1999 The year in review

July 1-14: July brings continued investigations in AV

July 1

LOS ANGELES - In what the prosecutor called one of the worst fraud cases his office ever handled, a 65-year-old Quartz Hill woman was sentenced to 11 years in prison Wednesday for cheating more than 60 elderly investors out of $1.4 million in a land fraud scheme.

Throughout Wednesday's proceeding, Carolina Peredes maintained she had done nothing wrong and said her investors had only themselves to blame.

QUARTZ HILL - Machine gun-wielding deputies laid siege to a home in the exclusive Godde Hill area early Wednesday, capturing a resident who allegedly aimed a shotgun at deputies serving a search warrant.

SANTA ANA - Amid tears and applause from the families of the dead, serial killer Charles Ng was sentenced to death Wednesday for 11 murders committed during a mid-1980s spree of bondage and torture at a rural Sierra foothills cabin.

PALMDALE - Results of the state's Stanford Achievement Test to evaluate reading, writing and math skills indicate that education in the Valley is on an upward trend. The testing program, known as STAR, was authorized in 1997 by Senate Bill 376 to test the knowledge of public school students in grades two through 11 in reading, writing and mathematics.

July 2

PALMDALE - The Family Support Office in Palmdale is again under public scrutiny, after an employee levied charges of gross mismanagement and negligence. The employee alleges that the cases of at least 300 Antelope Valley residents seeking child support will be delayed because workers sent incomplete paperwork to a court for processing.

PALMDALE - Diana BeardWilliams, who was terminated in April as public relations director for Palmdale School District, has filed a lawsuit against the district. Beard-Williams, who is serving as her own attorney, is suing the district alleging wrongful termination, discrimination, retribution for being a whistle-blower, violation of her civil rights and blackmail.

July 3

ST. PAUL, Minn. - An extradition warrant asking that alleged Symbionese Liberation Army member Kathleen Soliah be returned to California to face murder conspiracy charges has arrived at Gov. Jesse Ventura's office. Ventura was expected to sign the order as early as Tuesday.

July 4

LANCASTER - Lt. Gen. James "Jimmy" Doolittle who led the first American bombing raid against Japan in World War II made famous in book and film as "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," will be honored with a mural of his likeness, along with the B-25 he flew, on the side of a Lancaster Boulevard building.

July 5

AGUA DULCE - School district officials are upset they weren't notified of a proposed 500acre mining operation within the district's boundaries. Transit Mixed Concrete has applied for a permit to surface mine concrete aggregate, sand and gravel, and to operate a concrete batch plant and appurtenant facilities at 12101 Soledad Canyon Road.

July 6

PALMDALE - Municipal and Los Angeles County officials remain mystified by rumors that continue to abound in the Godde Terrace Estates housing tract on the city's far west side predicting the construction of halfway houses for juvenile court offenders and the following degradation of neighborhood property values and safety.

July 7

CANOGA PARK - Byron Wood understood the potential of the aerospike rocket engine 30 years ago, long before it became a key piece of the X-33 rocketplane design.

On Tuesday, the first of four aerospike engines was rolled out in a small ceremony at the Boeing Rocketdyne facilities in Canoga Park.

LITTLEROCK - U.S. Forest Service rangers and biologists have trekked Littlerock Canyon in hopes of finding five endangered arroyo toads that had been fitted with tiny radio transmitters and antennas in mid-May.

The group utilized a receiver equipped to fit on a belt and a connected antenna to help locate the toads.

LOS ANGELES - There will be no new investigation into allegations that several Antelope Valley residents' cases with the Palmdale Family Support office were mishandled. Allegations were raised last week by a Family Support worker that more than 300 Valley residents' cases were missing essential information when filed with the court.

July 8

LANCASTER - Following a tortuous path, including a stint on the Department of Defense chopping block, two crashes and a redesign, the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey will be heading west, possibly to Edwards Air Force Base, for flight testing in May 2000.

ROSAMOND - Cesar deLos Reyes may have been in a jealous rage when he allegedly firebombed an apartment July 1. His family described deLos Reyes, 21, as a troubled young man obsessed with an ex-girlfriend they knew only as Marycris.

HESPERIA - Motorists traveling the remote eastern section of Highway 138 are familiar with delays caused by traffic collisions, but Wednesday morning's commute was interrupted by a different kind of obstacle.

The Summit Valley wildfire, which chased residents from their homes in nearby hills in San Bernardino County, came too close to Highway 138, prompting officials to close the roadway.

July 9

LOS ANGELES - Cheryl Burnham, 39, an Antelope Valley woman accused of making thousands of calls worth nearly $120,000 to psychic hotlines from June 1996 to November 1998 while at her county job, pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of grand theft.

HOMER, Alaska - Relatives of Carson and Lorna Chism, a Lancaster couple rescued from Cook Inlet after a halibut charter boat sank Wednesday morning, said they are uncertain about the couple's welfare.

LITTLEROCK - A brownand-green speckled toad is behind the newest complaints against the Forest Adventure Pass. People must now pay a $5 dollar fee for areas they can no longer use because they have been closed to preserve the endangered arroyo toad.

The fee was applied to the Littlerock Recreation Area on June 25.

LANCASTER - Lancaster is offering to give away 40 acres of land to the DreamWorks SKG film studio for a multimillion-dollar headquarters after the studio formed by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen abandoned plans to build the complex in a development near Marina Del Rey.

July 10

PALMDALE - Palmdale is upping the acreage ante on the pitch to make the DreamWorks movie studio a real deal in the Antelope Valley, offering incentives that include 120 acres of land.

ST. PAUL, Minn. - A "soccer mom" originally from the Antelope Valley acknowledged Friday she is former radical Kathleen Ann Soliah and agreed to be sent to Los Angeles to face conspiracy charges that could mean life in prison.

The 52-year-old Palmdale High School graduate signed an extradition waiver with the names Kathleen Ann Soliah/Sara Jane Olson.

July 11

LANCASTER - Exodus Air Service has plans to build a jet center at Gen. William J. Fox Airfield in an attempt to capitalize on a current runway expansion project. While there are some services for jets at Fox Airfield, there is nothing specifically dedicated to them.

LANCASTER - A new experimental plane is possibly headed to Edwards Air Force Base, a place that has made its mark through cutting-edge flight research. NASA and the Air Force have begun preliminary work on a plane that could do away with all flight control surfaces and maneuver using only jet engines.

July 12

ROSAMOND - An electrical parade of lightning, thunder and heavy rains marched through the Antelope Valley and surrounding communities Sunday, leaving behind massive flooding and several power outages. In Palmdale, the day's heavy rain and extremely poor visibility are being blamed for a four-car crash along Pearblossom Highway that claimed the life of an elderly woman.

July 13

PALMDALE - With proof in hand that the nation's taxpayers could save up to $2.2 billion if the joint strike fighter is constructed at Air Force Plant 42, interested parties have one significant question left - What's next?

A study showing provable cost advantages of building the JSF at Plant 42 - as opposed to two other out-of-state sites - has been handed to Gov. Gray Davis and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Santa Clarita.

WASHINGTON - A House subcommittee moved Monday to freeze the Air Force program for developing the sophisticated F-22 stealth fighter jet, agreeing to spend the money instead on upgrading today's fleet of F-15s and F-16s. The appropriations defense subcommittee recommended taking the full $1.8 billion that was to be spent to buy F-22s in fiscal 2000 and using it elsewhere.

LANCASTER - Former Highland High School teacher and girls coach Craig Fulladosa was ordered Monday to stand trial on charges of adding nude photos to his school computer, stroking the bare leg of one of his athletes and possessing child pornography.

July 14

AGUA DULCE - Southdown Inc., the parent company of a proposed mining operation on Soledad Canyon Road near Agua Dulce, has a record of environmental legal battles throughout the country. Transit Mix Concrete, owned by Southdown Inc., has applied for a permit to mine 83 million tons of material on a 500-acre site in Agua Dulce.

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The capture of a former Symbionese Liberation Army member has prompted California authorities to reopen an investigation into a 1975 bank robbery in which a woman was shot and killed. Authorities suspect Kathleen Soliah was one of the masked robbers who stormed the Crocker Bank branch in Carmichael on April 21, 1975. One robber fatally shot Myrna Lee Opsahl, 42, a physician's wife who was depositing receipts from a church event.

Uploaded December 21, 1999