By Paul Rolly, Salt Lake Tribune Columnist
Shaelene and Ben Hays paid Salt Lake City $1,000 to reserve the beautiful setting of Memory Grove for their Sept. 26 wedding, which they had meticulously planned to be a memorable event for all who attended.

The central venue of the wedding was to be the historic Memorial House, with a procession along a path and across the road inside Memory Grove to where the couple would tie the knot.

But as wedding guests began to arrive for the big event that Sunday, a Salt Lake City fleet van was parked in the middle of where the procession was supposed to walk.

The wedding coordinator at the Memorial House had left a message with Salt Lake City Corp. about the van earlier, but never got a call back. The couple’s friend, Geana Randall, found a card inside the unlocked van and called the fleet, but the dispatcher said they could not move the van that Sunday because it was not an emergency.

Randall then called the police and got LeAnn Pratt, a dispatcher with SLCPD, who became the hero.

Pratt went to the police watch commander on duty and received permission to have the van towed to another location in the grove, out of the way of the wedding procession.

From that point on, everything went perfectly.

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