OH EV
PATRIOTS STAY PERFECT
SALMON DAYS GUIDE
Liberty cruises to 4-0 record — Page 8
Plan your visit to Issaquah’s annual festival — Insert
EN
FIS
TS
HA
•E N
TER
TA
LS
IN M
CH
EN
ED
T• AR TS
ULE
•F OO
OF
D• FU
EV
N• MA
PS
EN
&M O
TS
RE
The IssaquahPress m
OBE
to 6
R4
pm
&5
Da
ily
Free
Ad m
issio
n
Pre sen Ch am ted by be fro the r m the of Co Gr Cit ea mm Cit y of ter y of erc Iss Iss e aq Iss aq plem aq with ua ent sup ua h h Art ua to po s Co h an rt mm d the iss ion
Sup
Pro
Fes duced tiva by ls Offi the ce Issaqua and
AL
SPAWNS
The h Sal Issa mon qu Da ah ys Pre ss
OHFISH
O CT
10a
OR
Issaquah’s only locally owned newspaper
www.issaquahpress.com
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Liberty SRO honored as best in the state By Christina Corrales-Toy newcastle@isspress.com Deputy Dave Montalvo has had his fair share of assignments in a 27-year career with the King County Sheriff’s Office. He spent time on the SWAT team; he taught new recruits as a master police officer; he served on motorcycle patrol; and he also worked with a traffic enforcement unit. But he has truly found his home in the south end of the Issaquah School District where, for the past 12 years, Montalvo has served as the school resource officer at Liberty High, Maywood Middle and surrounding elementary schools. “This is by far, in my opinion, the best job that anybody can have, because you get to work with the kids and make a difference,” he said. Students, staff and parents have for years praised Montalvo’s warm and likable demeanor, but now the rest of the state knows how special he is, after the Washington School Safety Organization named him the state’s 2013-2014 School Security Officer of the Year. It’s not a surprise he won. It’s more of a surprise that he hadn’t yet won, said former Liberty administrator Ed Marcoe, who led the effort to get Montalvo considered for the award. He gathered nomination forms and passed them out to Liberty staff, parents and students. “We had, I’m going to say, close to 75 nomination forms supporting him,” Marcoe said. Montalvo’s day consists of walking — a lot of walking. He estimates he walks the Lib-
“In our line of business, a lot of times we don’t see the best of people. But if you can turn one of those troublemakers around and make a difference, it’s amazing how that feels.” — Dave Montalvo King County Sheriff’s Office Deputy
erty campus 15-20 times a day, making sure everything is safe and secure. He also helps teach Fourth Amendment rights in the school’s civics class and demonstrates the dangers of drinking and driving in the driver’s education class. He investigates student thefts of phones and personal items, makes sure kids aren’t speeding on the arterials or parking illegally, and helps with discipline issues when needed. Montalvo is responsible for most of the south end of the district, so he also makes time to visit Maywood Middle School and Newcastle, Apollo, Briarwood and Maple Hills elementary schools, where he interacts with students and monitors crosswalks. “I try to get over there a couple times a day as well, to make sure they know I’m watching out for them as well,” he said. Liberty visitors will often see his King County Sheriff Office car parked in front of the school, standing as a comfortable symbol of the school’s security. See SRO, Page 3
By Greg Farrar
Dave Montalvo, King County Sheriff’s Office deputy and the Liberty High School resource officer for 12 years, patrols the field during a football game last month.
Talus HOA rejects tree-removal appeal Most, but not all, of the disputed trees in the Talus neighborhood will be removed. A month after a contentious Talus Residential Association public hearing, the board decided Sept. 29 to cut down 10. Six homeowners originally petitioned for the removal of 16 trees that they said blocked their views of the landscape and lowered property values. The removal was slated to happen in April, but city officials
halted the process because more trees were marked for felling than had been approved. Then, the subsequent appeal from residents led to the residential association board’s re-evaluation. The board rejected the appeal presented at the Aug. 13 public hearing, but promised to address privacy and safety concerns by lowering the number of trees removed and issuing a revised replanting plan for the area in question.
By Kathleen R. Merrill
Above, Boy Scouts (from left to right) Jerry Lin, Adam Bussey, Lucas Dolliver, James Adkins, Joel Ruegsegger, René Loredo (of Flintoft’s Funeral Home) and Garrett Pomeroy kneel to work on replacing Civil War veteran Allan Day’s gravestone at Hillside Cemetery. Below are the original stone before and after cleaning, and the new stone.
CIVIL SAVIOR Scout spearheads Civil War gravestone restoration project By Kathleen R. Merrill editor@isspress.com Nearly 112 years after his death, Civil War infantryman Allan Day has gotten a new gravestone, thanks to a local Boy Scout project. Day, born in October 1831, died Nov. 7, 1902, in Issaquah. He served in Co. K, 43rd Wisconsin Infantry in the Civil War. His stone over the years had turned a dark gray, and his information was illegible. That has happened to most of the 18 gravestones of known Civil War veterans buried in Issaquah’s Hillside Cemetery. All of them need to be replaced. Local Boy Scout Joel Ruegsegger, an Issaquah High School student who will turn 18 this month, needed an Eagle Scout project. He said he contacted Dave Waggoner, with the local Veterans of Foreign Wars, because he knew he would have something worthwhile for him to do. Waggoner said he was talking with Troop 709 after reading
SLIDESHOW See more photos from the gravestone restoration project at www.issaquahpress.com. an article in the VFW magazine about an Eagle Scout doing such a project somewhere else and he told them that there was a possibility of nine of the local Civil War veterans getting new stones. Day’s was the first received. The local VFW sent an application and photo showing the old stone and the Veterans Administration agreed to send a new stone at no charge. Waggoner and Issaquah resident Barb Wood are working on applications for six other stones to be replaced. The then-War Department paid for and sent out those original stones. About six others are stones that were paid for by families and the VA will not replace those. On Sept. 20, Ruegsegger and other Boy Scouts not only replaced Day’s gravestone, but they also cleaned eight others. “This means we have respect for people who fought for our country so it could be the way it is now,” See HEADSTONES, Page 3
Richard Bergesen remembered as a kind, caring man who lived his faith By Kathleen R. Merrill editor@isspress.com Family members of Richard Bergesen are mourning his loss but trying to be thankful for the life he had, his cousin Bruce Whitehurst said. “He was just a wonderful person who spent his life giving to others, and that’s what he was doing by taking this young man into his home, to give him a better trajectory to get him on his feet again,” Whitehurst said in a phone interview from his home in Goen Allen, Virginia. Bergesen was killed in his Sammamish home Sept. 17 in the city’s first homicide since its
incorporation in 1999. Two men, Kevin David Patterson, 20, of Sammamish, and Christopher Shade, 18, of Issaquah, are being held in British ColumRichard Bergesen bia, Canada, where they fled after killing Bergesen and taking his car and credit cards, according to police. King County prosecutors have charged them with first-degree murder, first-degree robbery and theft of a motor vehicle. Bergesen had taken Patterson in about a year ago, when he
met him through his church, Overlake Christian Church in Redmond, and learned that the youth was homeless. “Rich had recently said that the nearly yearlong experience, though stretching, was positive and that he felt blessed to be able to help someone in this significant way,” a statement from the church said. Pastor Mike Howerton talked about Bergesen in his Sept. 21 sermon. The two had been friends for about seven years. Howerton called Bergesen “a gentle, humble, generous partSee BERGESEN, Page 2
EVENT WITH ISSAQUAH’S SISTER-CITY DELEGATES Join us! All are welcome! Friday, October 3 4:00 pm Delegation Celebration • 5:00 pm Art Gala 22975 SE Black Nugget Road, Issaquah, WA 98029 RSVP at (425) 200-0331 by September 30.
eraliving.com
75 cents