Will appear at library: Zoo visit started writing career for Gregg Olsen

It started with a trip to the zoo in Scottsbluff, Neb.

New York Times best-selling author Gregg Olsen, then a kid from Bellevue in the early 1970s visiting relatives, thought the zoo was lacking.

So he wrote a letter to the local newspaper, saying that the condition of the zoo disappointed him. The 12-year-old used the word “appalling.”

Soon he was back in the station wagon with his two brothers for the long ride back home.

Back in Scottsbluff, the paper started getting more letters.

“I agree with the man from Bellevue,” they noted.

A successful campaign began to improve the zoo.

Today, Olsen,...