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SACBEE - FINAL - 1 - 10/30/07
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PAGE: B 1
For the latest news throughout the day, go to www.sacbee.com
The Sacramento Bee
METRO
B
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2007
쏒쏒
SCANNING THE STATE
For 24-hour updates on news
from around California, go to
www.sacbee.com/state
Deputies’ feud takes break
LISA
HEYAMOTO
[email protected]
True nature
saga, or tall
talon tale
But union rivals
agree only on choice
to monitor election.
By Christina Jewett
[email protected]
One day in June, one faction
of the embattled Sacramento
County deputies union called
police and sheriff’s internal affairs investigators and accused
O
K, so there’s this woman,
right? And she’s walking her
Chihuahua/Pomeranian/
other breed of diminutive dog in
some sort of unsanctioned outdoor
place, when suddenly, to the immeasurable horror of its owner, a giant
bird swoops out of the sky, snatches
the dog in its claws and flies away.
If it sounds like an urban legend, it
is.
But it’s also something that actually happened at the Effie Yeaw Nature Center in Carmichael.
To hear publicity coordinator Betty
Cooper tell it, an employee was walking the center grounds when he was
flagged down by the hysterical
woman, who claimed a hawk had
made off with her toy poodle.
And though it’s a story straight out
of the friend-of-a-friend-told-me
handbook, it’s not outside the realm
of possibility.
The nature center does have a wild
hawk population, the dog was about
the size of a rabbit and there is an
area adjacent to the park that’s popular (though not strictly allowable) for
running off-leash dogs.
“It’s bizarre,” Cooper said. “This is
the first time I’ve ever heard about
(something like this).”
What’s next, whales in the Delta?
the other side of breaking and
entering.
The complaint fizzled.
This month, the other faction
of the 1,700-member Deputy
Sheriff’s Association asked a
federal judge to appoint a special master to oversee the upcoming leadership election, accusing the other side of “dirty
tricks.”
U.S. District Court Judge
Lawrence K. Karlton appointed
retired federal Judge Eugene
Lynch.
Now, deputies, detectives
and sergeants who have
sparred over the keys, bank accounts and the helm of the
union have something they can
both celebrate: a traffic cop is
on the way.
“We don’t want any accusations of any kind of any fraud,
so we took a step in the right direction,” said Brannon Polete,
the union vice president whose
attorneys called for the special
master.
Bill Barnsdale, a member of
the opposing faction and a vice
presidential candidate, also applauds the appointment.
“I think it’s an excellent
idea,” he said. “The members
get an untainted election.”
■ ■ ■
Astute patrons of the burger and
bun will have noticed a new name for
an old establishment on J and 17th
streets lately.
It seems the ‘Mary’ of Hamburger
Mary’s has gone the way of full-fat
mayonnaise, having been replaced
by an upstart burger buff named
Patty. Plural.
The restaurant has been newly
christened “Hamburger Patties,”
a play on words that patron Nick
Leonti finds a bit bizarre considering
you’d have to know the previous
name to understand the current one,
and even then, it doesn’t make much
sense.
“That’s like Kentucky Fried
Chicken changing its name to
‘Chicken Legs,’ ” he said.
Guess we’ve got to think outside
the pun.
■ ■ ■
Two weeks ago, during his regular
league play, at 75 years of age, Roy
Ichiho bowled a perfect game.
It was the culmination of 25 years
of twice-weekly play, and a crucial
point better than the 299 he bowled
a few years ago.
Ichiho, from south Sac, says he’s
not the first to score a 300 in his Japanese seniors league, but he’s pretty
sure he’s the oldest.
“Everyone was pulling for me,”
he said. “So that felt good.”
An urban legend, it seems, of a
different kind.
■ ■ ■
Call The Bee’s Lisa Heyamoto,
(916) 321-1261.
”
Cowboy poet’s lament
Some folks in the
dark about new
daylight time rule
By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg
[email protected]
Regional Digest
Obituaries
Editorials
Weather
Carl Costas/[email protected]
John Greber Jr., prepares cattle feed on his family’s ranch in Franklin, where he’s lived and worked since he was a boy. Greber
serves on farming organizations and writes about changes to the land in poems that he has read at industry conferences.
In path of a freeway,
cattleman feels glum
as he pulls up stakes.
B2
B4, B5
B6
B8
John Greber Sr.
bought his
Franklin cattle
spread in 1978.
As transportation planners
mapped an
Interstate 5
connector on
the land, it was
sold to an investor last year
and the Grebers
are moving.
By Melissa Nix
[email protected]
R
oosters strut by with a
sense of entitlement.
Horses pasture behind the
henhouse. The air is heavy with
the smell of the ranch – wet dirt
and manure.
It’s hard to believe this place
sits three miles from Elk Grove
Boulevard and its strip malls.
John Greber Jr. was a boy
when he moved to this rural
stretch of Hood Franklin Road
back in 1978.
“Elk Grove was seven miles
away then,” said Greber, sitting
at the Formica table in the family
kitchen. “We weren’t bothered
by anything. I-5 wasn’t even
completed.”
That year, his father bought 83
acres in the community of Franklin. To this day, the family tends
the land and the 115 Angus cows
that graze there.
And Greber, now 34, writes
poems about the ranching life –
what’s left of it around here.
He started back in high school,
왘 POET, Page B4
2 Lincoln teens jailed
in shooting of animals
Driveway lights also
shot out in ‘brazen’
spree, authorities say.
By Art Campos
[email protected]
A dog, a baby bull and two other animals are dead following what Placer
County sheriff’s officials say was a
“brazen” killing spree by two teenagers in rural Lincoln.
Timothy Schulz and Collin Lovejoy, both 18-year-old Lincoln residents, were arrested Saturday. In addition to the dog and bull calf, a goat
and a chicken were killed and another
dog and a goat were wounded by rifle
shots, the Sheriff’s Department said.
ONLINE TODAY
INDEX
왘 MASTER, Page B3
FALL
BACK?
NOT
YET
they develop open ground, and build up a new town,
“… every time
they drain the lifeblood out of the land … .
■ ■ ■
In 2001, Jose Lorenzo Chavez, then
dean of students at Riverside Community College, was arrested for stealing
about $20,000 worth of computer
equipment from his former employer
and giving it to family members.
Then he was hired at Sac State as
an assistant professor of education
leadership and policy studies. Last
year he pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges and was sentenced to
270 days of house arrest.
What happens next is a bit unclear.
Sac State spokeswoman Gloria
Moraga said Monday the college has
taken the appropriate steps under the
California Education Code, which
says that an employee can be dismissed, demoted or suspended for
conviction of a felony or misdemeanor involving “moral turpitude.”
Chavez, she said, has exercised his
rights under the faculty collective
bargaining agreement.
“It’s still a question of whether he
will be teaching here next semester,”
she said.
Sac State’s criminal justice department, however, does list two openings on its Web site. So there is that.
It is the latest twist in a saga
that Sheriff’s Department insiders readily concede has become
a major debacle.
Turmoil in the union began
13 months ago. Underlying all
of it are opposing viewpoints.
Union President Steven
Fisk’s group says Polete and others do management’s bidding
and sell out union members’
In memoriam
For previous news obituaries and death notices, go
to: www.sacbee.com/obituaries
The two suspects also allegedly
shot out the lights in the driveways of
at least four homes, said Detective
Jim Hudson.
“This appears to have started as benign shootings of street signs and
ended up with the aggressive hunting
of livestock and pets,” Hudson said.
He said the shooting of the lights at
homes was of concern to investigators because the incidents “could
have escalated either accidentally or
on purpose” to the harming of a human being.
Schulz and Lovejoy were booked
into the Placer County jail on suspicion of felony cruelty to animals, firing a weapon from a moving vehicle,
conspiracy to commit a felony and
왘 SHOOTING, Page B3
In an audio slide
show, cowboy
poet John
Greber Jr. talks
about ranching:
왘 www.sacbee.
com/links
The little electronic conveniences that streamline our lives
fell victim to scattered glitches on
Monday, as daylight saving time
lingered longer than it has for the
past decade.
Automatic doors stayed stubbornly locked at opening time, a
few youngsters straggled into
school an hour late, and appointment calendars misbehaved.
“We live in a society where everything is so computerized, the
days of the wristwatch that we reset by hand are gone,” said Elk
Grove Police Officer Chris Trim.
Instead we rely on timers, and
the software patches that tell
those timers when something
has changed. The latest change
came from Congress, which
hoped to save energy by tinkering with daylight saving time.
Back in 2005, Congress voted
to extend daylight saving time by
four weeks, starting it three
weeks earlier and ending it one
week later, effective in March
2007.
So far, two studies are suggesting that the changes may not
make much impact on energy use
at all.
But they are definitely making
a small and sometimes confusing
ripple in daily life.
Take, for example, the two families who brought their first- and
third-graders in late at the Green
Oaks Fundamental School in Orangevale on Monday morning,
not realizing their automatic
clocks had gone automatically
wrong.
“They were very surprised. It
was like they had a clock that had
a mind of its own,” said Jeannie
Odom, the school’s administrative assistant.
왘 TIME, Page B3
SHADES OF AUTUMN
Brian Baer/[email protected]
I
t looks a lot like fall as a pedestrian walks through a carpet of leaves at
Oak and Judah streets in Roseville. But Monday’s high was 77 – hardly
nippy. There’s a chance of rain today. See full weather report, Page B8.
SACRAMENTO STATE
COMMENTARY
Rwanda focus of conference
Defining affordable care
A Sacramento State professor with firsthand knowledge
of genocide in Rwanda organizes a conference to tell how
the country has bounced back from the atrocities. | B2
The health care debate in California has
focused attention on a key question:
How much can people afford to pay? | B7
OUTPUT: 10/29/07
22:50 USER: DCARACCIO BEEBROAD MASTER 06-26-02