What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Note that if an individual is listed by name, but their appearance in the case is as a government official, then they should be counted as a government rather than as a private person. For example, in the case "Billy Jones & Alfredo Ruiz v Joe Smith" where Smith is a state prisoner who brought a civil rights suit against two of the wardens in the prison (Jones & Ruiz), the following values should be coded: number of appellants that fall into the category "natural persons" =0 and number that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials" =2. A similar logic should be applied to businesses and associations. Officers of a company or association whose role in the case is as a representative of their company or association should be coded as being a business or association rather than as a natural person. However, employees of a business or a government who are suing their employer should be coded as natural persons. Likewise, employees who are charged with criminal conduct for action that was contrary to the company policies should be considered natural persons.
If the title of a case listed a corporation by name and then listed the names of two individuals that the opinion indicated were top officers of the same corporation as the appellants, then the number of appellants should be coded as three and all three were coded as a business (with the identical detailed code). Similar logic should be applied when government officials or officers of an association were listed by name.
Your specific task is to determine the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Alexander TOWNS, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 87-5602.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued March 11, 1988.
Decided March 29, 1988.
Russell P. Butler (Keiffer, Ditrani, Johnston, Butler & Reinstein, Camp Springs, Md., on brief), for defendant-appellant.
Hollis Raphael Weisman, Asst. U.S. Atty. (Breckinridge L. Willcox, U.S. Atty., Baltimore, Md., on brief), for plaintiff-appellee.
Before WIDENER and CHAPMAN, Circuit Judges, and McMILLAN, United States District Judge for the Western District of North Carolina, sitting by designation.
CHAPMAN, Circuit Judge:
This appeal presents the question of whether the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) is an agency of the United States so that theft from the AAFES causes the government to suffer an actual property loss, subjecting the person accused of the theft to prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 641. We conclude that AAFES is an agency of the United States, and a theft of its property causes property loss to the United States and 18 U.S.C. § 641 is applicable, and we affirm.
I
Appellant was convicted before a United States Magistrate of the theft of two “Pillow Sacks” from the Army and Air Force Exchange Service at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was sentenced to pay a fine of $25, plus a $25 special assessment. Appellant appealed to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland and claimed that property of the AAFES was not property of the United States and that he could not be found guilty under 18 U.S.C. § 641. The district court ruled against the appellant and sustained his conviction, 668 F.Supp. 454. The appellant has raised the same issue on appeal to our court.
II
There is no contention that theft or shoplifting from an AAFES store does not cause loss to the AAFES. The question is whether such loss constitutes a loss to the United States so that it may be the subject of a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 641. The appellant relies upon our decision in Keane v. United States, 272 F. 577 (4th Cir. 1921), in which we held that the Post Exchange at Fortress Monroe was not such a department of the United States and that one who conspired to defraud an agent of the Post Exchange should not be deemed guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States. The precedential value of Keane ended with Standard Oil Co. of California v. Johnson, 316 U.S. 481, 62 S.Ct. 1168, 86 L.Ed. 1611 (1942). In that case the question presented was whether the Post Exchange constituted an arm of the government of the United States or a department thereof. The court concluded:
From all of this, we conclude that post exchanges as now operated are arms of the Government deemed by it essential for the performance of governmental functions. They are integral parts of the War Department, share in fulfilling the duties entrusted to it, and partake of whatever immunities it may have under the Constitution and federal statutes.
316 U.S. 485, 62 S.Ct. 1170.
In Brethauer v. United States, 333 F.2d 302 (8th Cir.1964), the court was faced with a criminal prosecution for defrauding the United States under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, and the issue was raised whether an Army Post Exchange constituted an agency of the United States within the false statements statute. The Eighth Circuit found that under Standard Oil Co. of California v. Johnson “it is compellingly clear that a Post Exchange, although created by regulations, is an arm of the Government and an agency within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1001.” Id. at 305. In Champaign-Urbana News Agency v. J.L. Cummins News Co., 632 F.2d 680 (7th Cir.1980), the court concluded that AAFES is an instrumentality of the United States for the purposes of federal antitrust legislation, that it is an integral part of the Department of Defense, and that it is an arm of the United States Government.
In United States v. Hopkins, 427 U.S. 123, 96 S.Ct. 2508, 49 L.Ed.2d 361 (1976), the court answered the argument that the exchange services are not agencies of the federal government because they operated with “nonappropriated funds.” The court found that the exchange services are created and administered pursuant to the general authority granted to the Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of the Air Force by 10 U.S.C. §§ 3012 and 8012, that its nonappropriated-fund status did not change its character, and that the employees of the exchange were employees of the United States. Id. at 127, 96 S.Ct. at 2511. In Army and Air Force Exchange Service v. Sheehan, 456 U.S. 728, 102 S.Ct. 2118, 72 L.Ed.2d 520 (1982), the court stated, The AAFES, like other military exchanges, is an “ ‘ar[m] of the government deemed by it essential for the performance of governmental functions ... and partake[s] of whatever immunities it may have under the [C]onstitution and federal statutes.’ ” 456 U.S. at 733-34, 102 S.Ct. at 2121-22.
We find no merit to appellant’s additional claim that 18 U.S.C. § 641 is void for vagueness.
AFFIRMED.
. Title 18, § 641 reads, in pertinent part:
Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof;
... if the value of such property does not exceed the sum of $100, he shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 1