SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

June 29, 2003
By Robert L. Jamieson

Three wise men gathered in Pioneer Square to make beautiful music.

Mike, under a straw hat, plucked a guitar. Craig, with clean-shaven head, banged on a Djembe, an African drum used in healing rites. A fellow named Pharaoh rounded out the trio using sticks to pound a metal instrument with the easy-to-say name.

"Tin can," Pharaoh said with a wink.

The street musicians mellifluously crooned the Marvin Gaye standard "What's Goin' On," but it was clear the trio had no idea what was happening a few yards away, where people had set down flowers.

"What flowers?" Mike asked, standing under the pergola. "I didn't see flowers."

Yellow flowers were atop a plaque embedded in the earth. Words on the plaque: "No greater love hath a man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

The plaque -- unveiled last week -- honors Kristopher Kime, the young man killed two years ago while trying to help a woman being pummeled during Seattle's Mardi Gras riots.

Seattle police watched the paroxysm of violence and did nothing. 

Kristopher, in his unselfish act, became a civic hero.