Around the time of my mom’s passing last June, I posted a Facebook story of how back in the mid seventies, myself and two friends found ourselves under arrest and in the back of a police car in handcuffs.

It was the true definition of a “nightmare” and I told of how my mom came to my rescue and did many things to get me out of that mess. Those included driving for over four hours across a large area of Northern Ontario in the middle of the night to pick me up at the Sudbury airport, paid for my return Air Canada flight, gave me the car so I could drive down to where the court date was AND my parents covered the costs for me to hire a top-notch defence lawyer to save the day and did that ever pay off.

I won’t go into great detail of what happened as I’ve already put that on here but let me just say this. I, along with two friends, were in my vehicle and pulled over one evening and attacked by a man who thought he was a police officer but wasn’t. The result of that was we were all arrested, charged and had to go to court over the matter.

Being only twenty-one at the time and knowing nothing about law / lawyers, I asked the local Sudbury news anchor, Michael Connor, for his advice and after telling him what happened over lunch one day, he wrote out the name of a lawyer and told me “this is the man who you want to call” and Mr. Connor said to use his name for a reference, which I did. The lawyer turned out to be Ron Horeck and just like Michael Connor told me, he was brilliant.

When we all went down to Mr. Horeck’s office and he heard the story, he told us what his fee was and said “This won't be cheap. I’m going to have to do a lot of research on this” and that is exactly what he did.

As it turned out, after doing some digging, Mr. Horeck found out that this “want to be” cop had applied a bunch of times to get on with the Ontario Provincial Police but denied. He also had been charged and convicted of selling alcohol, illegally to minors. Quite simply, he was the local bootlegger. And I later learned that Ron Horeck was personal friends with the judge who heard our case so, in the end, it was a real learning experience about court and “the law."

In the end, the judge threw out the case, everything was dismissed and I left there with no criminal record but with one thing really sticking in the back of my mind. Do you want a good return on investment? If you are ever in a legal jam, do yourself a big favor, spend the money and get a good lawyer. And what happened to us that time is proof of that right there.

Anyway, I just found out that Ron Horeck passed away last fall and I wanted to mention him, thank him again for all the great work he did in helping us and give him another “shout out” for a job very well done! RIP Mr. Horeck. You certainly were proof that it really does pay to get the best!