This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press December 21, 1996.April 2
LOS ANGELES - A Palmdale woman accused of issuing homemade banker's checks skips a federal court hearing, prompting a judge to delay arguments on a government request for a restraining order to stop the allegedly fraudulent practice by Mary Elizabeth Broderick.
PALMDALE - A chain of family recreation centers announces plans to build a 9-acre park in Palmdale with a race track, two miniature golf courses, laser tag, a go-cart track, a bumper boat lagoon and an outdoor soccer arena.
The Mountasia/Malibu Grand Prix Family Fun Center, planned for the southeast corner of Avenue P-4 and Trade Center Drive, is scheduled for a June groundbreaking and an early January opening.
April 3
LANCASTER - The City Council will issue $19 million worth of bonds to help a private, non-profit corporation buy two mobile home parks.
SYLMAR - A Lancaster teenager who shot and killed his best friend in November is sentenced to probation.
April 4
PALMDALE - NASA officials say they have asked for proposals to build a prototype of the next-generation space shuttle, the X-33.
Three teams of aerospace companies, two with operations in the Antelope Valley, are testing the technologies they hope to expand before the final proposals are due in May. The $941 million contract is expected to be awarded July 1.
LANCASTER - Gunshots ring out at an occupied bus stop just outside Antelope Valley High School, only minutes before some 2,400 students are to change classes. No one waiting for a bus was injured, says principal Michael Dutton.
April 5
LANCASTER - Charges are expected to be filed against a man who allegedly strangled his elderly landlord in a Lancaster duplex.
April 6
LANCASTER - Antelope Valley Hospital and two healthcare groups end talks about forming a new organization to win contracts with insurance companies. The hospital will continue searching for partners, says board member Shirley Sayles.
April 7
Palmdale's now-closed hospital was cited more than any hospital in the nation for breaking a federal law that prohibits hospitals from denying treatment to emergency patients, according to a just-released report.
A jetliner ferrying the Atlantis space shuttle to Florida makes an emergency landing at Edwards Air Force Base when an engine fire warning light goes on shortly after takeoff.
April 9
PALMDALE - Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works employees ratify a three-year contract, averting a strike by about 1,300 union members here.
ACTON - Two men die when machinery they are using touches a 16,000-volt overhead power line.
April 10
LANCASTER - Jim Jeffra, a former Lancaster School District trustee and retired sheriff's deputy, wins a landslide victory over seven other candidates seeking a seat on the City Council.
LANCASTER - Councilman Frank Roberts becomes the city's first directly elected mayor in a much-watched contest against Councilman Michael Singer.
April 11
LITTLEROCK - Residents want to preserve the oldest building in town - Martin House, a two-story landmark off 77th Street East that once served as a hotel and stagecoach stop.
LANCASTER - A city worker seen retrieving a misplaced box of voter ballots from a supply tub has raised allegations of ballot tampering.
That complaint and others about the theft of campaign signs, wrongful placement of signs and unproven slurs about candidates were part of this year's municipal election.
April 12
Winds gusting to 60 mph wreak havoc in the west Antelope Valley, ripping part of the roof off a schoolhouse, toppling dozens of power poles and launching big tumbleweeds into traffic.
April 13
LANCASTER - Empty storefronts and commercial buildings here may add up to much less than might meet the eye, according to some interpretations of a city survey of retail and commercial building vacancies.
Stafford Parker, director of the Lancaster Redevelopment Agency, says commercial vacancies represent only about 9.3% of the city's total commercial square footage.
Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed, who fought with limited success last year to get the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to pass sweeping budget cuts, resigns to head the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
April 14
LAKE LOS ANGELES - Floyd and Jane Braido didn't know they were drinking and bathing in water with uranium levels 183 times higher than state regulations say is safe. Now the couple wonder if the water at Hillcrest Mobile Home Park is to blame for health problems.
April 16
Minor league baseball returns to Los Angeles County for the first time in 39 years, as the Lancaster JetHawks open at home in the new "Hangar" against the Visalia Oaks.
JetHawks right-hander Ken Cloude delivers the historic first pitch to open a new chapter in Antelope Valley sports history.
April 17
Radical Freemen theories embraced by a Palmdale woman who teaches people how to make homemade bankers' checks take a legal beating when a judge bars the practice and a prosecutor drafts criminal charges against some of the woman's students.
U.S. District Court Judge William Keller signs a preliminary injunction prohibiting Margaret Elizabeth Broderick and two co-defendants from making and distributing the fake checks.
April 18
LANCASTER - The city's first directly elected mayor asks colleagues to seat Councilman Henry Hearns as vice mayor, thereby denying the previously rotational assignment to Councilwoman Deborah Shelton.
The move by Mayor Frank Roberts garners the three votes to pass, along with denunciation by Shelton and Councilman Mike Singer, the outgoing vice mayor.
April 19
LITTLEROCK - Jeff Foster, principal at Littlerock High School, is named one of the 10 best educators in the state.
The California League of High Schools presents Foster with the Educator of the Year award for the Los Angeles region at a ceremony in Universal City.
MOJAVE - Angry Kern County residents tell a Canadian company to take its mining operation and go home, while others implore their neighbors to consider the jobs and economic benefits the new Soledad Mountain Project would bring.
April 20
LOS ANGELES - The county's top administrator will propose eliminating 1,000 jobs and cutting $200 million in spending, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich says.
April 21
CALIFORNIA CITY - City officials take the first step in allowing construction of a $13 million medium-security prison two miles north of downtown.
April 23
EDWARDS AFB - One of two existing prototypes of the DarkStar unmanned spy plane crashes during takeoff for its second flight.
April 24
LANCASTER - Superior Court Commissioner Victor I. Reichman, who 20 years earlier helped open the doors to the Valley's first dependency court, is transferred after a court decides he has an "angry" bias against a Palmdale defense attorney.
April 25
LANCASTER - A judge who abruptly transferred Superior Court Commissioner Victor I. Reichman out of the Valley's juvenile department - based on a ruling that states the local jurist is biased - says the move is permanent.
April 26
LOS ANGELES - Authorities arrest Margaret Elizabeth Broderick, the self-styled "lien queen" and Freemen student who taught people how to save their homes from foreclosure, pay taxes and buy cars with homemade checks.
PALMDALE - Sheriff's deputies arrest four men on suspicion of robbing a Rancho Vista Boulevard bank and leading authorities on a car chase that reached 100 mph.
April 27
PALMDALE - Nearly 3,000 local high school students take the day off classes for Air Force Plant 42's eighth annual "Salute to Youth," which offers job information, aircraft displays and, for a lucky few, a plane ride.
LANCASTER - House Speaker Newt Gingrich comes to the Antelope Valley with an election-year commitment on the B-2 program that brings thunderous applause from 550 people who paid $250 a seat to hear him speak.