December 2007

Starting in March, the repaving - from the foot of the Ballard Bridge, on 15th Avenue, Elliott and Western, to First and Denny - is planned to be "minimally disruptive."

The Seattle Department of Transportation intends to keep all lanes open on the route during rush hours. Grinding off the old asphalt, and laying down the new, will be done mid-day during off-peak hours, or evenings and weekends. Most of the construction will be limited to 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Friends of the Sunset Hill Substation will try appealing to the "green" side of political leaders to save a small parcel of surplus city property for community use that could otherwise be sold to developers.

Residents began organizing this past summer and have come up with some ideas for how the patch of land could be used as a multipurpose park for solar energy and open space.

Located on the south side of Northwest 65th Street, west of 32nd Avenue Northwest, the 6,400 square foot parcel could produce as much as 25,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year with an elevated

Agnes Meserole, a teaching assistant in the preschool program at St. Alphonsus Parish School died after being hit by a car on Dec. 13.

The accident occurred in the crosswalk at Northwest 58th Street and 14th Avenue Northwest around 11 a.m. as Meserole, 71, was walking to school.

Witnesses immediately called 911 after the accident. Meserole may have been placing a letter in the mail box on the street's median when the car struck her. Meserole was in stable condition on Friday, Dec.

Recognizing its busiest year ever, Sea-Tac International Airport honored in December a Seattle family's 3-month old baby boy as its "30 Millionth Passenger" for 2007.

This marked the first time that more than 30 million passengers have passed through the airport during a single year.

Sea-Tac, which also experienced its busiest month ever during the summer, was projected to serve over 31.3 million passengers before the end of 2007.

Three-month-old Ian Peyton of Seattle arrived at Sea-Tac with parents Tracey and Jana Marie, 4 1/2 year old sister Chloe, and grandp

Federal help is on the way for King County residents recovering from damage caused by the mid-December storm and flooding.

Major damage in the Highline area was in Shorewood, where about 20 homes were damaged or destroyed by a mudslide.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently declared King County eligible for individual assistance for the recent series of storms hitting the region.

"Thanks to the hard work of our local emergency management officials, and our partners at the state and federal levels, our residents can now receive the financial he

Evan Renwick is not your normal 14 year old.

While most of his peers spend their idle moments basking in video games and text messaging, Evan dons a brightly-colored spandex outfit, slips into a pair of biking shoes and takes off like a rocket through the hills, streets and trails of the South Sound.

Such is the life of a cycling wunderkind.

A devout love of all things on two wheels drives young Evan to push himself harder.

He trains daily, pedaling at a blistering pace through the cyclocross trails near SeaTac, only to dismount and huff his bike up

It's not difficult to see how incredibly impressed Mary Faber is with the new Federal Way Community Center.

After a wait of more than three years, she now helps administrate one of the state's largest community facilities.

The Community Center's opening in March also means that years of hard work have also helped turn its supporters' dreams into reality.

Faber, the facility's Recreation and Cultural Services Superintendent, has watched the 72,000 square foot building transform from concepts to concrete, and she - like many others in Federal Way - acknowledge th

From a new face to downtown, complete with the transformation of a 4-acre abandoned movie theater into a state-of-the-art high rise center with residential and retail space, to a state-of-the-art community center that will certainly emerge as a hub of a growing community, Federal Way has certainly been a busy place in the past 12 months.

In the next two issues, we'll look back on some of our favorite stories and memorable moments of 2007.

Jessie Schutz is missing.

Her mother believes that she may be in Seattle, or possibly Tacoma, but so far no one Mrs. Schutz has spoken to or contacted has seen her.

At 16 years old, Jessie is apparently living on the streets and likely does not have her asthma medication.

On December 25, at approximately 2:30 p.m., Washington State Patrol received numerous 9-1-1 calls from motorists regarding a disturbed individual on the interstate interfering with traffic.

Witnesses described a white male running from the on-ramp of South 320th Street onto traffic traveling Northbound on Interstate 5.

Witnesses described the subject, a 27-year-old male from Olympia, who had begun to shed his clothing, strike moving vehicles, and attempted to pry open the doors of moving vehicles.

At approximately 2:45 p.m., the first Washington State Patrol Tr