John Beale, Post-Gazette La Roche College junior Jennie Roth, a volunteer at Providence Family Support Center, meets President Bush yesterday. Click photo for larger image.

Jennie Roth's moment came yesterday afternoon, on the tarmac at Pittsburgh International Airport, standing in front of the leader of the free world.

"Thank you for your volunteer service," said President Bush, handing Roth a pin, the President's Volunteer Service Award, and giving her a two-handed presidential handshake.

"It was pretty quick," said Roth, 21.

Roth, a junior English major at La Roche College and frequent volunteer at Providence Family Support Center on the North Side, was part of the greeting crew that met Air Force One.

Just days before, Roth got a call on her cell phone from the White House, asking if she would like to meet the president, who would present her with the citation before visiting the family support center. The center provides parent education, job training, counseling, child care and preschool services for at-risk children.

Roth was nominated by one of the Sisters of Divine Providence, La Roche's founding congregation, which also runs the center.

For three years, Roth has served food at holiday meals, organized toy drives and participated in game nights with children who attend the center. She has career aspirations in serving others, and plans to go to graduate school to study public and international affairs.

After the airport, Roth and her mother, Carolyn, of Ross, joined the presidential motorcade, riding through the city in a van with several Secret Service agents.

"It was an experience, that's for sure," she said. "Seeing a policeman on every corner, roads blocked off. It's an honor just to meet the president; it's a big deal."

Police cordoned off several North Side streets yesterday as Bush and his entourage toured Providence Family Support Center. Residents gathered along the barricades, their video cameras trained on Brighton Road, eager to see the limos pass by or peeved that their daily activities were being curtailed.

"This is just show," said Tina Degonish, 46, who lives nearby. She walked her dog Spot, who wore a sandwich-board sign reading: "Dogs for Peace."

Others talked politics, or swapped ideas on how to trim down the motorcade and Secret Service operations.

"Why can't the president come here in a Mustang, all tricked out, with some rims," said Sheldon Harris, 18, who recently graduated from Oliver High School. "Put some spinners on it? You could never tell that it was the president coming up."

Down the road, a few dozen protesters, mostly students at Community College of Allegheny County, gathered at Brighton Road and Ridge Avenue for Bush's next stop. It was about a block from the CCAC gymnasium, where Bush was speaking, and the closest they could get to the action.

Peter Stolmer, 19, held up a sign: "Why does free speech need a zone?"

Earlier, two protesters were arrested at CCAC: the Rev. Jack O'Malley of Highland Park, a Catholic chaplain to the state AFL-CIO, and Molly Rush of Dormont, a community activist. They are co-founders of the pacificist Thomas Merton Center.

O'Malley and Rush refused to move from an area that had been secured for Bush's visit, said Pittsburgh police Detective Peg Sherwood.

She said that in general the protesters were "pretty good" about staying within designated areas, the so-called "free speech zones."

Toward the end of Bush's visit yesterday, police responded to a report of shots fired at Pennsylvania and Allegheny avenues. Four young black men in a white van, possibly stolen, were seen shooting through the van windows. Police didn't know who or what the men were shooting at, but no one was hurt.