Mount Si softball post season ends with back-toback losses Page 13
Your locally-owned newspaper, serving North Bend and Snoqualmie, Washington
Police divers recover man’s body from river
June 2, 2011 VOL. 3, NO. 22
Veterans honored Memorial Day service pays tribute to the fallen. Page 2
City shuffled North Bend council approves personnel moves. Page 3
Police blotter Page 6
By Dan Catchpole
Champs at last Read this Valley organizations help with literacy programs. Page 8
The Mount Si High School Wildcats hoist the school’s trophies after rallying to win the state 3A baseball championship at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma. Down to its last out, Mount Si came back to beat the Shorewood Thunderbirds. Read the story on Page 12.
School board passes district redraw 4-0
Volunteers unearth four cars, trash on riverbank
An eye for art
By Sebastian Moraga
Mount Si High School hosts arts festival. Page 10
The Snoqualmie Valley School Board voted 4-0 to pass a proposal that redraws the board member seats within the board, and which had irked a vocal group of citizens. Board member Scott Hodgins did not vote, but prior to the vote board President Dan Popp read a statement from Hodgins supporting the proposal. Opponents to the proposal had assailed it, since under it Snoqualmie seats won’t be up for re-election until 2013. Board member Craig Husa said the community's input had been “tremendously valuable.” Still, opponents to the proposal said they were disap-
The four cars, rusted and caked with moss and dirt, had cluttered the banks of the Snoqualmie River for decades, along with piles of beer cans, old shoes and broken appliances. Enter Wade Holden: the man who makes trash tremble. After Holden and his wife moved from Texas to North Bend in 1992, the two were astounded by the amount of garbage in the city’s woods and rivers. Undeterred, they founded the nonprofit Friends of the Trail and they have scoured the Snoqualmie Valley and neighboring areas for trash ever since, making the outdoors cleaner, one garbage bag — and even one bullet-riddled abandoned refrigerator — at a time. The morning of May 24 was
Welcome aboard John Belcher is named new principal at Mount Si. Page 10
Prsrt Std U.S. Postage PAID Kent, WA Permit No. 71 POSTAL CUSTOMER
See REDRAW, Page 2
By Laura Geggel
ON THE WEB
> > www.snovalleystar.com See more photos online.
no different, but this time Holden was working with a crew: King County Solid Waste Division, Triple J Towing, three volunteers and his good friends Jeff Martine and Martine’s grandson Max Karlinsky. After moving to North Bend in 1997, Martine said that he found that the ravine near his house, the beautifully green embankment that was home to ferns, evergreens and underbrush, had so much discarded junk strewn about that it almost rivaled the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill. And all of it was just a stone’s throw from the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River by Southeast See UNEARTHED, Page 3
Divers with the King County Sheriff’s Office recovered a missing man’s body from the Snoqualmie River on May 25, three days after he had last been seen. The divers recovered the body shortly after 3 p.m. in about four feet of water more than 50 feet from shore, close to where the man disappeared. The missing man was last seen when he and his fiancée were playing with their two dogs near Fall City. The Bothell couple had been throwing sticks for their dogs in the river in the 37200 block of Southeast Fish Hatchery Road below Snoqualmie Falls, when one of the dogs began struggling in the water. The man and woman went into the water, but quickly found themselves in trouble because of the current’s strength and the water’s cold temperature, according to Sgt. John Urquhart, spokesman for the sheriff’s office. Witnesses called for help, and rescuers from Eastside Fire & Rescue were able to get the woman out of the river. She was taken to Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue with minor injuries. The dog made it to shore on its own. Divers from the sheriff’s office and Mercer Island Police Department began searching for the 29-year-old man May 22. The search continued until May 24. “Visibility during the dives was between two and five feet, with many car-sized boulders, rock walls and log debris,” Urquhart said in a news release. Sheriff’s deputies had located the body of a prior drowning victim near North Bend on April 29. He had been missing for two days.