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April 13, 2006
WALKOUT: Hundreds of students and other
members of the Humboldt State University packed the campus Quad
at noon last Thursday, after organizers associated with the annual
"Take Back the Night" anti-rape coalition arranged
a snap rally and classroom walkout . The walkout, which was immensely
well attended for a noontime event, was put together in about
"10 hours of insanity," according to organizer Willa
Damon, and was intended as an instant response to news that a
student had been raped on campus a few days earlier.
According to a University Police Department press
release, the rape occurred at around 7:40 p.m. on the night of
Tuesday, April 4, near the west end of Laurel Avenue, next to
the stairs that lead from the campus library's parking lot down
to LK Wood Boulevard. The victim reported that she was suddenly
approach by a man wearing a ski mask, gloves and a black and
red jacket and brandishing a knife. The victim said the man,
who was later described as a Caucasian adult around 6 feet tall
and of slender build, forced her into a silver Saturn 4-door
sedan and there assaulted her. The victim later drove herself
to the hospital, where evidence of the assault was confirmed.
Attendees of the rally chanted and sang along with
the organizers, many of them despondent over the fact that such
a crime could happen in this day and age, in a community as small
and peaceful as Arcata and Humboldt State. Many broke down in
tears. Activities were arranged: Women were offered a crash course
in self-defense, men the opportunity to join a group devoted
to stopping sexual assault. One professor who walked out of class
with her students said that she, too, had been a victim of rape,
and that it was long past time to put an end to it. She issued
a challenge and a warning to the male students in attendance:
"All of you guys who are heterosexual, you will be with
someone who has been raped. I guarantee it."
The UPD is still seeking leads in the case of Tuesday's
assault, and it asks anyone with information to call 826-5555.
The annual "Take Back the Night" event -- an international
rally against sexual violence -- will be held locally this Friday
evening, from 6 p.m. until midnight, on the Quad.
MUM'S THE WORD: A former employee of the
Pacific Lumber Co. turned belated whistleblower last month, when
he filed a wrongful-termination suit alleging that in early 2004,
Palco President Robert Manne ordered him not to report evidence
of contamination at a site where an unlined storm water retention
pond was to be built as part of a new sawmill operation.
Jimmy Dan Cook, who was Director of Business and
Community Development at Palco at the time and in charge of making
sure the sawmill and pond construction complied with environmental
laws, alleged in his lawsuit that as the site was dug up for
the new pond, workers uncovered a dump site filled with asbestos,
plastic-bagged garbage, mysterious barrels "with unknown
contents" and "shop residue." Cook's suit said
he raised concerns about contamination at the site, was told
to hush up, and when he resisted "was subjected to repeated
verbal abuse and threats from ... Manne." He alleges he
"suffered significant anxiety and emotional distress"
that led his doctor to place him on disability in August 2004.
Cook also alleges he was fired in 2005, which the company disputes.
Although the suit was filed on March 6 in the Humboldt
County Superior Court, it didn't hit the news until the Los
Angeles Times reported it on April 7. Oddly, that same day,
Eureka's Times-Standard reporter Kimberly Wear tried to
get a copy of the lawsuit from the court's records department,
as she related in an April 8 story: "A clerk there denied
the existence of the lawsuit on Friday afternoon and refused
to look up the case, saying she had already tried earlier in
the day," Wear wrote. So Wear found a copy through other
means.
Palco's Chuck Center told the L.A. Times
that "These allegations are not correct" and that Cook
had not been fired. Palco spokesman Chris Manson told the Times-Standard's
Wear that he expects it will be "proven that the allegations
and assertions ... in the lawsuit are baseless." (Palco's
not talking to the Journal -- "for now," said
Manson last week, in response to a request for an interview for
an unrelated story.)
Cook's attorney, Zachary Zwerdling, said Tuesday
that Cook had been agonizing over the decision to file suit.
(Zwerdling, incidentally, was dubbed a 2006 "Northern California
Super Lawyer" last month by the publishers of Law &
Politics magazine and San Francisco Magazine, following
peer votage.)
Pacific Lumber has one month to file a response
to Cook's charges. Meanwhile, the California Regional Water Quality
Control Board, North Coast Region, has told media that the agency
would monitor water quality in the area and seek records from
Palco on the pond's construction.
CLAN DIKEMAN: The June 6 election is now
about seven and a half weeks away, and it's maybe a bit surprising
that it's taken this long for things to heat up in what will
surely be that date's most contentious contest. For better or
worse, though, it's looking more and more like the battle for
district attorney will be nearly as acrimonious as 2004's failed
recall attempt against incumbent DA Paul Gallegos, the wounds
from which are still raw on both sides of the aisle.
In recent days, Deputy DA Worth Dikeman, who is
seeking to take the position of the county's top law enforcement
official away from Gallegos, objected to the way in which state
Assemblymember Patty Berg (D-Eureka) and the Humboldt County
Democratic Central Committee have gone about endorsing candidates.
Dikeman, a lifelong Democrat, charges that both organizations
have been cavalier in the manner in which they have gone about
endorsing (or, possible, preparing to endorse) a candidate in
the race.
In a response to Berg, who announced her endorsement
of Gallegos last week, Dikeman charged that the assemblymember
neglected to do her homework before lending her name to the Gallegos
campaign. "It disappoints me deeply that she did not speak
with me before endorsing Gallegos," Dikeman wrote, adding
that in his four years in office Gallegos has done "significant
damage to both the District Attorney's office and our criminal
justice system."
The 22-member Democratic Central Committee has
yet to endorse a candidate in the race, though a subcommittee
on endorsements has backed Gallegos and the full organization
could do so as early as its regularly scheduled meeting on the
evening of Wednesday, April 12 (after the Journal went
to press). In another open letter, Dikeman asked members of the
committee to refrain from voting to endorse in the race, as the
committee, he said, had traditionally refrained from supporting
one Democrat over another for district attorney, a non-partisan
office. (Committee members have said that the organization has
picked between Democrats in the past.) In addition, Dikeman asked
DCC chair Patrick Riggs to refrain from voting on the endorsement
question, as he previously served as Gallegos' campaign spokesperson
during the recall.
These purely political issues, as well as substantive
ones concerning the duties and functions of the district attorney,
will likely be among the topics discussed at the candidates'
first debate, to be held this Thursday (April 13) before the
Humboldt County chapter of the Republican Party. The debate will
be held at 6:30 p.m. at OH's Townhouse (corner of Sixth and Summer
streets, Eureka).
BIG FBI BUST: A federal grand jury last
week indicted McKinleyville resident Christina Kim, 42, with
identity theft, mail fraud and 49 counts of bank fraud, saying
that the former owner of the Chosun House Korean restaurant in
Arcata had for nearly eight years stolen personal information
from foreign students studying at Humboldt State and used the
information to receive bank loans and open credit card accounts
in their names. Kim is also charged with using the names and
identities of several of her own family members for the same
purpose, creating at least 12 false identities in total, according
to the indictment.
"She would use the monies to pay for personal
expenses, including a new home; designer clothes, shoes and handbags;
and jewelry," the indictment reads. "She would not
pay back the monies fraudulently obtained from the banks and
credit card companies. All in all, Kim defrauded financial institutions
of approximately $1 million."
The charges follow a year-long investigation by
the Federal Bureau of Investigations into Kim's activities, which
, according to the indictment, are believed to have started in
October 1998. Among the other specifics offered by the paperwork
filed in the case: Kim allegedly told the Farmer's Insurance
company that she had owned a well-known ancient painting by a
Korean artist, and that the painting had recently been stolen
from her. She apparently successfully persuaded the insurers
to pay her $91,000 for the loss. In fact, according to the indictment,
she had never owned the painting in the first place.
A spokesperson for the FBI said Tuesday that the
case was originally referred to the agency by the Arcata Police
Department in early 2005, and that both the APD and HSU's University
Police Department worked closely with the agency in investigating
it. Kim was scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Wednesday
morning (April 12) in federal court in San Francisco.
CLARIFICATION: In last week's cover story,
"Scrubs and Suits," a comment by Marc Levin was mischaracterized.
It attributed the following comment (not a direct quote) to Levin:
"Other doctors `cherry-pick' from money-making services
at the hospital by starting their own outpatient centers for
things like urology, gastroenterology and outpatient surgery,
leaving St. Joe's with cases that don't pay."
Levin said in a follow-up call that Humboldt Radiology's
new outpatient facility could be considered a local example of
"cherry-picking," but local gastroenterologists and
urologists have not engaged in the practice. "In fact, they
looked at free-standing consumer models and made a conscious
decision not to do it here," Levin said. "They
recognize the need to work with the hospital [for its survival]."
TOP
Bridgeville big news again
From general stores to yoga retreats ... what's
next?
by HELEN SANDERSON
This isn't the first time the sale of Bridgeville
has generated national coverage. In fact, it's not the second
time either.
When the 83-acre town on the banks of the Van Duzen
River was first hawked on eBay in late 2002, news sources far
and wide descended on the sparsely populated town, grabbing interviews
with various townspeople and former owner Elizabeth Lapple.
The sale came to a close at the height of the hoopla,
following a last-minute bidding frenzy that reached $1.78 million.
But the buyer had a serious case of remorse after realizing the
town was in major disrepair, and backed out of the deal.
In 2004, the town made headlines again when Bruce
Krall, an Orange County mortgage banker, bought it on the traditional
market for $700,000.
Two years and "hundreds of thousands"
of dollars in repairs later, Krall has put the town back on eBay,
with an asking price of $1.75 million. Included with the acreage
are seven rental houses, a main house, four cabins, a vacant
machine shop and café, a 136-year-old functioning post
office, two Quonset huts and nine individual parcels.
Krall explained that he's selling because his family
does not want to relocate to the remote area and manage a retreat
center, which was his plan. Ideas for a hideaway for artists,
yoga or meditation enthusiasts or family counseling groups have
been kicked around.
"It's still my dream," Krall said.
Krall was so intent on the idea that he secured
conditional use permits from the planning commission for an 80-person
facility and a new septic system.
After articles ran in newspapers like the Los
Angeles Times Krall said he has been inundated with e-mails
and phone calls from potential buyers, some as far away as Belgium.
Local resident and Bridgeville Community Center
organizer Mike Guerriero said he's pleased with Krall's renovation
efforts and hopes the next owner will fulfill the plans for a
resort and also have a good relationship with Bridgeville School,
of which he's been a board member.
However, Guerriero, a softspoken graphic artist
who has lived on 40 acres outside of town for 26 years, said
that not everyone in the town welcomes the limelight.
"It's good for the owner of the place because
he's able to achieve a huge amount of PR," he said. "But
it's throwing a lot of attention on a really small community
that doesn't necessarily want to have a lot of attention focused
on it."
But it seems the media's infatuation with the Humboldt
County hamlet won't end at least until the bidding closes on
May 4.
Back in 1973 when Laura June Pawlus decided to
sell the tiny wooded town 25 miles east of Fortuna, she wrote
a letter about Bridgeville to the LA Times and they picked
up the story; so did Time and The New York Times. Pawlus'
pitch worked. Lapple, who was living in Los Angeles, bought Bridgeville
that year for $150,000.
Pawlus is now deceased but her daughter, Jessie
Wheeler, 62, kept those old articles, along with a lot of other
memorabilia from the place where she grew up. "I'm like
the town historian," she said in a phone call from her Eureka
home, where she relocated from Bridgeville just a few years ago.
She recalled that her family's house didn't have electricity
until she was 13 years old.
Wheeler's family purchased the riverfront property
in the early 1900s when it was on the stagecoach route. It was
a bustling place back then, she said.
Her relatives managed a two-story, 18-room hotel;
they ran the general store, owned a blacksmith shop and a livery
stable, rented out small houses and ran the post office -- her
great grandmother, grandfather and mother all served as town
postmaster.
When Wheeler's grandparents married in Fortuna
around 1910, they traveled the dirt roads back to Bridgeville
by horse and buggy. It took them two days.
And it seems to longtime resident Joyce Barnwell,
76, that a slower pace was a good thing for Bridgeville. The
town was actually more active, she said, before the county replaced
the original bridge, built in 1925, with a new one that makes
for a smoother, faster drive.
"That bridge didn't help any," Barnwell
said. "Now you just go swooshing by."
Another change that drove some people away from
the town, Wheeler said, was when the Lapples raised the rent
back in the 1970s.
"So many of them moved to Campton Heights
[in Fortuna] they called it Little Bridgeville," she said.
In 1977, the Lapples sold Bridgeville to a Christian
group, but later foreclosed on the property when payments weren't
made.
Over the past 30 years, Bridgeville steadily fell
into disrepair and by the time Bruce Krall bought the place a
massive cleanup was needed.
Wheeler, who still visits the Bridgeville Community
Center regularly, said 40-foot tall "mountains of refuse"
covered in blackberry brambles dotted the property. Krall described
the mess as "not to be believed."
"Everything looks a lot nicer now," said
Wilma Buergler, owner of Swain's Flat Outpost, about 5 miles
from Bridgeville in Carlotta.
Buergler and her husband bought Swain's 5 years
ago, made repairs to the 6-acre property and, just like Krall,
are now selling so they can move to San Diego, where their extended
family lives.
Swain's went on the market last week.
"You can see it at www.pacificbay.com,"
she said.
And while there have been no bids placed on Bridgeville
yet, Krall said that's not unusual, as anyone who's bought goods
on eBay knows that "90 percent [of the bids] usually come
in the last half-hour."
Krall is confident the property will sell but conceded
he has "mixed emotions" about letting it go.
"It's not without some sadness, that's for
sure," he said.
TOP
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