Cindy Hanks' oldest daughter, Alison, lives in South Dakota, where her husband is stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base. She and her baby came to Salt Lake City for the holidays because her husband is deployed in the Middle East.

Alison has been diagnosed with adult asthma, and the condition worsened while she was in Utah because of the poor air quality.

Alison, her baby, sister and mother recently were shopping at the Harmons Bangerter Crossing store in Draper when she suffered an asthma attack. Alison hit the floor, gasping for breath. Cindy gave the baby to her other daughter and dumped Alison's purse out on the floor, looking for her inhaler. She finally found the inhaler and after three puffs, Alison was able to breathe again.

While all the commotion was going on, says Cindy, not one person stopped to ask if they were all right. A number of people were right next to them, standing in the specialty bread line.

Alison told her mother when she had a similar attack in a store in Mississippi, she actually passed out and woke up to three female military service members giving her CPR.

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Advice for humans • After my recent column about encounters with unleashed dogs, Craig Annis tells me he saw a line worthy of passing along, especially given our current era of hate-talk radio:

"Wag more, bark less."

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Gotta do what ya gotta do • A reader relates a scene he witnessed four days before Christmas in Murray.

He was traveling southbound on State Street and came to a red light at 4800 South. He glanced over to the sidewalk in front of what was the old Grecian Garden restaurant.

At first, he thought a man had fallen out of a wheelchair, but it soon became evident he had crawled out, with shovel in hand, and was scraping the snow-covered sidewalk. He would slide a few feet on his hands and knees, then pull his wheelchair up to him to balance. Then he would scrape a few more feet and travel along the walkway.

As the light turned green, my source pulled up to a spot on the curb so he could jump out to help. But the man had already completed the job up to 4800 South and it was clear sailing after that. The man had on kneepads and gloves to help him scoot along.

Apparently, he was doing the job city officials or property owners had not done but should have.

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Drug of choice? • I have written in the past about the failed efforts some Utahns have made to express their admiration of a certain beverage by having a vanity license plate that reads "MERLOT" on their vehicle.

The Utah Division of Motor Vehicles nixed such applications, not wanting the state to take part in any demonstration of support for the demon wine.

So one of my readers, Randy Curtis, was amused the other day when he noticed a little red car that passed him on I-80 near Tooele sporting the Utah vanity plate, DUBIE.

That, obviously, was allowed by our state bureaucrats constantly working to protect us from bad influences by rejecting unsavory messages on Utah-issued license plates.

To be fair to these bureaucrats, however, it should be noted that they may have felt the DUBIE license plate was in reference to the official Utah State star, the Dubhe, named by our Legislature several years ago, rather than a reference to a marijuana joint, often called a doobie.

prolly@sltrib.com