Photo reveals another side of convicted killer Donna Trautman admires the spirit of giving by 10-year-old Phillip Hammer at Port Plaza Mall. By Warren Bluhm News-Chronicle While exploring our photo files for something else the other day, I stumbled into an unexpected challenge to my preconceptions. Back in December 1999, photographer Tina Gohr went in search of a Salvation Army bell-ringer to show a sign of the season and remind the readers the ringers were out there. She came back with a nice picture from Port Plaza Mall (now Washington Commons) of a bell-ringer in a motorized wheelchair smiling as a little (girl) put her coins in the kettle. I literally cried out, because I recognized the woman in the wheelchair. Donna Trautman. Earlier this month, Trautman was surprised when Brown County Circuit Judge Donald Zuidmulder told both prosecuting and defense attorneys that their recommendation she be placed on probation was not good enough. Trautman provided hospice care for Ray Krerowicz, a 67-year-old friend who was dying of cancer and in great pain. Three weeks after his death, she walked into the Green Bay Police Department and confessed that in the final hours, she hurried the process along and suffocated him. She pleaded no contest to assisted suicide. Zuidmulder made it clear he thought a more severe homicide charge was warranted. "She executed him," the judge said. "She put a pillow over his face and she sat on him." In sentencing her to two years in prison, followed by six years of intensive supervision, Zuidmulder made as eloquent a case against euthanasia as I've ever heard. With strong pain management medicine available, no one need suffer as death approaches, he said. "No one, not a devoted husband, not a devoted wife, not the parent of a gravely ill child, can conclude they have the right to take that life ... until someone more powerful than them summons that person," the judge said. Afterward, family members spoke of being cheated of the right to sit by their brother's side as he passed to the next world. Whatever her intentions, Trautman did a horrible thing and deserves to be in prison. But the photo tells another part of the story. According to the attorneys at the sentencing hearing, Donna Trautman was abused when she was younger and later had several run-ins with the law; the details aren't important anymore. What counts is that she has been 14 years sober and providing service to the community in her own way. Nurses from Unity Hospice who monitored Krerowicz said Trautman was a loving, attentive caregiver, and they seemed shocked that Krerowicz's life ended the way it did. This incident was the saddest moment in the more than 59 years of Trautman's hard, sad life. She has a debt to society to serve behind bars. But the photo offers hope for a happy ending.