Girl’s deed earns her a computer

Art Nadler

Thursday, March 21, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Teary eyed and unable to speak, a surprised 10-year-old girl stood in front of a packed auditorium of students to accept a $1,700 computer system for a deed well done.

Nevada Power Co. gave the Pentium 75-megahertz computer with CD-ROM to Tonya Frederick during a ceremony Wednesday at Dondero Elementary School. The utility was expressing its appreciation for her finding and returning a lineman's lost personal belongings and a high-security key.

The fifth-grader found the lineman's lunch box, which had fallen off his truck. She and her parents were able to track him down from a telephone number and address on his prescription medication in the lunch box.

"I just want to say, 'Thank you guys very much for what you have done for me,'" Frederick said at Wednesday's presentation, her eyes welling up with tears of happiness.

"We are very proud of her," Linda Frederick said of her daughter's quick thinking.

"We always taught our children to be honest," an emotional Rodger Frederick added, wiping tears from his eyes.

Lineman Joseph Ming was at Jones Boulevard and Flamingo Road when his lunch box fell off his service truck. He returned within 10 minutes to search the area, but it was gone. Ming assumed someone had decided to keep the lunch box, so he called his wife to warn her that a stranger had their address and phone number.

When Ming called home, his wife informed him that Tonya Frederick had called to tell him she found his personal belongings and the key.

"In this day and age, most people more or less would have kept it," Ming said. "If all the kids were like this, we'd have something nice. This should make us proud of our kids for what she did."

Nevada Power executives learned from the Fredericks that Tonya had wanted a computer for a long time. They decided to buy her one because it fit into their corporate philosophy of supporting math and sciences in the schools, said Glenda McCartney, director of corporate communications.

They wanted to present the computer -- as a surprise -- to Tonya during a school awards ceremony.

The Fredericks, including their other daughter, Nicole, 12, are originally from Milwaukee. They have lived in Las Vegas for six years.