LORAIN — The Nord Center is getting more than a quarter of a million dollars in federal stimulus funding.

The mental health services organization was awarded $264,182.24 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds by the Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission.

The funds are to assist with severe mental illness in Lorain, Huron, Erie and Sandusky counties with employment services.

Those services include career exploration, assessments, job placement and coaching, job skills training and benefits analysis. The areas of skill training are food services, clerical/computer and building trades/maintenance.

To find out more about the services, call (440) 204-4339.

The Browns at the bye are where they’ve been way too often — out of the playoff picture and in disarray.

This year, they’ve taken the level of dysfunction to a new high — or is it low?

They have no head of football operations, no general manager, no clear-cut starting quarterback.

They do have seven losses in eight games, an impending fan protest on “Monday Night Football” designed to embarrass the organization into change, two young quarterbacks who’ve played so poorly they were both benched in the first half of the season, a 31st-ranked offense and a 32nd-ranked defense.

The embarrassment has been shared on the field and within team headquarters.

The game-day product is so inept, the Browns are irrelevant across the league on Sundays. They only re-enter the national discussion when off-the-field events draw attention to the dysfunction.

General manager George Kokinis was stripped of his duties and escorted from the building last Monday. The next day, two frustrated fans — one who donned a giant dog bone hat — met with owner Randy Lerner to air their grievances and offer suggestions for improving the team.

Lerner is at another crossroads. The fans are restless, the first television blackouts since 1995 are coming, the economy hasn’t recovered and the anticipated improvement in coach Eric Mangini’s first year never arrived.

“I still believe in Eric, and we’re trying to give him the resources he needs to be successful,” Lerner told The Plain Dealer in an e-mail.

Lerner’s top priority is finding an experienced executive to oversee the football operations and make the proper hires. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported former Packers and Seahawks coach and executive Mike Holmgren is at the top of Lerner’s list. Former Browns general manager Ernie Accorsi, Atlanta president Rich McKay and former Packers GM Ron Wolf are also in the discussion. If the eventual choice doesn’t approve of Mangini, the coach could be gone after one year.

Lerner’s already shown Mangini no longer has the run of the place. Director of team operations Erin O’Brien and Kokinis were Mangini selections and have been bounced after just months on the job.

Mangini could be the next to go if things don’t radically improve in the next eight weeks. Lerner would swallow a reported $3.9 million a year through 2012. That would be on top of the $20 million he owed Savage and Crennel when they were fired and the $4 million Kokinis would get if the Browns can’t prove he was fired “for cause.”

A one-and-done for Mangini could be a fitting end to another shipwreck of a season.

First eight games, by the numbers

• 0: TDs scored by running backs and receivers.
• 0: Correct replay challenges, in four tries, by coach Eric Mangini.
• 1: Win by Browns.
• 2: Completions by Derek Anderson in the win.
• 5: Offensive TDs scored.
• 6: Points scored in the lone win.
• 7: Losses by Browns.
• 8: Games left for Mangini to save his job.
• 12: Turnovers created by Browns — four interceptions and eight fumbles.
• 23: Turnovers by Browns — 13 interceptions and 10 fumbles.
• 24.8: Percentage of third downs converted by Browns.
• 36.2: Passer rating of Derek Anderson, lowest in the NFL.
• 39.9: Percentage of third downs converted by opponents.
• 61-9: Combined score of last two losses.
• 62.1: Passer rating of Brady Quinn.
• 78: Points scored in first eight games.
• 209: Points allowed in first eight games.
• 221.1: Yards gained, per game, by Browns.
• 409.1: Yards gained, per game, by opponents.

Contact Scott Petrak at 329-7253 or spetrak@chroniclet.com.

LORAIN — Albert Radawiec knows he’s in for a lot of ribbing.

But he’ll gladly take it all, considering the alternative.

Radawiec, 81, of Avon, was saved from drowning in the Black River on Saturday when Lorain police officer Mike Hendershot jumped into the water to save him after Radawiec fell in while on a fishing trip.

The weather looked so fine on Saturday morning that Radawiec decided to go to one of his favorite fishing spots, the concrete pier at the mouth of the Black River. He set up his fishing spot with his bait bucket and aluminum folding chair and began fishing. But when the walleyes and steelheads weren’t biting from the deep water, he decided to go back to his car and get a bobber. As he turned to go to his car, a gust of wind started blowing his chair away.

“Like a dummy, I ran to grab it,” Radawiec said. “I lost my balance and took a nose dive.”

Radawiec knew he was in trouble. He’d fallen down deep into the water and struggled against his clothes, already weighted with water, to reach the surface.

The water, according to the Coast Guard, which assisted in Radawiec’s rescue, was around 50 degrees. Cold water is more dangerous than cold air, because the body loses heat up to 25 times faster, and hands, arms and legs become numb quickly, the Coast Guard said.

He yelled for help until two fishermen nearby heard him. According to Lorain police reports, the fishermen threw him a bait-bucket line and dragged him close to the pier. But he was too weak from the cold water to climb the nearby ladder.

“I was really cold, and ready to go under,” Radawiec said.

At that point, Hendershot arrived and climbed down the ladder to assist Radawiec. According to the police report, he went in the water alongside Radawiec and held him up until the Coast Guard rescue boat arrived.

With Lorain police officer Christopher Pittak assisting, Hendershot got into a personal flotation device while still holding Radawiec, then attached a flotation ring to Radawiec. Hendershot then swam Radawiec about 15 feet to the Coast Guard rescue boat, where Radawiec was hauled in and brought to the Hot Waters municipal boat launch, where an ambulance was waiting.

Radawiec, whose body temperature dropped to a dangerous 92 degrees while in the water (hypothermia is defined as when body temperature falls below 95 degrees), was taken to Community Regional Medical Center in Lorain, where he was treated and released.

He said Sunday night that he felt fine, except he felt bad about losing his wallet in the river. But, he said, one of the officers told him that Lorain police are doing some diving training there this week and maybe they’ll retrieve it.

“They can keep the money — I’d just like my license and paperwork back,” he said.

Hendershot was unavailable for comment Sunday.

Radawiec knew word would be getting out when he saw a bunch of people gathered to watch the rescue, and recognized many of them as fellow fishermen.

“I’m gonna get chewed out,” he said. But he’s learned his lesson.

“Next time, the chair can go in the drink for all I care,” he said.

Contact Melissa Hebert at 329-7129 or mhebert@chroniclet.com.

CLEVELAND — Police say there’s only one way for the families of missing women to know for sure if their loved ones are among the victims found in suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell’s house: Give DNA samples. But relatives with checkered pasts in the hardscrabble neighborhood seem reluctant to come forward.

Area pastors are urging families to provide DNA samples that could help the coroner’s office identify the remains of eight black women, saying that nearly two dozen others are still missing in southeast Cleveland. The coroner’s office, meanwhile, tried to calm concerns by promising the samples would not be shared with police.

“The only way we are going to get closure is to find out who these victims are,” said City Councilman Zach Reed.

Police and a cadaver dog re-entered the house Thursday where Sowell apparently lived among the reeking, rotting corpses of 10 women and the paper-wrapped skull of another that authorities found in a bucket. The ex-Marine, who served 15 years in prison for attempted rape, is being held without bail on five aggravated murder charges.

Scroll down for more photos.

In response to messages asking how the investigation would proceed on Friday, a police spokesman e-mailed a brief note stating only that a news release would be issued late in the morning.

So far only three victims have been identified: Tonia Carmichael, 52, of Warrensville Heights; Telacia Fortson, 31, of Cleveland; and Tishana Culver, 31, also of Cleveland.

If people are hesitant to reach out directly to police or the coroner’s office, Reed said they should contact him or a pastor.

Stanley Miller, executive director of the NAACP in Cleveland, said people concerned about turning over their DNA to authorities might be reassured by the coroner’s offer to use the DNA only for the purpose of identifying victims.

“People are very reluctant because they don’t trust the establishment,” he said. “They don’t trust the police, and they are not very apt to give up something like DNA that can match you to anyone, anytime forever. That’s an issue.”

Powell Caesar, a coroner’s office spokesman, said nobody should be alarmed about providing DNA, a painless process that involves swabbing the inside of a person’s cheek. The program is voluntary, and samples from a mother or a child of a missing person are most helpful in matching genetic markers.

For those who still don’t want to provide samples, he recommends they supply dental records, which are just as helpful. Relatives of missing women, in particular, can provide the coroner’s office with the names of dentists who may have treated their loved ones, he said.

Meanwhile, a court document based on a 2005 interview with Sowell said the chances of him sexually assaulting another woman were supposed to be low, a newspaper reported Thursday night.

The interview was done for Cuyahoga County Common Pleas court to determine whether Sowell was a sexual predator, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland said. It’s standard procedure for sex offenders just released from prison.

The evaluation said that of 100 offenders with criminal histories similar to Sowell’s, six would commit another sex crime within five years of being released. But the report cautioned that the estimates do not directly correspond to the individual but to the person’s risk group.

Sowell said during the court interview that a woman gave birth to his daughter in 1978. He also said got married in 1981 and divorced in 1985.

Near Sowell’s home, a plywood memorial hangs from a chain link fence, the word MISSING stenciled in black. Five stuffed animals and an artificial rose adorn the sign, which holds fliers showing 13 missing women and three men.

The fliers reflect not just fears that their bodies might be on Sowell’s property, but also community members’ frustrations with how they say police treat missing-persons reports from their downtrodden neighborhood.

Some of the missing are women who lived on society’s fringe. Some were active or recovering drug users. Some had gone to jail, producing criminal records their families believe are the reason police didn’t take their disappearances seriously.

Gloria Walker was 43 when she disappeared May 20, 2007. She was an alcoholic and dabbled in drugs, said her aunt, Sandy Drain.

“I think police looked at it as, ‘Oh, just another drug addict gone,’ ” said Drain, who now cares for Walker’s two sons, 16 and 26.

Janice Webb was on her way to a Father’s Day gathering with her family when she disappeared, said fiancee Ronnie Bowie of Lakewood. Her grandmother lives in Sowell’s neighborhood.

Webb, the 47-year-old mother of a grown son, was a drug user, but had a good heart and would “give you the world,” Bowie said.

“She did things I wasn’t proud of,” he said. “That still don’t give nobody the right to kill.”

Though Bowie disapproved, Sowell’s neighborhood was one of the areas Webb frequented. Bowie says he went to police in Lakewood to report his fiancee missing, but they refused to take it because she was an adult.

“They said, ‘I’m sorry about your loss. But she’s a grown woman.’ ”

Later, he went back with her sister, but they still wouldn’t listen.

“If I was rich,” he said, “they’d have been looking for her.”