CARY - From his studio at Wired 96.5, live on the air, Mike Hershberger picked up the phone to hear a voice brimming with tiger blood.

"Hey," said the voice, casual, but possibly insane. "It's Charlie Sheen calling."

So began the biggest coup of Hershberger's zany radio career - bigger than the time he chatted up Janet Jackson, more daredevil than the night he sneaked backstage for Kanye West's sound check.

On a wild hunch, Hershberger, a Cary High School graduate and Philadelphia drive-time announcer, hired a private plane to circle Sheen's Los Angeles home earlier this year towing a gigantic banner with the phone number for Wired 96.5, offering Sheen love, sympathy and a job.

And Sheen called back - just 15 minutes later.

"You guys are radical," declared Sheen, whose face was by then appearing on every television screen in the nation, ranting about crack and porn stars and boogers. "You hatched this brainstorm like the Vatican assassins you are. How could I not? If I did that over your house, you're calling me back, right?"

Hershberger, who goes by Kannon on-air with Wired 96.5, has lured Lady Gaga onto the show, so he knows how to approach famously off-kilter stars. Once you've interviewed a singer who sometimes shows up encased in a giant egg, you get a feel for the flamboyant mind. Hershberger tried the sky banner gambit with Sheen, betting that a half-crazy celebrity would respond only to a half-crazy request.

The Wired 96.5 team thought about just knocking on Sheen's door, or hitting him up on Twitter. But an out-of-control actor who boasts about possessing the blood of a jungle cat and a 10,000-year-old brain - a mind that normal humans can't understand - required an invitation with a little more swagger.

So they called LA pilots, and the first one bit. For $1,200, he would circle for an hour, flying low enough for his engine's drone to roust Sheen from his den.

Sheen called in the middle of Kannon's 3-to-7 afternoon-commute show, predicting, incorrectly, that he'd soon be invited back to "Two and a Half Men," and offering a few tidbits about his custody battle.

A few of the gems from the conversation:

"They can't really ruffle this assassin's feathers, right?"

"I got to beat these trolls to the punch."

"I was fending off the attempts of a sub-being to hijack my mind."

Then he promised to call again for the next morning's show.

"You're assuming I'm going to sleep at some point?" Sheen asked Kannon. "Last I checked, sleep was for infants."

Sheen sounded level-headed, cool and bound for sobriety, Hershberger said. He may have some delusions about the work involved in overcoming addiction, but he sounded like he wanted to break through.

The station got tons of publicity from the pair of interviews, including shouts from Hershberger's old friends back in Cary.

To Hershberger/Kannon, there's no shame in milking the star's downward spiral.

"This show is centered around pop culture, and he is a figure in pop culture," Hershberger said. "We certainly don't condone his actions, but he's a piece of pop culture. We wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't cover Charlie Sheen."