1999 The year in review

November 1-13: Candidate arrested on eve of election

Nov. 1

LANCASTER - Palmdale City Council candidate Kevin Wright Carney, arrested Friday for a lewd act with a 14-year-old girl, maintained his innocence on Sunday. Carney, who was released from jail on $100,000 bond Sunday, called his arrest on suspicion of molesting a 14-year-old girl "... the epitome of dirty politics."

Nov. 2

PALMDALE - With Valleywide elections set today, the lastminute "fooled ya" messages and "hit mailers" are raining on voters like blows on a punching bag. Some of this stuff is pretty ugly. Some of it is just plain misleading. Other offerings are more positive as everyone in a field of 68 candidates tries to get out his or her particular message.

PALMDALE - One by one at McAdam Park in Palmdale, the panels that make up the Moving Wall were attached to the others, creating the half-scale replica of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

ROSAMOND - What seemed like a quiet campaign to get voters to approve a $13.3 million Southern Kern Unified School District bond measure took a negative turn during the weekend. The bond, intended to pay for improvements to the district's aging schools, met with opposition from Rosamond resident Sheila Carle, who distributed more than 1,000 fliers around her community on Saturday.

Nov. 3

PALMDALE - Two members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were the leading contenders Tuesday in a race to fill a City Council seat vacated in January by a departmental colleague.

Early returns had sheriff's Lt. Rod Penner leading five other candidates in a race for a two-year post created by the departure of former Councilman Terry Judge.

PALMDALE - Early returns Tuesday showed incumbent Jim Ledford on his way toward winning a fifth term as Palmdale's mayor.

Based on a tally of absentee ballots and votes cast in 9 of the city's 24 precincts, Ledford had a 666vote lead over his closest competitor, businessman Rick Norris.

PALMDALE - Kevin Carney - the Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy arrested Friday for an alleged lewd act with a 14-year-old girl - clung to a slim second-place lead as ballot counting came to a close early Wednesday morning. Carney was one of 13 candidates in a race for two four-year seats on the Palmdale City Council.

LANCASTER - Antelope Valley College incumbent Earl Wilson and newcomer Wayne Woodhall appeared to win the two seats on the board as the last of the ballots were being tallied in Los Angeles and Kern counties early this morning. Woodhall took an early lead and led throughout the night, pulling in 10,017 votes, while Wilson followed with 8,594 votes with 86 of 94 precincts reporting. The two other contenders, John Currado and Steve Buffalo, had received 7,142 and 7,486 votes, respectively.

Nov. 4

PALMDALE - Councilmanelect Kevin Carney faces two possible futures. One opens to his apparent newly won seat on the City Council. The other door yawns from prison. Free on $100,000 bail, Carney said Wednesday he would plead not guilty "if" he is arraigned Nov. 22 on charges of alleged child molestation.

LANCASTER - Voters narrowly rejected a $91 million bond measure to fix up Antelope Valley high school campuses during Tuesday's election.

Antelope Valley Union High School District's bond, Measure E, was geared to build new classrooms and fix up aging schools and needed a two-thirds majority vote to pass.

PALMDALE - Jim Ledford won his fifth term as Palmdale mayor Tuesday night, but he awoke Wednesday morning to a City Council full of political rivals, a new set of campaign promises to fulfill and a single harsh reality: in just two years he'd be on the stump again.

PALMDALE - Karl Shepherd of Rosamond drove to McAdam Park in Palmdale to pay tribute to fallen comrades Wednesday morning. While he may have driven on surface streets and the freeway to the Moving Wall memorial at the park, somewhere along the way, he was back on his patrol craft on the inland waters of Vietnam. Shepherd served with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam in 1967-68 as a member of the "Brown Water Navy." He was a "River Rat" or a "Swiftie."

Nov. 5

LANCASTER - He came to Palmdale a decade ago to transform a struggling Lutheran congregation that met in a school into a strong community church. Somewhere along the way, he became a thief, preying on his flock.

During his five years as pastor of the Shepherd of the Valley Free Lutheran Church, authorities say Rev. David C. Molstre embezzled more than $200,000 from the church and nearly drove it to bankruptcy.

LOS ANGELES - A member of a supremacist gang called the Nazi Low Riders was convicted Thursday of the racially motivated murder of a homeless black man in 1995. Charges against two co-defendants were in the hands of two other juries. A Superior Court jury found Randall Lee Rojas, 24, guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Milton Walker Jr., 43, who was beaten on Nov. 25, 1995, behind a McDonald's restaurant in Lancaster.

Nov. 6

LANCASTER - To many in Los Angeles and farther afield, mention of the Antelope Valley calls forth an immediate association with racial violence - an image that in recent years is largely unearned and, now, largely inaccurate.

True or not, the region's characterization as a "hotbed for hate crime" may be responsible for scaring away investment. This still occurs, oddly at a time when the local economy is improving; local crime is plunging; and California's statewide economy is surging.

LANCASTER - Antelope Valley businessman Frank Visco and Los Angeles County 5th District Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich have both been named to the GOP national steering committee to elect Texas Gov. George W. Bush the next president.

PALMDALE - Asked how she felt seeing the names of American military personnel who died during the Vietnam War, 13-yearold Cheryl Williams eyed the Moving Wall at McAdam Park in Palmdale on Friday, lowered her eyes and said, "it makes me feel sad and proud at the same time."

An eighth-grade student at Challenger Middle School in Lake Los Angeles was one of the thousands of students from Antelope Valley schools who have visited the Moving Wall on field trips.

PALMDALE - Local businesswoman Sandy Corrales' run for a Palmdale City Council seat isn't officially dead, but it appears to be dying.

Election results updated Friday afternoon show she is now 96 votes behind Kevin Carney for second place in a race for two council seats.

Election returns earlier this week showed her trailing Carney by 49 votes. Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder workers still had provisional and absentee ballots to count, however, and Corrales said she was not giving up hope.

Nov. 7

PALMDALE - Droves of shoppers huddled around the outdoor entrances to Dillard's on Saturday, wondering whether the rumors of the department store's noon opening would be validated.

As a brown door slid open, a cheer went up from the 60 shoppers on the east side of the building.

LANCASTER - Antelope Valley High School District trustees did not have enough money to build all the new schools they needed this year, but they have enough to double their own travel and discretionary funding as well as provide senior members with lifetime medical, dental and vision care.

In July, the district's board of trustees voted unanimously to raise - as part of their fiscal year 1999-2000 budget - their travel and discretionary funding from $24,000 a year to $50,000 a year.

Nov. 8

PALMDALE - Candles, a pint of Jim Beam, a vintage steel pot helmet, wreaths, candles, flowers in vases. These were the remnants of memory that thousands of visitors left in front of the Moving Wall Memorial at McAdam Park.

Wall volunteers said about 4,000 people visited The Wall on Sunday, many of them driving from outside of the Valley.

Nov. 9

LANCASTER - The Antelope Valley College board of trustees voted, 3-2, Monday night to extend AVC President Linda Spink's contract for an additional year.

As expected, outgoing President Don Ross, trustee Betty Lou Nash and Vice President Earl Wilson voted for the extension of Spink's contract. Clerk Betty Wienke and trustee Michael Adams voted against the additional year.

LANCASTER - Jill Harris, executive director for the Antelope Valley High Schools Education Foundation, has been placed on paid administrative leave by the foundation's board of directors.

PALMDALE - Six delegates from China were at City Hall on Monday, seeking to establish relations with the city of Palmdale as well as searching out a possible location for a new business outlet.

"We came here to establish a sister city with Jinhua City. This is our main purpose," said Wu Zicheng, deputy section chief of the Department of Foreign Affairs for Jinhua's municipal government.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon joined other Republican House members in calling for a final appropriations bills to include provisions guaranteeing local control of President Bill Clinton's 100,000 new teachers plan.

McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning, urged GOP congressional leaders to continue supporting the principles of his Teacher Empowerment Act, which would send federal education dollars directly to local schools to be spent on local priorities.

PALMDALE - Perhaps the most telling sign the economy is bouncing back in the Antelope Valley was revealed recently when a real estate information service reported a dramatic decline in foreclosure rates throughout the state.

In Los Angeles County, 6,949 foreclosures were recorded in the third quarter of 1999, down from 8,378 at the same time last year - a 17% drop, according to Acxiom Corp.'s DataQuick Products Division, which monitors real estate activity nationally.

Nov. 10

LANCASTER - A gasp of disbelief and outcry of dissent erupted from members of the Antelope Valley College faculty and staff on hearing the trustees' 3-2 vote to extend the contract of college President Linda Spink.

Tensions ran high as more than 70 people packed the board room in anticipation of the Monday vote that granted Spink a one-year extension that allows her to be fully vested for her California state retirement account.

LANCASTER - He advertised to lure women to his house, drug them and have sex with them. Now he's going to prison.

Ron Rowen, 48, has been convicted of drugging and raping two women. Prosecutors say he lured them to his apartment on the ruse of hiring them as house-sitters.

LANCASTER - High school trustees spent $20,502 on travel and discretionary expenses during fiscal 1998-99, not $16,794 as reported by the Valley Press on Sunday.

The $16,794 was spent during fiscal 1997-98, according to copies of Antelope Valley Union High School District records. The $20,502 was spent in fiscal 1998-99.

Nov. 11

PALMDALE - Shoppers packed Dillard's department store Wednesday, with more than 1,000 at the doors flowing into aisles and squeezing so tightly onto the store's escalator that they triggered a safety mechanism, which cut power to the lift.

The department store's grand opening Wednesday morning at the Antelope Valley Mall brought throngs of eager shoppers and attracted a broad band of media attention, including a KABC-TV camera crew from Los Angeles.

PALMDALE - Site 9 at Air Force Plant 42, where Rockwell International built 100 B-1B bombers for the U.S. Air Force, is still on the sale block by its post-merger owner, The Boeing Co. of Seattle.

At the southeast end of the complex, Site 9 is one of two privately owned areas with arranged access to Plant 42's two 12,000-foot runways. The other is Lockheed Martin's Site 10, at the southwest end of the installation.

LANCASTER - The Antelope Valley High Schools Education Foundation board placed executive director Jill Harris on paid administrative leave from her $70,000-a-year job until members could sort out a $15,000 debt accrued in overdue bills.

Foundation officials remain silent about their decision to place Harris on leave, transferring all inquiries to the foundation's president, local attorney Thomas Ward.

LANCASTER - Is Palmdale's curfew ordinance unconstitutional?

A defense attorney says it is, and Superior Court Judge Chesley N. McKay Jr. agreed Wednesday, making a preliminary finding that the 1989 statute restricting the nighttime activities of minors is too vague to pass constitutional muster.

LANCASTER - The proposed switch of special education programs from the county to local school districts has some parents worried about possible upheavals in curriculum and class sizes.

As more students are coming into the Antelope Valley's elementary and high school districts, top education officials are being forced to re-examine who should have control of special education programs.

Nov. 12

PALMDALE - Three World War I veterans - Phillip Welburn, Jasper A. Bond and John Shelton Gordon - were in the front row at the Veterans Day services held Thursday morning at Desert Lawn Cemetery in Palmdale.

American flags placed in the ground near their grave markers denoted their veteran status.

Veterans of other wars were there as well - World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam War and Desert Storm.

LANCASTER - In the worst case, Antelope Valley Hospital may have to pony up $35,000 to the Internal Revenue Service for a lapse in its tax-exempt status, according to a preliminary report by hospital legal counsel.

It also may have to establish a different kind of tax-deferred retirement plan for employees other than the one in place at present.

PALMDALE - A downward trend in the number of violent crimes and property crimes Valleywide is the natural result of an improved economy, according to Capt. Tom Pigott, commander of the Lancaster Sheriff's Station.

LOS ANGELES - A Palmdale woman has been sentenced to three years in prison for embezzling more than $121,000 in welfare money, announced the district attorney's office.

Karina Lorena Hopewell, 34, pleaded no contest Wednesday to one count of theft by a government employee before Superior Court Judge Norm Shapiro. The judge then sentenced the Palmdale women to three years in prison.

Nov. 13

LITTLEROCK - Nearly 100 dogs, crowded three and four to a cage, or tied up next to a fence, erupt into a cacophony of barking when a human being approaches.

Canines loll in the sun with inadequate shelter, or none at all, and there are only algae-covered plastic water buckets to drink out of. The property has no running water.

LANCASTER - The Nov. 2 rejection of a $91 million bond measure to build new classrooms and refurbish old ones puts the high school district in position to play hardball with housing developers.

It also could force the district to establish double-session days or year-round classes for students attending the seven high schools in the Antelope Valley, or to attempt to renegotiate the split of local school-impact fees, board of trustees Vice President Bill Olenick said.

PALMDALE - A deal that could bring up to 5,000 jobs to the Antelope Valley is in the works.

SR Technics, the aircraft maintenance and repair branch of Swiss-based SAirGroup, is weighing the opening of a global maintenance shop at Air Force Plant 42's Site 9.

Uploaded December 28, 1999