It was pretty common to have him fly in and out of town, obviously, but that spring Baylor was hosting some sort of symposium or summit with Bush, Vincente Fox (then President of Mexico) and Paul Martin (then Prime Minister of Canada), on the campus of Baylor itself. It's one thing to have the president drive at a brisk pace between Crawford and Waco's airport...it was a HUGE different thing when the collective leadership of most of North America was sitting down for lunch and a talk in the same building I was doing some research in!
I was in the main library on campus, down in the forgotten basements of old books dealing with Latin and Ancient Greek manuscripts (classics major for the win!), and my presence was missed during whatever sweep of the place they did. I walked out of the building without noticing anything unusually on my part, but almost as soon as I was outside of the south doors on a sort of raised sitting area, LOTS of SS agents rushed me and very quickly whisked me out of the area down the block. They never really talked to me other than saying who they were and why they were removing me from the area, and never searched me or "lectured" me about anything. I got the impression that that sort of stuff probably happens real frequently when you have to close off a large section of real estate and they're used to sniffing out real threats and risks very quickly and very effectively... normal, nonthreatening folks are simply removed without discussion.
The real fun part of the story was when I was walking away from that library back towards my apartment, there was a Blackhawk helicopter hovering about 500 feet above the block where I lived, with its beauty of a Minigun hanging out the door and someone sitting behind it, watching back towards campus. That's the lesson that sticks with me: these guys don't mess around. Serious folks with serious toys.
Edit - picture of the library where I was whisked away. Probably the fasted anyone made me run a block and a half's distance since I was playing lacrosse back in the day!
