It’s about 7 pm on a warm summer evening, and Darrell Smith is driving around the East Side, dropping off plants that he just picked up from a nursery in Waukesha. At this time of year, the only way to talk to a landscaper is to ride along in the pickup truck.

That’s Debbie Davis towering over the crowd in her Statue of Liberty regalia in the Riverwest Fourth of July parade. She’s the stilt-walker everyone loves to see. “She has quite a large fan base,” admitted her partner, Dimitri. He works in Waukesha and meets people out there who plan their summers around events where they’ll see “the Stilt-Walker.”

I’m not going to tell you much about Rabbi’s feisty side. Somehow it feels like an oxymoron coupled with his name. Yet, the man who keeps a keen eye sharpened for intolerance, has fought for his life while being beaten until his jaw and other bones were broken, and who has a real problem with police response times and indifference, is definitely a part of Rabbi Bradley Van Engel.