In Bay County District Court on Monday, a deputy who once upheld security in the building sat in an orange jumpsuit and shackles as several former colleagues took the stand to testify against him.

Dale Van Wert, 48, of Garfield Township, has pleaded not guilty to 11 felonies and four misdemeanors stemming from allegedly operating his private process serving company while on duty at the Bay County Court Facility from February to June of last year.

Additional charges alleging that he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl in December - charges that carry, upon conviction, penalties of up to life in prison - also are pending against Van Wert, though those charges weren’t addressed in Monday’s hearing.

Prosecutors allege that Van Wert misused his authority as a deputy to obtain information on people and vehicles to facilitate the operations of his business, Court Service Integrity.

Dennis Kozlowski, has been served with divorce papers

Tyco International Ltd.’s imprisoned former chief executive officer, L. Dennis Kozlowski, has been served with divorce papers, giving him 45 days to disclose his financial condition to his estranged wife, Karen.

Former Cumberland resident Kozlowski, 60, was served Thursday at the Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, N.Y., his lawyer Dirk Lorenzen said. The former CEO previously refused his wife’s demand for disclosure. His lawyers told a Palm Beach County, Fla., court he was never served with divorce papers, so disclosure wasn’t mandatory within 45 days of her July 31 filing.

Kozlowski’s financial information may be of interest to Tyco shareholders who sued him and the company. They are seeking to recover money lost when Tyco shares plunged after accounting problems became public in 2002.

The idea of a firefighter being involved in arson is so starkly counter-intuitive as to startle the sensibilities. It’s like a doctor intentionally harming a patient or a builder intentionally erecting an unsafe structure, yet it is hardly unheard of.

The recent criminal charges against three men who had been members of the Pike Road Volunteer Fire Department have raised anew the issue of background checks for would-be firefighters. As the Advertiser’s Crystal Bonvillian reported, there were no formal background checks conducted on the men, one of whom is serving time now on a theft charge in Henry County.

The three are entitled to the presumption of innocence in the Montgomery County cases, to be sure. However, the charges do argue for conducting background checks and, perhaps even more importantly, some form of psychological testing on those who wish to join a fire department.

Such tests are done routinely in larger-city fire departments. It’s simply a cost of doing business, an investment in the public safety. But for smaller departments, particularly the volunteer fire departments that serve many Alabama communities, cost is decidedly an issue.

Is your dream date hiding a less-than-dreamy rap sheet?

Can you trust your new baby-sitter with the car keys — or the kids?

More and more government agencies post public records online, making a startling amount of information available. With a little amateur sleuthing, you can peek into the backgrounds of the people you let into your life — a nanny or housekeeper, an online acquaintance, a potential business partner — and be reasonably satisfied they’re not predators or crooks.

You may feel squeamish about digging up dirt on people — and privacy advocates do worry about some methods people use to gather that dirt and its potential misuse.

Kimberly Hall was twice betrayed by men she met dating online. Both turned out to be married.

So she started doing background checks on her dates using a Web site called Intelius. Now, the 33-year-old from Laurel is engaged to a man she met on Blackplanet.com, but even he had to undergo record checks.

“He wasn’t happy” about doing it, Hall said of her fiance. But eventually he turned over his Social Security number.

Buck Lanham proved over the past decade that he was one of the best girls basketball coaches in Central Florida.

He first coached middle school at St. John Vianney in Orlando. His high-school teams at Bishop Moore and Orlando Christian Prep often competed for district championships. He led OCP to the state final four in 2004, then to a state championship in 2005.

There was one other thing about him: He was a felon. In 1988, Lanham was caught with four ounces of cocaine. He served almost eight months of a three-year prison sentence and was given 26 years of probation.

The house was one of those stucco numbers that grow in the suburbs like crab grass. The woman in question was a cagey brunette suspected of chiseling her landlord. She had a rent-regulated apartment in Manhattan that she seemed to be subletting illegally for twice what she was paying, while sleeping in the stucco house just outside the city.

Bill Golodner idled his sport utility vehicle beside the curb a few doors down. He clipped a surveillance camera to the steering wheel and brought the house into focus. He ran a rough paw over his shaved head, switched on a camera concealed behind the third buttonhole of his dress shirt, then slipped out into the chill morning, heading for the front door.

Philip Marlowe, if he were around, might be doing rent-fraud cases, too.

The Higley school district has hired an independent investigator to determine if the district is following state laws amid allegations that nearly 200 employees lack fingerprint clearances to work in schools.

The probe comes two weeks after the arrest of a former Higley High School band assistant on charges of raping a student.

Jeremy Ross Calvert’s file did not have a fingerprint clearance, prompting the district to conduct a separate internal audit of its personnel files.

In a first-grade classroom this week, Marie Merkins helped 7-year-old Jordan McIntosh with his reading lesson.

“Sound it out. T-tells,” said Merkins, a Foster Grandparent volunteer.

More than 100 volunteers like Merkins help out in the Ada-Borup School District’s elementary schools throughout the year. Superintendent Ollen Church said requiring background checks on the volunteers would kill the district’s Parent Volunteer Program.

Yet bit by bit, more Minnesota school districts are conducting background checks on their volunteers in the interest of student safety.

Doyce Hayth begins her day with a cub of coffee to wake herself up. Then she says a prayer, something that helps ground her for the day.

She knows a call can come in at anytime from her supervisor, Betty Camblor, a manager with the state Department of Elder Affairs.

As a volunteer with the state’s long-term care ombudsman program, Hayth is expected to handle complaints from family members and residents of the state’s long-term care facilities.

• Group for Private Investigators
• Group for Process Servers