Mendocino County Today: Monday, Nov. 27, 2017

• Bob Kirkpatrick
• Body Found
• Boonville Gauge
• Mental Morass
• Pixar Perv
• Grassy Knolling
• Creep Spotting
• Human Shield
• Little Dog
• Trough Fire
• Noyo Sky
• Engine Mice
• Yesterday's Catch
• Donation Tracking
• FB Sky
• Typewriter Repair
• Low-Income Housing
• Fairy Tales
• Jailhouse Reading

BOB KIRKPATRICK, February 11, 1929 to November 16, 2017

Bob was born in Fort Bragg in 1929 and grew up in Healdsburg — "the buckle of the prune belt." His confidence, creativity and communicability opened doors for him as he made his way from the US Navy to Cal Berkeley and on to Stanford for his doctorate. Bob was selected for his first School Superintendency in Los Banos at age 32, becoming the youngest Superintendent in California. There he established Title 9 and Desegregation. Bob came to Willits in 1981 to lead the Willits Unified School District. In 1990, Bob was elected Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools.

After a storied career in administration, he had a second vocation as a Mendocino College professor teaching Raku ceramics in Ukiah for 13 years. Bob died at home on November 16. Bob's wife Kathleen, his children Rob (Ruth) and Kathy (Paul), his brother Don and sister Betty, and his grandchildren Sean and Mackenzie will miss him forever.

MISSING GRANDFATHER FROM ARIZONA FOUND DEAD

Yesterday, Southern Humboldt searchers located the body of Keith Olsen, the grandfather on his way from Arizona to his granddaughter’s wedding whose car was located on Zenia Mountain Road. Diana Totten, Aurora Studebaker, Kristal Gray, and Casey Odisio discovered Olsen’s body not far from where his car had been abandoned.

Diana Totten said, “There was no evidence of foul play.” Totten has been working on the case since Tuesday when she was introduced to the family of Keith Olsen. Totten said her team met with the family to narrow down where the search should start and their investigation led them to believe that with Olsen beginning to have dementia issues, it was most likely that he had gotten lost rather than been the victim of a criminal act.

“Without any evidence of foul play, we narrowed our search area to where the car was located,” Totten explained. “We profile the person and you kind of get into their mind. We try to understand what they would do if things start going wrong.”

Totten said the family was very helpful in providing important details. “Having worked on many missing person cases, we have learned to build a profile of the missing person,” Totten explained. “We do this by talking to family members and others to try to understand how the person became lost and what they would do…In this case, the family was able to give great information such as his state of mind, his way of dealing with stress and his clothing and shoes, the fact he used a cane and had trouble walking, and many more indicators including his age and possibly some slight dementia.”

On Wednesday, the tracking team went to Covelo. “We checked a lot of video footage [from surveillance cameras at businesses] in the timeline that he might have come through the area,” she explained. “We felt pretty strongly working with the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office that he had come through the Covelo area.”

The team passed out missing person flyers in hopes some locals had seen him. Eventually, they decided their next step was to search again around the area Olsen’s car had been located.

On Saturday, the team arrived at the scene to look around. “We started to search for signs of him around where the car was located but had been towed last week,” Totten explained. “Also, twelve days had passed and several rain storms had gone through our area.”

While at the location Olsen’s car had been discovered, the profile the family had helped provide the searchers helped them narrow down the search area. Totten said, “Within about 500 feet south of where the car had been, there was a cattle guard across the road. They are hard to cross by foot even on a good day, so knowing Keith had trouble walking and sometimes used a walker and most often used a cane, and realizing it was dark and storming the night he got to this location, it was unlikely he would have been able to get across without some difficulty.”

The cattle guard provided “a bit of boundary on the search area for us,” Totten explained. “We were then able to locate his tracks and we then were able to find his body.”

Totten said while they will probably never know for sure what happened, her team was able to make some good guesses.

She believes that somehow Olsen had gotten off of his intended path up I-5 and ended up on the wrong route. She said that it was likely dark and rainy when Olsen headed out what she called the “long, lonely road” between Covelo and Kettenpom. For some reason, she says, he stopped not long after going over a cattle guard. “He left his vehicle, he walked a short distance..It appeared that [Olsen] was disoriented…He took a wilderness deer trail and went further into the woods. This is a very rugged and forested area.”

Soon after Olsen took the wrong path, he stumbled, Totten said. According to her, his tracks showed that “he had fallen down a little hill and into a dry wash. He kinda crawled along through there….He got to a place that was a little flatter and laid down.” He didn’t get up again.

Totten said, “There doesn’t appear to be any foul play. Trinity County Sheriff’s Office will be investigating further.”

Totten is proud of her team. “Wilderness man-tracking is a very intricate and detailed discipline,” she explained. “Every case is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Totten said her team works hard to stay up on their skills so that they are “able to bring closure to families.”

(Courtesy, KymKemp.com/Redheaded Black Belt)

Earlier Chapter: Grandfather Headed From Arizona to Washington State Disappears; Bullet Riddled Car Found in Zenia Area

MARSHALL NEWMAN: "Miracle of miracles, the NOAA (National Weather Service) Boonville rain gauge began working again on November 24 and currently seems in general agreement with the Weather Underground Boonville rain readings. I doubt anyone will come forward to take credit for putting things right, as he or she likely is the same person who hadn’t noticed it stopped working roughly a month previous." (Don't be shy, Marshall. You got 'er done.)

WHERE’S DR. JEANINE MILLER?

The last on-line reference to Dr. Miller we can find any mention of her is in the minutes to the September Behavioral Health Board meeting. We're wondering if she hasn't been non-personed like the famous Alan 'The Kid' Flora, Mendocino County's answer to Leon Trotsky.

APPARENTLY Dr. Miller remains Mendocino’s Mental Health Director. But you wouldn’t know it since her brief stint in the public eye in the aftermath of the Ortner Experience when she oversaw the transition from Ortner to Redwood Schrader Management Inc. or whatever they’re called now. Now you saw her, now you don't.

WE MENTION IT because it’s another indication of how little attention is paid to what Sheriff Allman rightly says is the County’s biggest public health problem. Ms. Miller has disappeared from the public eye because, as we’ve said many times before, nobody really cares about mental health, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary. The Board of Supervisors/County/State/Feds spend upwards of $30 million a year on it in Mendo alone, but nobody has the slightest interest in what it’s spent on, never asks about how things are going, require no status reports… And the visibly deranged seemed to increase every day, as a drive down State Street in Ukiah confirms.

TAKE THIS RANDOM QUOTE from those September minutes from the Supes:

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/home/showdocument?id=13773

“BHRS Director Miller reviewed some of the changes in how programs are being funded and where the funding is coming from. There was discussion on how dollars would be leveraged from other HHSA programs and MHSA. MHSA dollars will be sued as match for some Whole Person Care Grant Programs. The MHSA team is looking for how to fund Positive Parenting Program (PPP), it might be posible to fund thorugh reversion funds or leverage other funds.”

(Check the link yourself, there’s nothing in the entire meeting about clients, how they’re served or what the “funding” is spent on. At the end there’s even a mention of trying to determine who comes to their meetings, but not a word about the people they’re allegedly there to serve or monitor.)

SO THERE YOU GO! Proof positive of the primary mission of the entire Mental Health apparatus: Funding, and "leveraging" that funding to get more funding!

FROM the Press Democrat accounts of the Pixar Perv:

"These included statements that Lasseter [the Pixar magnate] was known for ‘grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes’' in situations that were not always purely social, as at parties."

LIKE, otherwise women were fair game for the portly groper?

THE GRASSY KNOLL, an update. I was about a third of the way through, "JFK and the Unspeakable — Why He Died and Why It Matters” by James W. Douglass when I recommended it. The book was recommended to me by Jeff Blankfort who got his recommendation on the book from Ray McGovern, former CIA man become lefty become author. I was sorry to have missed Blankfort’s KZYX interview with Douglass. I am now here to modify my recommendation, and without citing chapter and verse am also here to say I still recommend the book as consistently interesting, but I think a lot of Douglass’s assertions, that there was an earlier Chicago-based conspiracy to murder Kennedy for instance, are single sourced by people who don’t seem totally credible. I’m also not convinced that Kennedy was not a fully committed Cold Warrior, albeit a much more flexible one than the other crackpot realists then driving American foreign policy. If Oswald was, as he claimed before he was gunned down by the Mafia-affiliated Jack Ruby, simply a “patsy,” he had to have been the all-time naive patsy. “OK, Lee, we’re gonna get you a job at the Book Depository. Now that you’re there we want you up on the 6th Floor with your mail order rifle, the one with the scope on it, and when Kennedy’s motorcade comes around the corner you pretend to shoot at him while the two other guys shoot from the front. We’ll get you outta there, no prob.” Oswald may have been the patsy he said he was, but had he lived he would have had a lot of ’splaining to do to exempt himself from sole responsibility. I think he was definitely a shooter, if not the shooter, but I also think Douglass makes a strong case that there was some kind of conspiracy to kill Kennedy and that Oswald was employed by the American government at least as an FBI informant. How all the moving parts to the conspiracy moved, and at whose behest they moved is not known.

DEBRA KEIPP WRITES:

"Saw this lately and had to comment on local pagans… Not Manson followers. Will the first Valleyite who wasn't friends with Treefrog Jones or Charles Eng when they invaded Valley, please stand up!?!?!”

WELL, I can certainly stand up and would claim to be among the majority of Valley people who were definitely not friends with either Tree Frog Johnson or Charles Ng, or any other of the world class maniacs who briefly made their murderous homes in the Anderson Valley. I did get ripped off by the Moonies when I bought about thirty elderly, non-laying hens from them. And, on still summer nights, everyone in Boonville could hear Moon's novitiates' hypnotic chanting as they deep-cycled on brain wash. Frog I would see riding through town with his captive child catamite on a too-small motorcycle. The hippies said he was a great babysitter, always ready and eager to spend quality time with the kids. A friend gave me an old step-van I quickly put up for sale because I had no use for it. Frog appeared with a friend to have a look but refused to acknowledge my presence. I remember being so irritated with his rudeness I wanted to give him a swift kick or two. The friend later explained, "He doesn't talk to straight people." In light of Frog developments and his capture in a step-van with a little girl that he and the catamite, by then an adolescent, had kidnapped, I was relieved that Frog's sordid chomos adventures hadn't occurred in my step-van. Ng I pegged as retarded. He had that look. I had no direct experience with him or his pal, Leonard Lake. I'd see them walking along 128 in camo gear, and I knew Lake worked at the Boonville Hotel as a dishwasher and served as a volunteer fireman. Another fireman told me, "Yeah, yeah, he was a psycho alright, but we didn't know that then. And you know what? He was our recording secretary. Had the best handwriting you'll ever see." Lake's wife, a teacher's aide at the Boonville Junior High tried to recruit girls, who happened to include my daughter, to Lake's hot tub so he could "photograph" them. I was among several parents who got her fired. No personal knowledge of Jim Jones other than meeting people close to him, and the Manson gang was gone by the time I arrived in the Anderson Valley. Kenneth Parnell lived way the hell out Mountain View Road where his kidnapped catamite, Steven Stayner, attended Point Arena schools. Parnell and Stayner also lived in Comptche. No Mendo school person, incidentally, ever inquired about Parnell's relationship with Stayner. The maniacs, it always has to be said, stuck close to the counter-culture, anything goes sectors of the Mendo community. "Straight people," then and now, pegged creeps as creeps.

SHERIFF SHEA, as recalled by the PD: "His department was marked with greater controversy in later years, including a 1985 botched drug raid where deputies targeted the wrong house for a major marijuana smuggling operation, and a 1987 incident where a deputy used a youth as a human shield to fend off an angry mob. Shea retired after two terms, citing accomplishments such as a countywide narcotics task force and an anti-marijuana program “that’s the political envy of the state.”

THAT BOTCHED RAID made Point Arena's Billy Hay a millionaire. Not that the Hay family didn't earn it, what with being bullied, insulted, and physically mistreated for a number of hours until the macho masterminds figured out they were on the wrong property.

A DEPUTY fending off "an angry mob" with "a youth as a human shield" seems to have escaped our eagle-eyed vigilance, but has certainly piqued our interest. We're going to research that one and report back.

THE FOLLOWING is all we could find, but if an “angry mob” was involved that mob was not mentioned in any account we could find. (Mr. Dorner, Mr. George Dorner. White courtesy telephone, please.) We did find this paragraph from the AVA, of April 20, 2016:

SHERIFF'S DEPUTY CRAIG KEISER has died from a fast-moving cancer. Keiser enjoyed a long and unblemished career with the Mendocino County department save for a bizarre episode in Covelo when he was a rookie cop. He'd stopped two young men with whom he was soon engaged in a vicious, post-stop fight. Matt Dalson, then 17 years old, was arrested and charged with attempted murder because it was determined he'd knifed Keiser. Dalson was acquitted by a jury after it learned that the deputy was drunk when he encountered Dalson. Dalson had claimed self-defense. A Willits emergency room doctor testified that Dalson had suffered the worst injuries he'd seen from a beating. This all happened when Tim Shea was Sheriff and unwitting rookie deputies from SoCal were being assigned to Round Valley.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “This is their idea of a Christmas decoration! Unbelievable!”

TROUGH FIRE

Bruce McEwen Writes: The outbuilding at the Trough was used to store left-over stuff from the parking lot yard sales that used to go on at the Trough. Many regulars would bring stuff to sell and set up tables in the Trough's big parking lot. When it was over, the stuff went in the storage shed. It was back in the southwest corner of the property, next to that old rundown place where your brother once lived when Robert Mailer was a kid, and there were some boards in the fence that could be taken out and a kid could get in and access a secluded little hidie-hole behind the shed -- to smoke meth and other things back there. It would be my considered opinion that this was the cause of the fire, as there would be no good reason to torch the place for insurance money or anything like that. And it was far enough away from any other buildings that the fire dept. could let it burn down w/out much danger of it spreading. The most significant loss would have been some long folding tables and chairs used for Roger's Famous Barbecues at the Trough in the Good Old Days. The wood pile for the fireplace inside the Trough was close to the shed, but all that cord wood would have been long gone by now, so only bark and wood-pile debris would have been left as fire hazards.

NOYO PARK SOUTH

(Photo by Susie de Castro)

RONNIE JAMES, the Mendo Coast's go-to animal lady, asked people for their fave recipes for keeping mice out of their car engines, a question I've asked myself after seeing the damage they did to a friend's truck, a truck often driven: "Thanks for all the anti-rodent suggestions," Ms. James writes, "here's the list: peppermint oil on cotton wads or spray, lavender, Bounce dryer sheets, moth balls, and something called Rodent Sheriff, FreshCab, sonic buzzers, and simply leaving the hood up. Peppermint oil was the most frequently mentioned..."

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 26, 2017

DWAYNE ARNOLD, Sacramento/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

BRET BENGSTON, Ukiah. Parole violation.

SCOTT BOISSONNAULT, Ukiah. DUI.

ROBERT DECKER, Willits. Contracting without a license.

JOSHUA GUEVARA, Ukiah. Attempted burglary, burglary tools, probation revocation.

MICHAEL KOROMA JR., Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

PHILLIP LOPEZ JR., Ukiah. Parole violation.

MICHAEL PATE, Tahoe Vista/Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

FREDERICK WARD, Ukiah. Petty theft.

ANTHONY WOODWARD, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

THE FOLLOWING appeared in Sunday's Press Democrat. SoCo fire victims are not receiving donated millions:

Aid Leaders Attempt To Clarify Picture On Donations Going To North Bay Fire Victims

by Eloísa Ruano-Gunzález

Tens of millions of dollars have been donated in recent weeks to assist residents affected by last month’s deadly North Bay wildfires, but the outpouring has left some survivors of the disaster seeking greater clarity about how the relief money will be distributed.

Jil Child reached out for assistance after the Tubbs fire destroyed her Fountaingrove home in the Vintage Woods development behind Sweet T’s restaurant. She said she got $1,000 from the North Bay Fire Relief fund, spearheaded by the Redwood Credit Union, state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and The Press Democrat. While it was double the amount she received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Child, 54, said it far from covered the cost of replacing clothing, furniture and other necessities she lost in the fire, forcing her to further deplete her savings. Many friends have had to do the same after losing their homes.

“We’ve seen very little money that’s out there,” Child said. “$1,500 doesn’t even replace a computer.”

She attempted to seek additional donations after she heard about the $17 million raised through the Band Together Bay Area concert earlier this month at AT&T Park. She ultimately was referred back to the North Bay Fire Relief fund, which received some of the concert proceeds but doesn’t allow victims to apply for assistance more than once.

It’s frustrating not knowing where the larger pool donations for various different agencies and groups are going or how to access them, Child said.

“It just makes us sick when we hear another figure they’ve raised when we’ve seen very little,” she said.

Sonoma County Supervisor Susan Gorin said she’s heard similar frustrations from residents on social media. While there’s no gatekeeper overseeing all the donations, she said nonprofits and organizations are starting to come together to get a clearer picture of how much money is rolling in and how it’s been handed out.

“Accountability and transparency will be important,” said Gorin, who along with Supervisor Lynda Hopkins was assigned to work with the city of Santa Rosa to track the funds. “We want to make sure the folks who are entitled to the assistance and need the assistance receive the assistance.”

The Community Foundation Sonoma County will hold a meeting Tuesday with major fundraisers to talk about the donations received and strategies on how and when the money is distributed, said Elizabeth Brown, the organization’s president and CEO. They’ll also discuss future community needs.

Her foundation so far has raised $8 million for fire victims, but it’s planning to use the money to address more long-term needs rather than provide immediate cash relief. Brown said the money will be distributed to nonprofits who already are stretched thin serving fire victims. (emphasis added)

“We’re giving ourselves some time to listen and to learn and to leverage our fund so that we can maximize each charitable dollar,” she said.

The North Bay Fire Relief fund is considered the largest fund dedicated to the immediate assistance of fire victims. Nearly $14 million, or 60 percent of the $23 million raised, already has been committed to help thousands of fire victims in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties.

“It sounds like a lot of money until you break it up in four counties,” said Brett Martinez, Redwood Credit Union CEO and president.

He said the need is great. They’re still getting applications from people who lost homes, jobs and wages during the fires. In Sonoma County alone, the fires destroyed 5,100 homes and killed 23 people.

As applications begin to taper down, Martinez said they’ll look at whether they can go back and offer fire victims additional money.

So far, $7 million has gone in the form $1,000 checks to victims who lost their homes, regardless if they owned or rented. More than $1 million went to hundreds of children to replace their school supplies, books and clothing lost in the fires.

The North Bay Fire Relief fund also partnered with nonprofits, such as California Human Development, to provide more than $3 million to people who lost jobs or wages during the fires. Some of that money also went to UndocuFund, an effort launched by Graton Day Labor Center, North Bay Organizing Project and North Bay Jobs with Justice to provide financial assistance to undocumented families impacted by the fires.

“Our fund is helping a lot of people,” Martinez said. “Our goal is to get those dollars out (quickly).”

He said residents who haven’t already applied for relief have until Thursday to do so through the North Coast Opportunities and United Way of the Wine Country, which are handling the applications for the fund. Sonoma Valley residents have until Dec. 15 to apply through La Luz Center, while Napa residents have until Dec. 8 to apply through the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership.

The North Bay Fire Relief fund received $750,000 from the San Francisco-based Tipping Point Community’s emergency relief fund, the initial beneficiary of the Band Together concert. The grant-making organization raised a total of $23 million, including the concert proceeds, for low-income and vulnerable residents impacted by the fires. It won’t be handing out the money directly to victims, but will distribute it to groups already assisting survivors of the disaster. So far, it’s allocated a total of $2 million to eight organizations, including the Community Foundation Sonoma County, Jewish Family and Children’s Services and Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa.

“Tipping Point has been working for over a decade to find and fund the most effective groups fighting poverty in the Bay Area. We are drawing upon this experience to partner with North Bay organizations serving low-income communities hit hardest by the fires,” said Daniel Lurie, the nonprofit’s founder and CEO.

Jennielynn Holmes, Catholic Charities’ housing and shelter senior director, said the agency has seen about 1,000 people looking for housing and other assistance since the fire. Some lost rental homes in the fires, while others were pushed out of secondary units by landlords who lost their homes in the blazes. Many had never sought assistance before from Catholic Charities, which has relied on donations like the one from Tipping Point to assist these families, she said.

“As a nonprofit we had already penciled out and squeezed every penny,” Holmes said. “Without these additional dollars we would not be able to meet the new needs facing our community.”

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

THE FORT

(Photo by Susie de Castro)

MARY ADELMAN, 89, FIXER OF BROKEN TYPEWRITERS, IS DEAD

nytimes.com/2017/11/24/obituaries/mary-adelman-89-fixer-of-broken-typewriters-is-dead.html

MARKET RATE

Editor,

I am a retired professional woman who lives in low-cost senior housing. My neighbors and I will most likely face homelessness if the Republican tax plan now in the Senate passes.

Hidden behind rules for “simplification,” the plan revokes a tax credit for developers and property management companies to build properties like the one we call home and to provide low-cost rentals. A recent New York Times article said that the low-income housing tax credit, which developers get to build low-cost housing and offset low rents, would be discontinued under the tax bill. This would hit California seniors, disabled people and low-income families particularly hard because the market rate is out of reach for many of us.

In Santa Rosa alone, there are 33 apartment complexes built under the low-income housing tax credit. That could mean approximately 3,000 people. This represents about two-thirds of the low-income apartments in the city.

It also would affect communities like ours hit hard by the recent fires because there will be no incentive to rebuild low-cost housing. Based on a report published by state Treasurer John Chiang, I estimate there are more than 37,000 units like this in California.

Thea Hartman

Santa Rosa

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Classic fairy tales have some pretty messed-up sexual politics. When a man starts kissing a sleeping woman who has no idea what’s going on, that’s not creepy and messed up — it’s romantic! Here are some more:

– For a young girl, the lesson of Beauty and the Beast is that if she’s with a man who scares her, then it’s up to her to love him more and that will cure him. That’s excellent training for abusive relationships later in life.

– Cinderella is stuck with a crummy step-family who treat her like shit. But that’s okay, because fairies and a handsome prince will fix everything. You know, because of how likely that is. She neither has nor needs any agency of her own.

– Is Snow White about a polyamorous relationship between a young woman and seven dwarves? The true facts are lost to history.

Personally, I think Star Wars will replace the fairy tales of old. Things have been trending that way for a while.

SHOUT-OUTS FROM LAKE CO.

To The Editor,

I just wanted to say thank you very much for hooking me and the rest of the Mendo boys over here in dirty ol’ Lake County Jail up with your awesome publication each week since this grimy turd receptacle they call a jail won’t provide any outside newspapers. We love and look forward to each week’s publication.

I also want to give a shout out to Jewel Dyer, Red, and any of my old [illegible] mates in Mendo. Ken DeWitt, if you are there: “STOP LYING!” Hopefuly all is well there.

And Jaime Barajas, I pray for you bro. I know you didn’t do nothin’.

Yours Truly,

Cameron ‘Scameron’ Hammond

Lakeport

PS. Is there any way you could keep these papers coming? I think my subscription is running out!