Question on using getSelectedItem() method in JCombobox to retrieve values

[Charu Krishnan]

I am at the point in the project where I am trying to use JCombobox to populate Unique Carrier/Origin/Dest values and have suceeded displaying it on the GUI. Next I when I click on the search button I want to capture the values of Carrier/Origin/Dest as selected by the user and pass it eventually to the CriteriaFind Method. This is where I get a Null Pointer Exception
Here is the code I am using
//jcbCarrier1 is the combobox for the Carrier field
//jbSearch is the Search button that implements an action
//listener

class SearchListener implements ActionListener {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
findValue[1] =
(String)jcbCarrier1.getSelectedItem());
//Null pointer exception above on findValue[1]
System.out.println(" SearchListener value "
+ findValue[1]);
}
}
What am I doing wrong here, or should I be doing it some other way. Any help would be much appreciated
Regards
Charu