The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 21

MetroRegion News A20, Bl-8 Lottery B2 New England News Briefs B5 Deaths B4 Comics B6 Weather B8 it I THE BOSTON GLOBE SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1998 1H 5 I Hard work in schools has its rewards By Jordana Hart GLOBE STAFF if 4 Mass. educators win $25,000 Milken prizes students clapped and cheered. Then she marched up front to say thanks. "The kids come here every day, noses pressed to the window, ready to go," she told the assembly. "That makes teaching easy." Smith-McAdams was one of four public school teachers and principals in Ipswich, Bourne, Hold-en, and Boston to win this year's round of cash awards from the Milken Family Foundation, which honored 160 educators in 38 states.

The prizes were started in 1985 by junk-bond financier Michael Milken and his brother, Lowell, to reward innovation while raising the profile of public school educators and perhaps attracting more people to teach. "It feels like Christmas morning right now," said a gleeful Smith-McAdams, 36, in a telephone interview late yesterday. She has taught third and fourth grades for 11 years, nine of them at Winthrop. Still, she said she felt awkward being the sole recipient of such kudos at her school. "I almost wish they would have given it to the she said.

"By singling out one person, you leave behind other people. Any teacher doing it PRIZES, Page B3 IPSWICH The 500 children and teachers sitting cross-legged on their assembly hall floor at Winthrop Elementary School yesterday figured the state education commissioner was there simply to give a back-to-school speech. But gasps greeted commissioner David Dris-coll when he divulged his real reason for being there: A prize of $25,000, no strings attached, to fourth-grade teacher Sheila Smith-McAdams for innovation in teaching science and technology. Smith-McAdams, caught entirely by surprise, dropped her head momentarily as the roomful of GLOBE STAFF PHOTO BARRY CHIN A $25,000 award from the Milken foundation for classroom innovation caught Ipswich teacher Sheila Smith-McAdams by surprise. agrees' IL'V.

'KM'-'- M' still out onMBTA con man arrested in Hub Subject of '93 film charged with theft 4' After years indoors, race ear airs it out Officials see gains combating bias, but complaints persist GLOBE STAFF PHOTOS JOHN TLUMACKI In the library of his Salem home, Don Koleman savors a moment in his Bugatti speedster before it Is removed. By John Ellement GLOBE STAFF By Mac Daniel GLOBE STAFF By Thomas C. Palmer Jr. GLOBE STAFF Eighteen months after the MBTA agreed to institute a wide array of antidiscrimination measures and six months after the attorney general's office gave the authority a passing grade, there is still no computerized system to track repeat offenders. MBTA officials, who cite many programs they have put in place to combat a long history of racial and other discrimination, concede this is an element of the agreement that has not been implemented.

Internal problems in the firrfl hired to develop the system, Inpower of San Diego, are responsible for the delay, they general manager Robert H. Prince Jr. said ALEM For 10 years, Don Koleman's library has contained an old desk, assorted bookshelves, a few simple chairs, and one of the rarest, finest, lip-smackingest Bugatti race cars in the world. About Koleman's Bugatti Type 51A Manufactured in 1930, the car was rebuilt over the years until 1934 or 1935. It set a world speed record in 1934, which was unbroken until 1951.

Koleman's Bugatti was driven in European Grand Prix races. It was once driven by French racer Pierre Veyron. SOURCE: Don Koleman IK 4 I It's 1,650 pounds and 1,500 cc's of twin cam, French blue, magneto-driven supercharged beauty, a car driven by legendary French driver Pierre Veyron in the mid-1930s during a remarkable string of victories throughout Europe. It set track speed records in 1934 that stood for almost 20 years. Historians say that after witnessing Veyron win in this French-built car on a German track in 1933, a humiliated Hitler poured national funds into race car development at Mercedes-Benz.

Born into a prominent Milan family of artists, Et-BUGATTI, Page B8 CM rights complaints against the MBTA are down, but some employees say change has been slow. A crane lifts the vintage car through a picture window in Koleman's home. in an interview this week that he still can't say when the $3 million computer system, supposed to be in place by June, will be delivered. A year from now? "I'd like to hope so," he said. But Diane Wong, who heads the MBTA's expanding organizational-diversity office, said even in the absence of electronic tracking, no complaint goes unrecorded.

"We don't have the ability to push buttons, When Joseph C. Keane met the man at a South End bar in May, he called himself Antonio, told Keane he was attending Harvard Law School, and that he was originally from New York. The two men struck up a friendship and went to Keane's home, eventually spending several days together before, according to Keane, his new-found friend stole his checks and assaulted him. Yesterday, Keane learned that Antonio was really David Edgar Hampton a con man whose scam of some well-to-do liberal New Yorkers in the early 1980s inspired the prize-winning play and popular movie, "Six Degrees of Separation." "I was really impressed. He said he was writing a book.

He's very smart. He's a good talker," Keane said yesterday about Hampton. "Obviously, for what he does for a living you have to be intelligent" Police arrested Hampton on Tuesday with Keane's help. In a telephone interview yesterday, Keane said he was unaware of the play and movie until told about it by a reporter yesterday. He added that Hampton, when he took his hat off, "looked just like Will Smith," the actor who portrayed the Hampton-inspired character in the movie.

As a teenager, Hampton posed as the son of actor Sidney Poitier and ingratiated himself into the lives of the New Yorkers. Playwright John Guare turned that into a one-act play that Globe stage critic Kevin Kelly called "a fable in which what is false has as much power as fact." Hampton, who spent 21 months in prison for the Poitier scam, yesterday was in the Nashua Street Jail being held on $500 cash bail. He is charged with attacking Keane and cashing two of Keane's checks after forging Keane's signature on them. Keane said that while Hampton was in his apartment, Hampton stole six checks from his checkbook. When he learned about a $500 drop in his account balance, Keane confronted ARREST, Page B3 A 1 1 but we're certainly tracking the old-fashioned way," Wong said, adding, "If there are any slowdowns, it's not because of the MBTA." Aside from that missing part, Prince said, officials have made considerable progress in establishing an effective complaint-reporting procedure, training managers in diversity issues, and generally stamping out managerial inequality and offensive behavior.

The number of civil rights complaints filed against the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which rose in the mid-1990s after months of intense publicity and scrutiny by state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger's office, Jias begun to fall. In fiscal year 1997, there were 107 civil rights complaints. In fiscal year 1998, which ended on June 30, there were 73. Likewise, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, which had 142 pending complaints against the MBTA a year ago, now has 114. To date this year, 27 eases have been filed, compared to 44 in the same period last year.

An agreement between the MBTA and the MCAD to settle scores of those cases rapidly, through arbitration, is being negotiated and could be MBTA, Page B8 Bad blood flows in Vineyard gas station feud More Metro news Return of the Banished from Influential islander makes 'hostile takeover' By Stephanie Ebbert GLOBE STAFF Beacon Hill 20 years ago as a convicted felon, George Rogers stands on the verge of returning. A16. Mob hearings: In an effort to get James Bulger's girlfriend to cooperate, FBI agents told her that Bulger might kill her for knowing too much, according to testimony. B2. Moving on: The city's environment director, Lorraine Downey, resigns.

B3. And Packer says he has the right to take "complete and peaceable possession" of the property if the tenant violates the lease. On an Island where the Packer name means power, Dario fears he could lose out Police were reluctant to remove Packer last Friday when he said the lease gave him a right to take over the businesses. It took a visit to the nearest available judge, in Fall River, and a court injunction to remove Packer. But no judge may be able to settle the dispute between the Dar-FEUD, Page B3 local dubbed it, was only the latest most dramatic salvo in a running battle between him and the Dario family.

Dario says he inadvertently stoked the slow-burning dispute by abandoning Packer as his gas distributor for a more reliable one a few months ago. Packer says he acted out of frustration, after months of futile attempts to get Dado's father. Jack Dario who leases the property for his son and other tenr.ts, to bring the property up to code. box, and even replaced pens with those marked R.M. Packer Co.

Inc. When Tisbury Texaco owner Scott Dario arrived and tried to intervene, Packer cut off the gas supply, locked him out and blocked the pumps with four of his company trucks. "It was like a hostile takeover." said Chris Pantalone, who watched the scene from the Mystic Grill across the road. But Piker's "great blockade," as one MARTHAS VINEYARD It was a curious display for bemused islanders: There was Ralph M. Packer one of this Island's most influential businessmen and the biggest landowner in the town of Tis-bury, pumping gas at the Tisbury Texaco.

Before dawn "on Sept 11, the Island's preeminent gasoline and heating oil wholesaler took back the station, which is on property he owns but leases out He change the locks, broupjit his own cash.