AZLE - A local avionics expert said Monday he helped recover the "leading edge" of Columbia's left wing -- and nearly got arrested for his efforts.
Paul Miller, president of an aircraft simulator company in Azle, said that he helped a state trooper on Tuesday identify the chunk of debris, found near a rural road eight miles from Nacogdoches, near Lufkin.
Miller said he felt good about participating in such an important discovery until Thursday when, he said, 20 state police officers armed with guns squeezed into his office, asking about the shuttle wing and glaring at potential Columbia "fragments" on his desktop.
"They thought I had the [ wing] here," Miller said.
Miller said that the officers, accompanied by three NASA investigators, "treated me like an outright criminal" until a high-level space agency supervisor told them over the phone that Miller had earlier in the week assisted in the massive search efforts in East Texas.
Alan Buis, a NASA spokesman in Houston, said he could neither confirm nor deny whether Miller helped find the "leading edge" to Columbia's left wing, considered a possible key link to whatever caused the shuttle disaster on Feb. 1 that killed seven astronauts.
"There is no more information available regarding how it [the wing portion] was found ... I wish I could be more helpful," Buis said.
Since Friday, NASA investigators have indicated that the wing section was found near Fort Worth, but refused to provide specifics. On Monday, some news services reported that NASA said the piece was actually found near Lufkin, and others declared it was found near Corsicana.
But Miller said the piece was actually found southeast of Nacogdoches by a state trooper who asked for Miller's expertise in identifying it. "Oh, my God, NASA needs that now," Miller said he told the trooper.
The wing section was loaded onto the back of a pickup and escorted by authorities to a collection site at the nearby Nacogdoches Airport. After that, Miller said he would later learn, "it was lost for two complete days."
Miller was back in his office in Azle on Thursday, feeling proud of his work in East Texas, when he got a call from an official with the Environmental Protection Agency in Nacogdoches, who asked where the wing section was.
"He was in a hangar standing right next to it, and he didn't know what it looked like," said Miller, referring to the EPA official.
He said he apparently upset the official because, within two hours, the state troopers and the NASA officials were at his office door.
Investigators at the hangar in Nacogdoches also called Tony Collett, a geography student at Stephen F. Austin State University and the owner of the pickup who took the possible wing section to the collection site.
"They called me and I described it to them," Collett said, adding that the person on the other end of the line responded: "Never mind, we see it."
Miller acknowledged that he brought several pieces of potential shuttle debris back to Fort Worth, but only after they were "left unattended on the side of the road" by officers.
Miller and his wife took those pieces on Wednesday to a Columbia debris collection site at the naval air station in west Fort Worth.
