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Thursday, December 24 - December 30, 2009 Volume 14, No. 52
One of Three New Banks Murder Victim Appears Opened This Year Sees to be White Supremacist Success in Pasadena By Susan Motander By Sameea Kamal
Pediatric patient Jayleen rushes to meet Santa after he gets off the chopper atop Huntington Hospital when he visited children at the Pediatric Unit last week as part of Pasadena PD’s Operation Polar Wind. -Photo by Terry Miller Full Story on Page 11
A Mother’s Christmas Wish: Her Daughter Back By Susan Motander
On the afternoon of October 29, this year, Sandra Ortega left her home in Monrovia for the short bus ride to her job in Duarte. She has not been seen since. Sandra had just turned 17 the month before and her family is worried. Sandra’s mother, Cassandra Lopez said that this year the one thing she wants for Christmas is her daughter back, or at least the knowledge that she is all right and safe. Sandra attended Monrovia High School and worked at the Dollar Tree in Duarte as part of the R.O.P. work experience program at the school. On the day she disappeared she never arrived at work. “She had said that she wanted to move out when she turned eighteen,” her mother explained, “but nothing happened that would make her suddenly leave now. “I just need to know she
Missing Monrovia Teenager, Sandra Ortega: Photo Courtesy of Cassandra Lopez
is OK,” the distraught mother said. If you have any information that would make this Christmas wish come true, please contact the Monrovia Police Department at (626) 256-8000.
In the third quarter of 2009, just three banks were approved nationally, and only two banks in the state of California. One of those banks was the California General Bank in Pasadena, which was approved to open in March. For two years prior to that, the bank has been in the process of filing applications, getting their charter approval and raising capital to meet their goal of $20 million. “It was a very long and arduous process that we went through,” said CEO Bill Hawkins. “As it turns out, about the time we were in the process of getting the approvals and raising the money, the financial crisis hit in the
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Relocation of Bank’s Millard Sheets Mural Under Discussion By Sameea Kamal
Catherine Haskett-Hany has been going to what is now Chase Bank on Lake Avenue and Colorado Boulevard since she was a child, and has always looked forward to seeing the mural of the Pasadena Rose parade on the wall. When she walked in one day to see it covered up by a wall, she was alarmed that it was hidden. Haskett-Hany, who is the Communications Director at the Pasadena Library, said the mural is one of the reasons she enjoys going to that bank. “They’ve made it so it’s very bank-like … and before it was a very special place to go to because you had that mural,” she said. “It didn’t matter how long the line was because you could enjoy the mural and there was always something to learn about it.” Haskett-Hany then con-
-Photo by Terry Miller
tacted the Pasadena Cultural Affairs Office, who has been working with Chase Bank to find a suitable relocation. “Having grown up with it, it means a lot to me,” she said. “More people other than (those) who know of it at the bank should be able to see it.” As a part of reconstruct-
ing the branch, the bank placed a wall to create a work area for employees that is out of sight of customers for security reasons, said Gary Kischner, spokesperson for the Pasadena branch. As a result, the mural is partially obscured to the public.
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T he man who died last week in a shooting in Monr o v i a has been identified as Jason Samuel Gentile, 22, of Costa Mesa. The shooting occurred on Tuesday, December 15 just after 8:00 p.m. on Colorado Blvd., just west of California. The dead man appears to have been a white supremacist and Sheriff’s Department investigators believe the five men who were in the group from which the shots were fired are members of Monrovia Nuevo Varrio (MNV), a local street gang. MNV is one of two gangs named in the Gang Injunction recently granted in Superior Court. The shooting took place in the area which is the subject of the injunction. According to investigators, Gentile, with a woman said to be his girlfriend, was on the south side of Colorado when an argument broke out with five Latino men on the north side of the street. Witnesses to the incident said that one of those on the north side of the street pulled out a gun and began firing. Gentile was shot three times in the head and torso, and died. The identity of the woman who was with him has not been released. She was shot once in the foot, was treated at a local hospital and released. Gentile, who had a long criminal history, had swastikas and other white supremacist tattoos according to court records, investigators and his own Myspace page. He is also said to be a member of a white supremacist gang in Orange County. Since the incident, that Myspace page has been
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