August 2005

Sports correspondent

First-year Evergreen football head coach Shaun Tarantola hopes to bring a high level of understanding and similar success as to where he was before through simplifying the offense to a basic level of play on the gridiron.

The four-year Liberty High School offensive coordinator will put things in place offensively simply even though he had much success complicating things for defenses while at the Kingco school that finished 8-2 and was ranked top 10 in the final 3A state polls.

Burien City Councilman Stephen Lamphear was endorsed in his campaign for re-election by the King County Democratic Party last week.

By giving Lamphear a "sole endorsement," King County Democrats rejected former Burien Councilwoman Rose Clark's bid for a joint endorsement.

He received support from more than 75 percent of party members who voted.

An early morning motorcycle crash in Tukwila Aug. 24 claimed the life of its 33-year-old rider.

According to the Washington State Patrol, Jim Rehak (no residence given) crashed into a guardrail around 2 a.m. while driving east through the Thorndyke neighborhood on State Route 518.

Troopers said Rehak was trying to pass another vehicle on the shoulder when he lost control

and slammed into the guardrail. They reported that he was wearing a helmet.

Special to the Times/News

For most people, the sound of a fire truck horn means, "Get out of the way!"

But when Mary Lou Grinols heard the horn honk on August 9, it meant, "Get on board, birthday girl!"

Members of North Highline Fire District surprised Grinols by treating her to a ride on their fire truck to show their gratitude for her support.

The "Cookie Lady" (a name given to Grinols by her students) served as a cook in nearly every school in the Highline School District.

Now retired, she still loves to bake.

Property taxes in Des Moines could increase by about $105 next year on a home with an assessed valuation of $250,000.

This will happen if the city council agrees on Sept. 8 to place a proposed property tax levy lid lift on November's general election ballot and the voters approve it.

In a story published Aug.

A report on the reaction of focus groups in the North Highline area to the prospect of annexation by Burien or Seattle indicates that residents are cool to the idea.

In fact, residents were not really hot about anything except keeping the status quo, the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council was told Aug.

A verbal argument at Alki escalated after a Shoreline resident and his friends drove to a nearby house and returned to the scene of the argument with a gun. The driver pointed the handgun at the group, then pointed it in the air and fired two shots before driving off. As he drove away, he aimed the gun out of the car and fired four more shots. Officers stopped the suspect car. The driver was booked into King County Jail for investigation of drive-by shooting. The others in the car were released.

I have safely returned from Chinese language camp in Minnesota and am now thoroughly enjoying all of the pleasures denied me there.

I am glad to report that I received no less than 26 letters from my friends and family while I was away. Some of my now most coveted commodities are pizza, cake, good food in general, telephones, my computer, and clean feet. However, I do miss the company.

In my particular cabin, there were nine girls about my age from Oklahoma, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and (including myself) Washington.

Regarding the police report of the 12-year-old wearing only his underwear and one shoe with the heavy bruises. The officers were told the same suspect hit the boy so hard in the chest a couple of years age he couldn't breathe but Children's Protective Servicies allegedly determined the charges were "unfounded" and now this incidence.

Will it take a dead body and millions of dollars in lawsuits with Protective Services repeating "no grounds, we are sorry, it was an oversight" etc., etc.

The exceedingly cruel foie gras market has some proponents in the Seattle area - 11 restaurants which continue to serve this "delicacy" despite repeated pleas to discontinue it. Three of the finer area restaurants have stopped serving it because of the extreme cruelty involved in its production.

Foie gras (literally "fat liver") is produced by forcing long metal feeding pipes down the throats of geese or ducks to fatten their livers. Sometimes these poor animals' livers explode, having been enlarged 12 times their normal size.