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Friday, April 26, 2013
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Area jobless rate still up from ’12 County unemployment at 8.9 percent in March; labor force dropped over previous year By DAVID THOMAS dthomas@shawmedia.com DeKALB – Employment experts were stumped by why DeKalb County’s unemployment rate has registered higher than a year ago for the third consecutive month. The unemployment rate for DeKalb County was 8.9 percent in March, compared with 8.5 percent in
March 2012, according to seasonally unadjusted data released Thursday by the Illinois Department of Employment Security. It was a full percentage point lower than February, though, when the rate was 9.9 percent. “The unemployment rate was very, very high,” IDES analyst Norman Kelewitz said. “It’s taken a long time to get it down. It hasn’t been a consistent recovery where things
are so much better.” The county’s labor force dropped by 103 workers over the previous year to 59,033 in March 2013. The number of employed workers living in the county also dropped by 336, the data shows. Labor force statistics count people who are working and who are unemployed and looking for work. People who have given up looking
for a job are not counted. Norm Walzer, a research fellow with Northern Illinois University’s Center for Governmental Studies, noted 734 people left the labor force between February and March. He said the drop in the labor force matches what he’s been reading in national news reports. “Nationally, there seems to be a feeling that people are getting
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discouraged and pulling out of the labor market,” Walzer said. “That seems to be what we’re seeing here.” Nationwide, employers added only 88,000 jobs in March, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released earlier this month. In the past four months, employers added an average of 173,500 jobs a month.
See UNEMPLOYMENT, page A6
Police: Dispute may have been shooting motive By REGINA GARCIA CANO The Associated Press MANCHESTER – The man suspected of storming a south central Illinois home and killing five members of the same family with a shotgun had been in some kind of dispute with at least one of the victims, but authorities said Thursday they were still trying to determine if it had something to do with the custody of a child. Illinois State Police spokeswoman Monique Bond said investigators were running down media reports about a possible custody battle involving Rick O. Smith, and were going to places he frequented. “Investigators are going to locaRick O. Smith tions where some of his last known addresses, locations he frequented, talking to family and friends, just kind of backtracking to see what can be pieced together,” she said. But whatever was going on between Smith and a person in the home had attracted the attention of the neighborhood in the tiny community of Manchester. Drew Summers said a white car – which authorities say Smith was driving after the slayings – drove back and forth in front of the slain family’s home late at night. It happened so often, Summers’ live-in girlfriend finally called the police. “He seemed like a stalker so we’ve called the cops on him,” he said. “It seemed he had something against them.” The motive is just one of the questions about the slaying that authorities were trying to answer a day after Smith allegedly shot and killed a 1-year-old boy, his 5-year-old brother, their pregnant mother, their father and their great-grandmother. The boys’ 6-year-old sister was also shot, but survived. Smith, the nephew of the town’s mayor, was killed after being shot while exchanging gunfire with police. What remains baffling is why the 43-year-old Smith scooped up the 6-year-old girl, Kassidy Ralston, carried her outside and handed the bloodied child to a neighbor before driving off. In fact, Bond said, the preliminary investigation suggests that Smith may not have meant to shoot the little girl, though like many parts of the story, detectives don’t know why he apparently decided to spare her.
Photos by Rob Winner – rwinner@shawmedia.com
Cook Meg Sisk (front) prepares an herb roasted vegetable soup as Gail Roloff, owner of Rural Girl Soups, prepares a zucchini pepper jack soup Tuesday at a kitchen in Geneva. Orders for the soup are taken online, then prepared on Tuesday and delivered to customers in DeKalb County every Wednesday.
Local businesses use Web in different ways By STEPHANIE HICKMAN shickman@shawmedia.com Gail Roloff knows her way around the rural routes of DeKalb County. As owner and operator of Rural Girl Soups, an online specialty food delivery service, Roloff has found herself dropping off soup to places so rural, they don’t even have road signs. But that doesn’t stop Roloff. “I can always try to figure it out,” she said. Based in DeKalb, Rural Girl Soups is somewhat unusual in that all of its transactions are processed online. Her website, www. ruralgirlsoups.com, is a virtual storefront, but businesses across DeKalb County are relying more heavily on their websites. Some, including Pita Pete’s in DeKalb and Sweet Earth Jewelry in Sycamore, use their websites to supplement their brick-and-mortar stores. Rural Girl Soups’ customers place items in a virtual shopping cart on the
Voice your opinion How often do you purchase something online? Let us know at daily-chronicle.com. website and purchase them through PayPal, an online wallet linked to their bank account. Roloff receives her online orders, which must be placed by noon on Sundays to be delivered that week, prepares the soups on Tuesdays and delivers them on Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Customers leave a cooler with ice packs outside their door, and come home to find the soup waiting for them. But Rural Girl Soups is more than what the name suggests; she’s added desserts, baked goods and hummus. “I just started in 2012 [and] I only sold soup,” Roloff said. “Four months after that, people were asking for more.” The World Wide Web provides only a portion of
Gail Roloff, owner of Rural Girl Soups, cuts up a zucchini while preparing a soup.
See SHOOTING, page A6 the overall sales for Pita Pete’s at 901 Lucinda Ave. in DeKalb. Similar to the online ordering process Roloff uses, Pita Pete’s customers can place orders for carryout or delivery with a click of the mouse. The restaurant, owned by Leslie Metz and Peter Lutz, generates about 10 percent of its sales through online orders, Metz said. Online ordering services offered through CampusSpecial.com and Foodler.com have made the entire ordering experience much easier for customers and staff for the past seven years, she said. “I think it’s very convenient,” she said. “Especially if [customers are] at work
and don’t have the time to call. And it’s nice when it’s just on one sheet of paper for us.” When a customer submits an order online at www.pitapetes.com, Pita Pete’s gets a fax with the details and an automated phone call notifying them of the order. They then make the food and send it out as soon as possible, Metz said. But online ventures aren’t just taking place in the food industry. Transforming their website into a more e-commerce type of business is something Sweet Earth Jewelry owners Rich and Roseann Para hope to do in the future.
AP photo
Police officials investigate the scene at a house in Manchester, where five people were found slain early Wednesday in the tiny southwestern Illinois town. Illinois State Police said the suspect died after a car chase and an exchange of gunfire with law enforcement.
See ONLINE VENTURES, page A6
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