:03

So you know, uh the Oregonian, I think it was last week, did an article that said the poll showed 40 percent of Portlanders would like to move out of the city. 40 percent. You think back to when you and I were here in 1980, late 80s, that probably would have been out four percent. Yeah. That's what breaks my heart when I see so many people want out of this community. So clearly not enough is being done to keep them.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

I just saw a chart this morning that showed all the negative um for Portland and for Multnomah County, people leaving and versus Clackamas County, Clark County, everywhere else are all on the positives.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Well, why what's what are they doing right?

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Well, I think it's more what we're doing wrong. Uh the tax situation in this county uh and city is just out of control. And uh, you know, my neighborhood uh you know I've lived in for 35 years as an adult, and the neighborhood is largely untouched by any of the problems that you know people think of uh as existing in Portland today, but I've never even seen close to as many for sale signs as uh exist now, and it's all a result of the tax situation. And uh we we just have to think I mean uh for example, if you remember uh when the Raj Nishes were trying to get voters in uh the 1980s, they had to go to Texas and California to import uh homeless people to vote.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Well, uh and that's not because there's been some economic disaster here in Multnomah County in Portland. It it's because policies that serve as a magnet uh for s certain types of people have been implemented, and that needs to change. I see some signs it is, but there's a way to go.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

No, I'm even because I show, I'm in real estate, I show some of these homes, and even if you find a buyer who can afford a $2 million price tag, they don't they can't afford to live in the county or the city because what's going to happen to their their income tax at that point? And then the property taxes on some of these that are $40,000 to $75,000 a year that could also go up three percent every year, they're like, that just doesn't seem like it's a wise way to invest in a home right now within the county or the city.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

It it's a challenge. Yeah. And you would think, and I think people kind of the bystanders are saying, why can't our leaders see this? See that so many people want out, right? Because of taxes, why can't they do something about that?

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Well, unfortunately, in my view, there's both naivete and there's just bad ideological uh views. Um both uh I mean I saw the mayor, who I'm sure is a nice very nice man on TV the other day, uh saying that everything was upward. Everything was upward in Portland. Well, I uh really and then we also have a group of people who have, in my view, disproportionate political power under the current city government system, who who have and uh just see the entire world differently than uh I think the majority of Portlanders do. What's next for you? Well, what's next for me is uh some uh major dental surgery. And also some traveling.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

We don't mean about Wednesday. Yeah, exactly. Okay, traveling. That sounds good.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

Where do you where are you gonna go? Tell us where you're gonna go and if you have room for us.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Well, I'm uh I'm thinking of uh a little trip to BC and uh maybe even Taiwan. Uh you know, now that I'm uh into uh the Chinese uh situation so much, I gotta see uh whether uh Trump is getting us in trouble there. Oh, be curious. Report back on that.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Do you miss it at all, prosecuting cases? And and if so, what is it specifically that you miss about it?

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Well, I have great memories of what I did, but prosecuting murder cases is a young man's job. So I I don't miss it in that sense. Uh it's very hard work and it's being done by some great people over there. So um I'm uh lucky enough to have some of the camaraderie with them still going on.

SPEAKER_03 31:25

So is there is there a case in your mind that we haven't mentioned that stands out in your your brain?

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Well, I really don't think so. I mean I think you've you've got it was all the high profile ones. Exactly. Well, there was Mologata Sarah, which brings in the current Ruhaha over the uh uh Southern Poverty Law Center, which at that time greatly assisted us in that case. Uh but if what I'm reading uh in the papers is accurate, they may have lost their way since then. But that was quite it.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Well, you've worked in and loved the city as much as we have for so many years, and thank you so much for all your hard work and everything you've done to keep us safe and at our best.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

Well, I appreciate you having me. You can come back any time. Don't go away yet, though, because you've got a story to talk about as far as a You need him to prosecute something?

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Need him to handle something for you? You brought some legal notes, didn't you? Steve's in a little bit of trouble, Norm.

SPEAKER_03 32:20

He's already noticed that. No, this is we we do a thing called the circular file at the end of the program. We talk some odd stories throughout the country, and this particular one. First of all, let me ask you, were you high in your graduating class when it can't- I don't mean high. Steve, were you close to the top of your graduating class?

SPEAKER_01 32:39

You could ask me that number.

SPEAKER_03 32:41

Well, I was I was okay. Yes, but that's a yes. And Natalie, where were you? Do you remember the number? I do not remember the number.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

It was not a good one. Do you remember how many you had in your class?

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Do you remember how many you had in college?

SPEAKER_01 32:53

I listen, I grew up in the LA public school system. I had over well over a thousand people in my graduate school. You had a thousand years ago. Really? I was probably in the top 800, Steve. Did you like high school? Did you like high school at all? I had a great time. Did you? But you did.

SPEAKER_03 33:08

You know, I like from I think it was about sophomore year on. Prior to that, it's tough. I think middle school is tough for anybody. I mean, you didn't like middle school at all. Ninth grade was okay, but then you get in tenth grade.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

You start You saw some wounds about this. Maybe this is next week's podcast.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

A whole hour. We're going the whole hour on that. Anyway, getting back to this. New York high school's graduating class boasts a record-breaking 21 valedictorians. Is that just incredible or what? Jericho High School in Nassau Accounty, Long Island. 21 valedictorians, brand new record. They had 15 a few years ago as well. I had five in my class. I thought that was a lot. Were you one of them? No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

No, of course not. You remember, that's good. That feels like a whole long time ago for me. I don't know. How long do you think it was for me? Exactly. How do you remember? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

The principal said the one problem is that not all 21 Valentorians will be able to give speeches at graduation. But how do you decide that? Let me flip a couple things.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

I think Doug, you need to go give the speech for them. We should do a little follow-up.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

You go to Jericho High School.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

They want him before they'd want other one.

unknown 34:18

100%.

SPEAKER_03 34:19

What would we have? Norm Frank is with us today. Norm, thanks very much for being here. Always appreciate it. You're always welcome back. Natalie, good seeing you as well. Good to see you too.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

You got to tell me, have a good time wherever you're going in that sharp sports code you have those.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

I'm stepping up my game a bit. Thanks for watching, folks. We'll see you. Bye.