“Superhuman” doesn’t quite fit the scenario, so John Houck calls it a “superanimal” feat – but one he’s certain won’t happen.

For a tiger to escape the showcase exhibit at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, it would have to leap up 13 feet past wire meshing and turn in midair to grab hold of a rock wall and pull itself over.

Houck, the zoo’s deputy director, calls it “so remote a possibility” that it could happen. Still, crews were working Friday afternoon to extend the wire mesh by more than three feet. It’s part of a thorough check of its animal facilities which have led to safety modifications to the tiger areas and a temporary closure of the polar bear exhibit.

“We don’t want any animal -- no matter if it’s a rabbit, a frog, a web-weaving spider or an elephant – to escape,” he said. “It might be different scales, but the same assessments go on for everything.”

But after an escaped tiger escaped its pen on Christmas at the San Francisco Zoo, attacked three people and killed one, the incident cast a critical light on enclosures of potentially dangerous animals. Zookeepers must balance safety with keeping the animals close enough for customers to get a good view.

In the tiger exhibit, the distance from the highest ground point to the end of the wire mesh was 13 feet. The Felid Taxon Advisory Group guidelines recommended a distance of 16.4 feet, so Point Defiance crews added about an extra three feet of mesh.

A fence that runs along the sides of the exhibit will also be extended.

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Bert Hayes dug in a file cabinet, chose a old log book at random and began reading.

“Business owner complaining about narcotics and alcohol,” said Hayes, a community liaison officer with the Tacoma Police Department. “Transient problem. Alcohol problem. Another alcohol problem. I just opened to a random page.”

And that was just the morning of April 1, 2006.

“I can go through any book and flip page after page after page after page and probably a full half of some of my months were transient-related, alcohol-related, panhandling-related problems,” he continued. “If we can eliminate these problems, it frees up a huge amount of time to devote to other problems.”

See why he’s such a supporter of the proposed Alcohol Impact Area in Tacoma’s South End and Eastside?

When Hayes met community leaders in Sector 4 – which encompasses the Eastside – they agreed that public drunkenness had to be reduced. Many calls for service were along walking paths to schools in the area, and it led to a score of other problems, from an increase in public dumping to public health problems.

“We didn’t originally think about the AIA program,” he said. “We just talked about how we were going to fight the problem on the street. It became apparent it was too big. It was a very big problem.”

The positive results of Tacoma’s original Alcohol Impact Area encouraged neighborhood leaders. They organized walking tours of the area and discovered discarded cans and bottles. (Olde English 800 was the most common.) The neighborhood groups, many of which rarely collaborated on projects, joined energies and grew in strength.

“I don’t have the time, nor do I think it’s proper for the police department to spearhead something like this,” Hayes said. “It has to be community-driven. And that’s what happened with it. They took the ball and started running with it.

“We had every almost every community group on the Eastside and others in the South End talking and building alliances. From that point, the communities took it over and ramrodded it through.”

The proposed AIA is part of a three-pronged plan with the housing-first initiative and panhandling ordinance to fight chronic homelessness, Hayes said. And a reduction in homelessness frees up police officers to work on other cases.

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I talked with Susan Reams, a communications consultant with the Washington State Liquor Control Board, about the proposed Alcohol Impact Area in Tacoma. She was helpful with a lot of background information, and there were a few points of the law that I didn't know before:

· The law allows jurisdictions to ban the sale of particular brands, but not categories of drinks. So MD 20/20 and Olde English 800 might be out, but the city can't outright remove fortified wines and malt liquor from the shelves.

· When the law goes into effect (usually a few months after approved), the drinks must be off the shelves immediately. In some cases of banned products around the country, stores are allowed to sell off their remaining inventory. Not so in Washington. Said Reams: "In Seattle, for example, we did mailing to licensees to tell them what was coming up and what to expect. We included a list of products so they could remove it from their shelves. That way they could return things to distributors and not order any more."

· And I just wondered why the City of Tacoma couldn't just designate its entire territory an AIA. The law says you can't do it, Reams said. For one, the law doesn't allow it. (According to the Washington State Code, one of the rules of the AIA is that it "comprises a geographic area that does not include the entire territory of the local jurisdiction.") However, there doesn't seem to be a maximum ceiling set.

So, if I'm reading things correctly, if the city jumped through the necessary hoops for everything else, it could designate everything but, say, a one-block area of Northeast Tacoma as an Alcohol Impact Area.

Candace Brown knows a few fliers aren’t going to end illegal human trafficking. But she wants commuters to realize that there might be something sinister happening beside them.

The frightened woman with no luggage waiting for a train might be a victim of human trafficking. So could a girl showing the signs of physical abuse who is being closely watched. Brown and three other members of the Tacoma chapter of Soroptimist International were passing out fliers to Sounder commuters early Friday morning on National Day of Human Trafficking Awareness to raise awareness of the problem.

“If all we’re doing today causes one person to notice,” said Brown, the chapter secretary, “we could save someone’s life.”

Human-rights groups estimate that 12 to 27 million people are living in a state of slavery or indentured servitude, and the United Nations estimates 800,000-900,000 are trafficked across international borders – overwhelmingly for the commercial sex business. About 80 percent of trafficking victims are women, and the sale of people is estimated to be $10 billion annually, according to the UN.

Members from other Soroptimist chapters passed out leaflets at train stations in Auburn and Seattle. They chose transit centers because trafficked women are often transported to their destination via bus depots, train stations and airports, Runbeck said.

The Tacoma chapter had 200 leaflets to distribute, and they were almost gone by 7:15 a.m.

Most of the commuters passing through Freighthouse Square, where the women distributed the fliers, seemed interested. Some asked for a few extras. That encouraged chapter president Jan Runbeck, who said many people often develop tunnel-vision and can miss the warning signs around them.

There have been reports of sexual trafficking in 20 states, according to Soroptimist International. An estimated 14,500-17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year. The University of Washington Women’s Center is studying the problem of human trafficking in the Northwest, but statistics aren’t yet available.

“We know it happens,” said Bernie Bell. “It happens here. It happens everywhere. And people need to be aware of it.”

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At The News Tribune, we're always trying to find different ways to cover the Seahawks and the team's fans. We occasionally need help with coverage, and finding the right people for an article for Sunday's edition is proving difficult.

We're hoping to talk to service members who are deployed overseas and fans of the Seahawks. (We'll take a Packers fan or two as well.) We'd like to chat with them during or after the game -- it kicks off at midnight Sunday in Baghdad -- and tell the rest of our readers how football helps maintain that link to home.

So if you know someone from Washington or in a unit based at a Washington military installation, please e-mail scott.fontaine@thenewstribune.com or call 253-320-4758.

No, that isn't a typo in the time. I'm up earlier than usual today.

First stop is the Tacoma train station. A local civic group is out there this morning trying to raise awareness for illegal human trafficking. I'll chat with them and hopefully post some audio in a bit.

Shortly after I'll be heading to McCarver Elementary School, where a food bank has been providing backpacks full of weekend grub for needy students.

Later I'm heading to Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. There have been some safety changes there I'll update you on.

And I'll be chatting with more folks about the proposed Alcohol Impact Area in the South End and Eastside of Tacoma.