The Evanston Parking Enforcement Patrols The Middle Ground In A World Of Human Extremes.

He’s one of the most visible public servants, yet many people fear him and would never approach him. He carries no gun and can’t arrest you, but he can make your wallet $50 lighter faster than the Norris Center Bookstore or Student Book Exchange.

When people finally notice the officer, they either purposefully ignore him or try to run him over.

Every time my friends and I pass a parking enforcement officer, we become curious about the person who sits behind the wheel of that green- and blue-striped vehicle and mans the steering wheel.

Well, the person behind the wheel is not unlike any of us. Felicia Clark, 29, took the $31,000-a-year job in 1995 because the city offered to pay for her college tuition. One of eight officers, she graduated from Kendall College and will earn her master’s degree in psychology at National-Louis University in December 2002.

She’s written several psychology papers about the job. Even five minute conversations about tickets reveal “priceless” insights about human nature, she said.

“People don’t like to be told they’re wrong,” Clark said. “They don’t like to accept blame.”

Getting a ticket is always the “tip of the iceberg” for a bad week, Clark said. Bad grades. A husband is upset because his wife left him.

Like the other officers — who have given more than 122,000 tickets this year — Clark is in it to help people. She enjoys giving directions and directing traffic.

At the parking enforcement headquarters on Asbury Avenue and Leon Place — “where all the bad people live,” supervisor Hal King said — officers brainstorm how they can make people’s lives easier.

When King noticed more Northwestern students ticketed on street-cleaning days, he wanted to help. At his insistence, the city will install permanent metal signs listing specific dates of street cleaning in 2002, rather than temporary paper signs that lean against a tree.

The parking enforcement officer’s good deeds are often subtle and ignored. On this day, Officer Kerry-Serge Deslaurier is parked in the Evanston Public Library lot. A woman carrying a 2-foot high stack of books returns to a car Deslaurier is ticketing. Deslaurier cancels the ticket before it prints. The woman walks by him without a word.

“They treat you like you’re invisible,” he said. “We’re not unattainable people. We’re usually happy-go-lucky people.”

Some people attack or drive cars at the officer, many of whom wear steel-toed shoes. A month ago, Deslaurier, who wears black gym shoes, ticketed a woman in a BMW who had parked in a handicapped spot. The woman grabbed the ticket — which is impossible to rip — and slammed it hard into Deslaurier’s chest.

He tried to stay calm, but wanted to say or do something.

“You have to swallow your emotions all the time,” he said.

The parking officer, from his middle ground, can learn so much about a person within minutes. And we can learn about ourselves through our interactions with them.

Do you blame others for the ticket? Was the ticket just “the tip of the iceberg” for a string of bad things that always seem to happen to you? Or do you take full responsibility for your error?

In Evanston and at NU — as in the rest of the country — self involvement often drowns out responsibility and respect for others. If the parking enforcement officer is the bad guy, what does that make the rest of us?