The call was not exactly a career-builder.

It was in my first week as an Illinois-based reporter for the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat when a cop I knew dialed me up with a hot tip: A guy had been arrested on charges he molested a child in Caseyville. The defendant, he said, was some kind of big shot at the Globe.

Uh oh.

The suspect's name meant nothing to me, but neither did about 99 percent of the names on the staff list. This one turned out to be quite high on that list, although thankfully not in the newsroom. I alerted my boss, who responded with an uh-oh of his own.

I wondered for a day or three about potential job repercussions after seeing my byline atop what for the paper was a very embarrassing story. I was still on new-employee probation.

It wasn't so much that I had reason not to trust my superiors. I just didn't know them well enough to be comfortable. Not that I had any choice. Covering crime in that area was part of my job. This was news. Our competition was sure to print it anyway. We used the story and I never heard a discouraging word about it.

I dredged up that distant memory upon hearing the news about somebody else whose name I didn't recognize: Joe Paterno. Really. Friends can attest that I'm not a sports fan. In a trivia quiz, I might have guessed Paterno to be in the "Saturday Night Live" troupe. These days, a better guess would be "Law and Order."

With everybody and his nephew writing about football coaching legend Paterno and the Pennsylvania State University child molesting scandal he allegedly let slide, I'll forgo judgment about him here.

I'll forgo judgment as well on Paterno's onetime heir apparent, Jerry Sandusky, who is criminally accused of — but denies — a string of sexual assaults against eight young boys over a 15-year period. Some of it supposedly took place on campus.

The name on my mind today is Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant at Penn State in 2002 when he supposedly told Paterno of witnessing Sandusky raping a boy in a locker room shower.

I'm imagining McQueary watching his life's ambition flash before his eyes. Here was a guy ready to parlay credentials as a former Penn State quarterback into a dream coaching career, suddenly holding the power to disgrace his alma mater and invite the enmity of reputation-conscious bosses and a generation of monied benefactors.

Still, he trusted Paterno enough to tell the head coach what he saw. And contrary to an earlier report, McQueary may have stopped the incident in progress and notified police directly, if an email that surfaced this week can be believed.

McQueary, long since a full-time assistant coach, has been suspended indefinitely. I'm not clear if it was for what he did or what he didn't do. Penn State cited concerns about "multiple threats," again leaving the nature of them unclear.

Given all this, I have to wonder what McQueary would do differently if he could. Look the other way? Make a bigger noise?

It raises the most important issue in this whole mess. What might we all do differently based on things we're seeing there? Any of us could become a Mike McQueary. Penn State-gate will provide an enduring guidepost to anyone reaching the intersection of tell and don't tell.

Lots of folks will tell you how they would have punched out Sandusky and called every cop in Pennsylvania. Really?

Pick a real person at work or school or church. Someone highly respected, very important and in whom everyone — including you — is emotionally invested. Now, imagine finding him (or her) with a naked child in the bathroom. Or looting the petty cash drawer. Or stealing the credit for someone else's hard work.

Do you trust those around you to support the exposure of this highly inconvenient truth? Can you face the prospect of being fired, suspended, threatened or ostracized? Of risking your dream when somebody else surely will discover and reveal the transgression anyway?

There has never been a better time to dedicate ourselves to justice with a renewed promise of protection and understanding for those who may come forward with something that's not exactly a career-builder.