January 2012

By Christina Kale

At age 22, Sahaya Corkern is deceptively small. But, even born with spina bifida, she doesn’t see herself as confined to a wheelchair. “I do almost everything for myself,” she says.

Alone, she rides the bus from her home in Des Moines to volunteer at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

“I work with kids who are really sick which made me think about donating my hair to Locks of Love,” Sahaya noted.

Locks of Love is a non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to children with medical hair loss.

Last week, while stylists Amy and Monica of Illusions Hair Design in West Seattle, cut her hair for Locks of Love, Sahaya shared details of her life journey.

Born in India and left at an orphanage run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, Sahaya believes her birth family just couldn’t handle the expense of her disability. “I was only a year old when I was taken to the orphanage,” she explains. As an older child, she was transferred to another Indian orphanage in hopes that she would find an adoptive family.

That family turned out to be Des Moines residents Sean and Laura Corkern.

By Gwen Davis

The results are in: The salmon runs of Miller and Walker creeks in Burien and Normandy Park were larger this year than last year, but more work still needs to be done to keep the stream water clean.

The findings are in thanks to the volunteer-based Community Salmon Investigation for Highline program, also known as CSI: Highline, which evaluates the health status of the creeks by counting the dead and alive coho and chum salmon on the shores-- paying particular attention to the dead pre-spawned salmon.

The fish count and pre-spawned mortality rate serve as a long-term indicator of whether the water and surrounding land is clean and healthy.

Twenty-one volunteers surveyed the streams this season. Volunteers were assigned into teams of two to three people, with each team surveying one day of the week.

The season ran from Oct. 10 to Dec. 23.

Volunteers collected the dead and alive fish, and if dead, cut them open to determine if they had spawned.

Fish that died before spawning were a solid indicator of dirty water.

Tuesday, Jan. 3
Boys basketball
Evergreen 53, Renton 45
The Wolverines of White Center emerged on the winning side in the Tuesday, Jan. 3 action.

Mt. Rainier 64, Kentwood 62
Mount Rainier rallied for a two-point win last Tuesday.

SCS 57, Chimacum 49
Seattle Lutheran scored a big win to show for last Tuesday's trip to the Olympic Peninsula.

Girls basketball
Renton 61, Evergreen 21
Evergreen was topped by the Indians in a Tuesday, Jan. 3 Seamount League game.

Kennedy 59, Lindbergh 44
The Lancers landed a win over Lindbergh last Tuesday, Jan. 3.

Mt. Rainier 70, Kentwood 64
Mount Rainier scored an important South Puget Sound League North Division victory over the Conquerors last Tuesday.

SCS 50, Chimacum 36
The Warrior girls team also came through with a win over Chimacum along with the boys.

Wednesday, Jan. 4
Girls basketball
Skyview 47, Evergreen 25
Evergreen took a non-league loss in action last Wednesday.

Hazen 52, Foster 31
Foster fell victim to the Highlanders last Wednesday.

Kennedy 67, Lindbergh 64

Locöl Barley and Vine at 7902 35th Ave. s.w. will celebrate their one year anniversary in business on Tuesday, January 10. The celebration gets underway at 7pm.

Owner Kyle Duce said, " We will be handing out Free cupcakes from our friends @ Stuffed Cakes and will also have Happy Hour Drink Specials all night long!"

Here's the West Seattle Herald story about the bar/restaurant from one year ago.

Seattle Christian opened up the court with offensive rebounding and defense in the second quarter en route to a 45-23 girls' basketball defeat of visiting Life Christian Academy in the first half of a boys' and girls' Nisqually 1A league basketball doubleheader on Friday, January 6.

With the win, SCS held on to first place in league at 4-0 and evened its overall record to 6-6. LCA now stands at 1-2 and 3-5 respectively,

"It was Jessica Johnson with her offensive rebounding," said Warrior head coach Dave Jansen. "Our girls stepped it up on defense and and shut them down."

Key architects of the SCS surges were Johnson and Catie Shelton.

Trailing 14-13 midway through the second quarter, Seattle Christian started covering the court like swarms of locusts. Johnson had already begun her offensive fireworks, but she stepped up her achievement even more.

Long scoring runs vaulted the Seattle Christian boys' basketball team to a 56-44 Nisqually League home victory against Life Christian Academy of Tacoma at the Warriors' SeaTac campus on Friday, January 6, in the nightcap of a girls' and boys' doubleheader.

Seattle Christian heads the league standings at 4-0 with an 8-2 overall record. Life Christian fell to 2-1 and 7-4.

"Tyler Stein was working hard and Cody Miller stepped up as a leader," SCS head coach Shaun DeYager said. "He's seeing his potential as far as effort goes. We made our early runs with steals. After our big leads, we lost focus. The team has not peaked in being the aggressor, but we're 4-0 in league and control our own destiny."

Despite regularly opening up huge leads during the game, the Warriors were forced to rely on fourth quarter key plays to hold off the charging Eagles.

After Shawn Abe's two free throws placed Seattle Christian in a 47-28 command with its greatest lead early in the fourth quarter, Life Christian roared back into the fray.

Game action turned fast, furious and turnover laden.

Evict me will ya?
The landlord of a property on 21st Ave S.W. called police earlier this month to report someone had broken into a shed and stolen a number of power tools, a bicycle and a box of ammo. The landlord suspects his former tenant who was evicted in mid-December. Police are familiar with the property (they have been called to the address several times for landlord-tenant issues) and ex-tenant (“a known felon with current felony warrants").

It wasn’t Santa
A man told police around 2 a.m. on Christmas morning an unknown male entered his home on the 9400 block of 20th Ave S.W., confronted him and then fled. The victim did not contact police until three days later because he said he was “very intoxicated” at the time of the home invasion and wanted to review his surveillance video to make sure what he thought happened actually happened. The video showed a white male wearing a backpack carefully walking around the backyard before entering the house.

Burglar impersonating The Grinch

OKLAHOMA: G2K runs Jan. 13-15 at the Burien Community Center Annex (home of Burien Little Theatre), located at 425 SW 144th St. All seats are reserved, at $10. For tickets, go to www.hi-liners.org or call 206-617-2152.

According to West Seattle resident Kelly Malloy, two Lafayette Elementary 3rd graders, Aine Malloy and Ruby Sullivan, are in the show.

Here is a review of the play from Aya Hashiguchi Clark:

As a 7-year-old growing up in the 1960’s, this would have been my dream come true. At that early age, I had already fallen in love with musical theatre. My fondest wish was to one day appear on stage in a musical, preferably one by the masters of the genre-- Rogers and Hammerstein.

That would have been all too wonderful...

But, for all the young, aspiring performers here in South King County, the Hi-Liners youth theatre organization has great news for you.
Anyone’s dream can come true. All you need is the desire to perform and be at least 7 years of age.

Tuesday, Jan. 3
Boys basketball
Evergreen 53, Renton 45
The Wolverines of White Center emerged on the winning side in the Tuesday, Jan. 3 action.
Girls basketball
Renton 61, Evergreen 21
Evergreen was topped by the Indians in a Tuesday, Jan. 10 Seamount League game.

Wednesday, Jan. 4
Girls basketball
Skyview 47, Evergreen 25
Evergreen took a non-league loss in action last Wednesday.

Thursday, Jan. 5
Wrestling
Foster 41, Evergreen 33
The Bulldogs prevailed over the Wolverines in Seamount League action this past Thursday.

Chief Sealth 54, Ingraham 20
Chief Sealth pinned a loss on the Rams this past Thursday.
Eastside Catholic 59, West Seattle 18
West Seattle took a beating against Eastside Catholic on Thursday.

Friday, Jan. 6
Boys basketball
Evergreen 55, Lindbergh 47
Evergreen posted a close win over the Eagles on Friday, Jan. 6.

Chief Sealth 57, Cleveland 43
Chief Sealth cruised to victory over Cleveland Friday.

West Seattle 52, Blanchet 34

SLIDESHOW: CLICK ON PHOTO FOR MORE

The Vietnamese Cultural Center, 2236 SW Orchard St. in West Seattle held its outdoor ceremony today to honor fallen soldiers in Vietnam, and to commemorate its new Fallen Soldiers Memorial, a black granite monolith. It was donated by Dr. Nguyen Xuan Dung, MD, of Tacoma who was honored as the sun came out for the bittersweet festivities. Within four vertical white circles placed on the front of the monolith are written "TO", "QVOC", "GHI", "ON", which translates roughly to "The Nation Will Always Remember Those Who Sacrificed". These words were also printed in gold on a white banner wrapped across a floral wreath carried and then set at the foot of the memorial.

The Center explained that The Fallen Soldiers Memorial honors the heroes of South Vietnam's armed -forces and 58,000 U.S. serviceman who fought for freedom and democracy of Vietnam.

An American Vietnam veteran who attended was asked to make an impromptu speech by Vietnamese event organizers.