1999 The year in review

August 16-31

Aug. 16

PALMDALE - As a new grocery chain opens up in the Antelope Valley this week, Stater Bros. Markets' chief executive, who grew up in the high desert, stepped away from corporate America to invite residents here to consider his stores in their shopping options.

Aug. 17

PALMDALE - The owner of a Palmdale pizza parlor faces potential charges of furnishing narcotics to a teenage girl, and Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies are investigating whether the restaurateur produced teen sex films as a sideline. Deputies visited Kourosh "Eddie" Ehteshami, 35, with an arrest warrant at about 10:30 a.m. Monday after concerned citizens tipped them, claiming that Ehteshami had given drugs to a teenager.
Aug. 18

PALMDALE - Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Antelope Valley residents filled shopping carts to the rim Tuesday. They were among myriad shoppers who flocked to the "heartland" to buy groceries at three stores that opened under the Stater Bros. banner. At the Stater Bros. store on Avenue S and 47th Street East - an Albertson's until Sunday night when it closed for 36 hours for the conversion - store managers said they counted more than 500 people walking through the store's check stands by 11 a.m., two hours after the store officially opened.

PALMDALE - A former Palmdale School District teacher who resigned after a drug incident now is under arrest for the alleged rape of one of his former students, a 13-year-old female. Wayne Martin, 50, turned himself in to Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies Tuesday morning after a warrant was issued for his arrest.

PALMDALE - Twenty-one charges, including harassment and drinking on the job, couldn't convince Palmdale school board trustees Helen Acosta and Fredrick Thompson to fire the district's public relations director, Diana BeardWilliams.

LANCASTER - A firefighter who allegedly tried to settle a dispute between his teenage nephew and another boy by smashing the windows of the boy's car and then firing a bullet into the ground near the boy's mother has pleaded innocent. Lancaster resident Steve Passmore, 46, is charged with assault with a semiautomatic firearm; assault with a deadly weapon; discharge of a firearm with gross negligence; and making terrorist threats.

Aug. 19

LANCASTER - Lancaster Mayor Frank Roberts on Wednesday handed over the deed to a 22acre site for a proposed veterans home at 30th Street West and Avenue I. The exchange between Roberts and Tomas Alvarado, secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs, came during a meeting of the California Veterans Board in the Lancaster City Council chambers.

ROSAMOND - Kern County Supervisor Steve Perez has apologized to residents for allowing a promoter to hold the Oracle 2 International Music Festival in Rosamond. Perez made the public apology during the Aug. 3 Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting after dozens of Rosamond residents were raving mad at Kern County officials for allowing the July 31 music festival at Willow Springs Raceway.

Aug. 20

PALMDALE - Commercial flights throughout Southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix were delayed early Thursday morning when a computer failed at the FAA's Los Angeles Air Traffic Control Center. Radar screen data went blank after the outage began at 5:07 a.m., said Mitch Barker, an FAA spokesman in Seattle. A backup computer immediately provided limited radar data when the initial system failed, Barker said. But on the backup system, the center opted not to handle as many aircraft.

Aug. 21

LANCASTER - When deputies pulled over Palmdale resident Mark Shehata in late June, they noted he was nervous and couldn't stand still. He was their primary suspect in the attempted theft of $4,000 from Downey Savings.

But the deputies couldn't know what prosecutors claim Shehata knew - that over the years, he had used phony credit cards and assumed other people's identities to swindle financial institutions out of more than $150,000.

PALMDALE - A draft study on the possible future use of Palmdale Regional Airport showed it could attract as many as 4 million domestic passengers a year by 2010. The study, by the Hagler Bailly Services consulting firm of Arlington, Va., was commissioned by Los Angeles World Airports, which owns and operates Palmdale Regional.

PALMDALE - A Los Angeles gang's abortive attempt to draft new membership in the Antelope Valley triggered an early-morning standoff on Friday, and ended when the gang members surrendered to the sheriff's SWAT team. Sometime before midnight, an unidentified 19-year-old Palmdale man was approached by about seven members of a Hispanic gang from Los Angeles, sheriff's deputies reported.

Aug. 22

PALMDALE - A 25-year-old film clip shows Kathleen Soliah in blue-tinted, oversized glasses and long, straight hair leading a protest rally in Berkeley's Ho Chi Minh Park. It was just two weeks after the infamous Symbionese Liberation Army shootout with Los Angeles Police officers where SWAT team officers hunting for newspaper heiress Patty Hearst turned a square block of L.A. into an advertisement for the apocalypse.

Aug. 23

PALMDALE - Columbia, the oldest space shuttle in NASA's four-ship fleet, is set to arrive in Palmdale for modifications Sept. 24.

Its collection of upgrades is scheduled to take 293 working days to complete.

Aug. 24

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Former Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive Kathleen Soliah, who lived under an assumed name for more than 20 years, legally adopted that name Monday.

Ramsey County District Court Referee Charles H. Williams Jr. allowed Soliah to change her name to Sara Jane Olson. That was the name she took when she settled in Minnesota after fleeing charges of conspiracy to commit murder in California.

LITTLEROCK - An odd battle between species rages on as the tiny endangered arroyo toad prevents Palmdale Water District workers from cleaning silt at the Littlerock Dam Recreation Area.

This is because certain parts of the recreation area are closed due to environmental concerns for the endangered species.

Aug. 25

LANCASTER - John Fidler, CEO of Lancaster Community Hospital, has been replaced. Fidler, who was named hospital CEO 16 months ago, was replaced Monday by Michael McAndrew, hospital spokeswoman Carol Fryer said.

LANCASTER - A pair of gang members tossed a few gags around and chuckled a bit Tuesday before facing sentencing for setting a woman on fire.

Eugene Contreras, 24, received 14 years in prison for the crime; Jon Albee, 26, received 14.

PALMDALE - California traffic deaths dropped to a 42-year low in 1998, paced by double-digit declines in motorcycle and pedestrian fatalities, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The CHP's Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System showed that 3,459 people died in crashes on California's highways in 1998, down 5.8% from 1997, when there were 3,671 fatalities. Deaths were the lowest since 1955, when 3,431 people died.

Aug. 26

PALMDALE - U.S. Forest Service Agents and narcotics detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spent Monday and Tuesday uprooting approximately 4,000 marijuana plants found in the Angeles National Forest.

LANCASTER - Enrolling in classes at Antelope Valley College has become a game of chance for some students as fall registration surges to record levels. Less than a week into the fall semester, enrollment at the college is up more than 23%, college officials said.

LANCASTER - Standing on a street corner watching the world go by could soon be a crime for the nearly 1,000 gang members who live in this city.

The Lancaster City Council approved an ordinance Tuesday night preventing gang members and their associates from loitering in public with the intent to either intimidate others or hide the evidence of a crime.

LOS ANGELES - Voters are likely to be offered a chance to expand the number of districts within Los Angeles County from five to nine, a move that some argue would give the Antelope Valley better representation in a government bureaucracy that represents 10 million people.

Aug. 27

PALMDALE - Teenage vandals who dubbed their tagging crew "Try Stopping Us" got stopped Thursday when deputies descended on their homes with arrest warrants connected to $40,000 in vandalism damage locally.

At one location connected to the vandalism, deputies discovered seven pounds of marijuana and evidence that there had been much more.

MOJAVE - Seventeen-yearold Koury Davis, one of the premier high school running backs in the Antelope Valley, died around 7:10 a.m. Thursday on a two-lane stretch of State Route 14, just north of Mojave. The high school football star was killed on his way to school in a single-car accident witnessed by a busload of fellow students who looked on in horror and arrived at school in a state of shock.

Aug. 28

PALMDALE - Marriott International, which has its name on 1,800 hotels in 54 countries, is adding two more in Palmdale.

Marriott, based in Washington, D.C., has granted a franchise to Tharaldson Enterprises of Fargo, N.D., for construction of a pair of hotels at the Palmdale Promenade shopping center, on Avenue P near Fifth Street West.

Aug. 29

PALMDALE - The developer that created the master-planned community of Valencia has purchased controlling interest in the more than 5,000-home City Ranch project on Palmdale's west side. The City Ranch project has been in the works since 1989 and developer Kaufman and Broad Home Corp. obtained approvals from the city of Palmdale for the 1,900-acre project in 1993. The development is one of the largest in Los Angeles County since the early 1990s.

LOS ANGELES - Plans to invest $10 billion for the expansion of Los Angeles International Airport continue, but neighbors to the hemmed-in airfield opposed to the expansion may be making some headway.

Environmental studies for the expansion of LAX were expected to be complete last fall, but now won't be ready until early next year, said Niki Tennant, spokeswoman for L.A. City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter. Her boss represents voters adjacent to the airport, and opposes the expansion project.

Aug. 30

ACTON - A silhouette of black smoked outlined by the orange glowing sunset filled the Antelope Valley night sky as wildfires ignited in Acton and Bouquet Canyon on Sunday.

More than 294 firefighters battled the Acton blaze that burned more than 1,200 acres with wind gusts of 10 to 15 mph.

Aug. 31

PALMDALE - As a 17-yearold sweat-drenched Highland High School football player stepped off the practice field Monday, he had more than a cool shower awaiting him.

Deputies from the Palmdale Sheriff's Station were there to arrest the teen on suspicion of auto burglary and the attempted robbery of a local Burger King.

Uploaded December 22, 1999