1998 Review June Part 2

VALYERMO - Air Force teams joined the search party looking for an off-duty sheriff's deputy who never returned from a hike through Devil's Punchbowl. Two search and rescue helicopters, canine units and more than 80 people combed Devil's Punchbowl and surrounding areas for missing Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy John Aujay, 38, of Palmdale.

LANCASTER - Future graduates of a new Eastside Union School District middle school braved heat to watch their fellow students and board members break ground for the new school. Fifth- and sixthgraders from Tierra Bonita South, Gifford C. Cole Middle School and Eastside Elementary will be among the first students at the new Cole Middle School, slated to open in fall 1999.

June 17

LOS ANGELES - Southern California's struggling aerospace and defense industries may be poised for a transformation that could create a high-growth, high-tech powerhouse in the region, according to a new study. The study predicted 200,000 jobs could be added to the region early in the next century. The study was done by A.T. Kearney, an aerospace and defense consulting firm in Orange County.
June 18

ROSAMOND - A fight between two rival gangs turned deadly, with a youth shot and killed near Rosamond Boulevard and five people arrested.

Luis Sanchez, also known as Louie Salazar, 17, was killed by a rival gang member around 3 p.m. Tuesday in the residential area of Trakell Street and Rosamond Boulevard.

PALMDALE - Antelope Valley schools were shut out of a grant that would have provided support for after-school programs, frustrating educators and politicians who applied for part of the $40 million pie.

PALMDALE - A bell marking the start of the first class to improve the qualifications of local aerospace workers will ring July 20. The class to improve blueprint reading is the first organized under the college's Aerospace Training Center, said Tim DeBellis, AVC's director of corporate and community education.
June 19

SACRAMENTO - Aerospace frontrunner California could trip and fall in the race to attract the burgeoning commercial space industry, executives warned state legislators. Aerospace industry representatives outlined what California must do to rocket ahead and maintain a lead in the battle for a bigger share of the commercial launch industry.

EDWARDS AFB - After a weeklong effort, authorities called off the search for missing Lancaster sheriff's Deputy John Aujay.

LANCASTER - Students of the Antelope Valley Union High School District scored below national averages in all academic categories, according to results from a statewide assessment test.

LANCASTER - More than 100 people spent the night in lawn chairs and blankets in front of Antelope Valley Hospital Wednesday night. Many were still there Thursday afternoon waiting for a chance to buy Beanie Babies at the hospital's gift shop.

Beanie Babies are small pieces of cloth sewn into animal shapes and stuffed with tiny plastic pellets. The child's toy is the latest and hottest collection craze.
June 20

PALMDALE - Space shuttle Atlantis passed a major milestone in its $71 million remodification program when it successfully powered up earlier this month.

MOJAVE - Countdown to launch of a reusable, fully piloted space vehicle from Mojave Airport officially began when ground was broken on a multimillion-dollar rocket complex. San Francisco-based Rotary Rocket Co., developers of the Roton reusable piloted-space vehicle, began construction on a 4.5acre rocket complex at the airport.

LANCASTER - Los Angeles County will get a federal grant worth $1.7 million that will help pay for about half the runway improvements planned at William J. Fox Airfield.
June 21

LANCASTER - Tillie Hatcher threw a party and 250 people came, all from the same family. They came from Alaska and Hawaii, from North Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Oregon and from right here in the Antelope Valley. They came from all directions to attend a reunion of the extended Ramos family at the Old Ball Ranch, 90th Street East and Avenue K.

SUN VILLAGE - Children played, adults shopped and musicians entertained more than 1,000 people at the sixth annual Juneteenth Celebration Saturday at Jackie Robinson County Park.
June 23

LOS ANGELES - A year and 11 months after first being convicted of killing Palmdale resident Steven L. Stewart, Raymond Beltran Jr. last week was once again convicted by a Van Nuys jury of committing Stewart's 1994 murder.

Beltran, who aspired to be a state corrections officer, will be on the other side of the bars, serving a sentence for second-degree murder that could vary from 20 years in prison to life.

SANTA CLARITA - Two stuntmen will be arraigned for the murder of a fellow stuntman, whose bullet-riddled body was discovered in a rental car alongside the Antelope Valley Freeway near Agua Dulce in May.
June 24

LOS ANGELES - Protesters against welfare reform marched in downtown Los Angeles for two hours Tuesday, bringing traffic to a standstill at the intersection of Temple Street and Grand Avenue. Most of the several hundred protesters showed up to call attention to the county Board of Supervisors' decision to end monthly welfare payments to single adults without children.
June 25

PALMDALE - As soon as Palmdale workers complete modifications to space shuttle Atlantis, they can expect a visit from Columbia in April.

"Columbia is coming to Palmdale," NASA spokeswoman Jennifer McCarter said.

NASA contracts its shuttle work out to United Space Alliance (USA), which sees the work moving in the same direction - Palmdale.

LOS ANGELES - A jury Wednesday found a former Sheriff's Department official, and the former Lancaster-based executive who bribed him, guilty on six charges of corruption.
June 26

LANCASTER - Salvation Army Capts. Ken and Debbie Hood of the Lancaster Corps will leave for their new assignment at the Monterey Peninsula Corps in a few days. Along with their belongings, the Hoods will also take their memories from nine years of service to the Antelope Valley.
June 27

PALMDALE - The Palmdale City Council wants some accounting for the $40,000 the city gives the Chamber of Commerce each year. The request came during a review of the city's annual budget Thursday night. The city reviewed a $101.2 million spending plan that increases law enforcement efforts and expands the city's business attraction, street resurfacing and park and recreation plans.
June 28

LANCASTER - The fate of the Lancaster Factory Stores is in the hands of a new management group. Plagued by low-occupancy rates and developer Yehuda Netanel's inability to make loan payments on the center, the factory stores went into foreclosure last year.

PALMDALE - Water poured from a lion-head fountain, information booths sat on new, green grass and families watched city officials open Palmdale's new Civic Center Square Park. Construction of the $1.4 million park began last September.
June 30

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has set aside $5.2 million for completion of plans for the Antelope Valley courthouse, and if court revenues continue to rise, construction of the anticipated Avenue M facility could begin in 18 months.

The funding plan was announced during hearings for the 1998-99 Los Angeles County budget, as was a new construction time line.

ROSEBURG, Ore. - Retired Marine Corps Gen. Marion Carl, who survived air combat in two wars and decades of hazardous flying as an experimental test pilot, was shot to death in a robbery at his Oregon home Sunday night.

Gen. Carl, whose pioneering aviation exploits landed him a place in Lancaster's third class of five Aerospace Walk of Honor inductees in 1992, was 83 years old.