After reading my column last week about being held against my will atop the LDS Conference Center several years ago, Tammy Hinckley of Santaquin couldn't help sharing her own "trapped in Zion" story.

It was Sept. 11, 2001, and she was inside the Salt Lake Temple attending a sealing ceremony. Suddenly, temple officials received word about the twin towers in New York City being felled by airplanes and the temple was to be evacuated, along with the other church buildings downtown.

Those officiating the sealing ceremony allowed it to continue to its end, then they ushered those attending out of the temple, with the temple recorder himself the only person on hand to see everyone out the door.

But right at that moment, Hinckley experienced a calling of a different kind.

She slipped into a restroom, not being able to wait and then she stepped into the hallway of an empty building.

It was just Hinckley and her maker, and she was unsure just what kind of security apparatus might be recording her every move and whether she was being observed as a possible terrorist.

"I knew I could get out just by lifting one of the red phones, but that would also involve the Mormon Swat Team, and I'd already noted their paranoia that day," Hinckley told me.

"My object was to escape without getting myself shot or jailed or, even worse, excommunicated. So I had the run of the temple for several minutes while I wandered upstairs and down,

She also didn't want to get the temple recorder in trouble for not checking all the women's restrooms before he left "which could lead to a different sort of headline."

But finally, she came to a door that didn't say it was alarmed. She pushed gently and stepped out into Temple Square, where she hastily lost herself in the crowd.

The story, she says, has become a highlight in her family history collection.

--

Looks can deceive » If you go to any Utah state liquor store Monday and find the doors locked, but employees inside working away, just chalk it up to another quirky Beehive State policy.

The liquor stores, by statute, must be closed on all legal holidays, and Monday is Columbus Day, a federal holiday.

But when former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. changed the work week for state employees to four 10-hour shifts instead of the normal five eight-hour shifts, the state took away the Columbus Day holiday to make the new system work.

So the stores must be closed, by statute, but the employees must work there anyway, by executive order.

We can all rest assured that the employees will find something to do to stay busy, even if it's thumbing their noses to the locked out customers peering through the glass.

--

Red state love feast » Where does a Republican national leader come when he wants a sure-fire warm welcome while the press is watching?"

Why, Utah, of course.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele will be in Salt Lake City Oct. 16 to speak at a fundraising luncheon at the Salt Lake City downtown Marriott Hotel. He later will appear at a town hall meeting with Gov. Gary Herbert at the Multi-cultural Celebration Center in West Valley City.

Paul Rolly is a political columnist. Reach him at prolly@sltrib.com