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VOL. 6 NO. 30
IN THIS ISSUE
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July 23, 2012
Road trip to Tijuana
Eight kids walk into Juvenile Court, how many walk out? Hopefully, if it’s the Shopper-News interns, all of them do. Last week the interns went to Juvenile Court and met Judge Tim Irwin and Richard Bean, superintendent at the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Detention Facility.
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See pages A-10,11
Recruiting near and far ... Derek Dooley is trapped between a rock and a hard place. If a Tennessee prep star (think Jalen Ramsey) escapes the recruiting net and flies afar, fans wonder how in the world a coach, with so many home-court advantages, could lose such a great talent. Dooley is obviously asleep at the wheel. He should own the state. This is Tennessee! But does becoming a Vol For Life mean you have hail from Big Orange Country? Marvin West takes a look.
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See Marvin’s story on page A-5
West High grad heads to Japan She graduated from West High School in May, but Kate Ballew doesn’t mind going back to high school as a sophomore – in Kofu, Japan. In fact, she’s thrilled.
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See Wendy’s story on page A-3
Don’t mess with Detroit! Jake Mabe says the best vacation he has ever taken was to Detroit. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it. Jake just returned from Motown and muses on the trip.
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See Jake’s story on page A-6
Index Business A2 Wendy Smith A3 Government/Politics A4 Marvin West/Malcolm Shell A5 Anne Hart/Jake Mabe A6 Faith A7 Interns A9,10 Health/Lifestyles Sect B
By Wendy Smith What happens when 22 teenagers and a handful of adults ride a school bus with no air-conditioning from Knoxville, Tenn., to Tijuana, Mexico? According to Fellowship Church Missions pastor John Winters, you get a tightknit group of sweaty teens – and a church that’s better able to serve a city built on a dump. Fellowship Church’s connection to Tijuana, which lies just 20 miles south of San Diego, began more than a decade ago when a group of young adults traveled to the city to work with an orphanage. The orphanage director suggested that they spend a day handing out food at the city landfi ll, and there they met pastor Albert Rivera. He had moved from Los Angeles to start a church at the dump, and a relationship began that continues today. The first youth group trip to Tijuana was in 2004. The teens were so moved by what they saw there that they raised money to build a
news@ShopperNewsNow.com ads@ShopperNewsNow.com GENERAL MANAGER Shannon Carey shannon@ShopperNewsNow.com EDITOR Sandra Clark sclark426@aol.com BEARDEN REPORTER Wendy Smith shopperWendy@comcast.net ADVERTISING SALES Laura Lyon Laura.Lyon@ShopperNewsNow.com Shopper-News is a member of KNS Media Group, published weekly at 10512 Lexington Drive, Suite 500, Knoxville, TN, and distributed to 24,267 homes in Bearden.
wave for the first three days of the trip. By the time they reached Arizona, it caught up with them. Because of insurance regulations, no teens could ride in the air-conditioned van, which was driven by Winters. When he learned that the temperature in the bus was almost 120 degrees, he turned off the air and rolled down the windows to show solidarity. According to Emily Alexander, a rising senior at Hardin Valley Academy, the heat didn’t wilt the spirits of the travelers. “It was really fun. We all had our own seats, and we were always talking and laughing. We got along really well,” she says. The group was refreshed by long stops at Walmart or McDonald’s, and each evening, the kids cooled off in a hotel pool. They were also rewarded with a day at the Grand Canyon. In spite of the grueling 2,400mile trip, the teens hit the ground running in Tijuana. They worked
on multiple projects at the orphanage and held a three-day camp for children from the church. Some stayed on longer to train kids at the church’s new computer center. The church at the dump has become a sister congregation to Fellowship, and it’s a reciprocal relationship, says Winters. Those who travel to Tijuana learn about contentment, faith and trust in God by being around people who live in houses built on a dump – and are happier than they are. “It makes you a greater giver – of yourself, and things. It’s really changed the trajectory of a lot of our folks.”
KAT may close Cedar Bluff route By Betty Bean
10512 Lexington Dr., Ste. 500 37932 (865) 218-WEST (9378)
church building at the dump. Last year, Fellowship Church paid off its mortgage, and those funds are now used to do things outside its walls, says Winters. Some were used to help ministry partners with one-time needs, and the biggest need of all was vehicles. The Tijuana orphanage needed a way to get kids to school, and the church at the dump needed to provide transportation to members. The church purchased a used school bus and a 15-passenger van, and to the youth group, the vehicles were the perfect excuse for a road trip. The teens had planned to fly to California to spend a week working in the orphanage and at the church in Mexico. But 22 of them agreed to use the money they would have spent on the flight to pay for gas and a few nights in hotels, and the cross-country expedition began. The group managed to stay ahead of a record-breaking heat
Members of the Fellowship Church youth group socialize with youngsters from a sister church in Tijuana, Mexico. Several of the teens used money they would have spent on plane fare to pay for gas for the bus, which was donated to the Mexican church by Fellowship. Photo submitted
Knoxville Area Transit will hold a public hearing to discuss ending the Cedar Bluff Express route at its July meeting this week. KAT has been notified by the management of the Cedar Bluff Center that park-and-ride spaces reserved for Cedar Bluff Express passengers will no longer be available after Sept. 30. To date, no suitable alternative has been located. The KAT board will consider eliminating the route at 3 p.m. Thursday, July 26, at the Main Assembly Room of the City County Building. “We were informed by White
Realty Management, the management company of the shopping center where the park-and-ride is for the Cedar Bluff Express route, that they have a new tenant and they are going to need all the available parking spaces, so we will no longer be able to use that parking lot as of the end of September,” KAT General Manager Cindy McGinnis said. “We have been making outreach efforts to other possible locations in the area for the purpose of relocating the lot, without any success.” The challenge of finding a suitable site for park-and-ride is complicated by the reality that the Cedar Bluff route is one of KAT’s
lowest performers, McGinnis said. “The numbers are not good. That route averaged less than three passengers per hour in May. Actually it was the lowest performing route with 2.2 passengers per hour. For comparison, Magnolia Avenue has 28.48 passengers per hour. What that tells you is you’re devoting a lot of resources to a route that isn’t performing well.” So, although ending the Cedar Bluff express wasn’t KAT management’s idea, McGinnis says it is a reasonable business decision, and that KAT has asked the town of Farragut for a subsidy to reestablish a park-and-ride lot, this
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one off Campbell Station Road. “Our ridership has been declining because the park-andride lot fi lled with van poolers,” she said. “Hopefully, passengers currently using the Cedar Bluff Express route would be attracted to using the Farragut Express route. In the past, this route was attractive to Kimberly-Clark employees. But now, with Kimberly-Clark moving, that is another factor. It’s not that the route even faces an encouraging future. “And that’s the way we have to look at things. We’ve got so many positive things going on, and we always hate losing passengers, but this is a good business decision at this point.”
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