The Press: Stop the Presses

As a sportswriter who never covered anything more exciting than home-town boxing bouts for Texas' San Antonio News, young (29) Dan Cook nursed a Technicolored dream: to stop the presses for a Page One beat. One night last week—as he later told the story—an anonymous phone call promised the big chance. The caller tipped him to "the biggest robbery pulled since the Brink's job"—the theft of $200,000 from a safe in Houston, some 200 miles to the east. The voice even gave Cook the address and automobile license number of the robber.

Cook picked up a friend, Jimmy Parks, 33, a fight...