SOUTHLAND MAN REPORTS DRIVEWAY FIND.

Byline: David Bradvica Staff Writer

NORCO - The way David Scherotter sees it, he either touched a piece of history on Friday, or just a very odd-looking piece of wind-blown trash.

The 31-year-old Norco High School teacher believes a burnt hard plastic piece of debris he found in his driveway after coming home from work about 4:45 p.m. Friday may be a piece of the space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated Feb. 1 while re-entering the atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board.

Scherotter reported the piece of debris to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, which has placed the debris piece in its evidence locker for safekeeping until officials at NASA come out to claim it, sheriff's spokesman Dennis Gutierrez said late Saturday.

For the moment, no one is sure if the debris was part of the space shuttle. But Scherotter said he noticed a resemblance to a piece of possible shuttle debris that was found earlier in the week more than 100 miles away in Joshua Tree in the San Bernardino County high desert.

``I looked up the other piece on the Internet and I thought, 'This looks similar,''' said Scherotter, who quickly took several digital photos of the debris with a ruler nearby to indicate is size, about two inches by three inches. ``It was burnt looking on the back side and had a charcoal-like residue.''

Sheriff's deputies are withholding judgment on what the debris might or might not be.