South Boston woman finds no wiggle room on parking sticker

It could have been a scene straight from ''Law & Order." South Boston resident Sharon Oxman answered her front door Tuesday morning and, in a driving rain, an official-looking man in a trench coat flashed a badge and demanded answers.

''I'm leaving here with one of two things: your sticker or your car," he snapped. ''What's it going to be?"

Oxman had run afoul of the city's resident parking sticker regulations.

In another neighborhood, she might have merely received a ticket.

But in South Boston, parking is serious business, and Boston's acting transportation commissioner, Thomas Tinlin, lives there.

Tinlin said he couldn't just drive past when he saw Oxman's car, which had North Carolina license plates and a South Boston resident parking sticker. He began questioning neighbors, trying to find the owner. He rang up his office and ordered a search on the license plate number. Then he rang Oxman's bell.

''He was very irate," Oxman recalled. The 20-year South Boston resident said she bought a new car last week and registered it in North Carolina because she plans to move there next week. ''I thought I would just be able to slide by for a week."

Tinlin scraped off the sticker with a spatula she retrieved from her kitchen, put the sticker in his pocket, and left.

''I warned her this is a prosecutable offense," Tinlin said. ''She knew the jig was up."

The next morning, Oxman awoke to find more evidence that city officials had been around: a ticket for parking in the neighborhood without a resident sticker.

DONOVAN SLACK