West Seattle Crime Watch: Targeted by burglars, a third time
Out of the WSB inbox, from J:
I would like to share the fact we had the 3rd burglary today (2 break-ins
and 1 attempt) since we moved to 41st and Thistle [map] about two years ago. At least one of the thugs squeezed through an 8″x12″ window in the basement (seriously?). They set the alarm off, but apparently it didn’t stop them from stabbing the alarm panel speaker with a large kitchen knife (baaad speaker, you!). They didn’t harm the horn.
Then they just ripped the alarm panel off the wall – the alarm company reported anyway because it has a battery.
It was a rainy day, so they made a big mess. They decided to leave all other expensive toys and went only for the LCD TV (lucky us). Although, they wrapped the TV with our most favorite blanket.
The cats had a short, but nice time outside until I arrived.
This was at 5:20 pm, open, exposed corner lot in the rainy but bright afternoon. Besides caring less to do this while I usually would have been home already (I wish so badly that I was!), the two guys wearing rubber gloves, hauling a large size TV out of a house with the alarm in the background, the TV covered up sparsely with a blanket and leaving the door open.?
Hey people, come on! They might not look like they live here, nor do I believe their car has ever been seen on our street and they were for sure covered in dirt from crawling under the muddy deck – yet not one person has seen or heard anything. What can we do, if we are all working during the day in this area and the thugs get more and more desperate?
Ah well, one day I’ll catch one.
A West Seattle celebration: Happy 97th birthday to Emma
By Ron Richardson
Special to West Seattle Blog
(Emma, left, with Betty Allen)
The Tuesday group at the Original Bakery in Fauntleroy celebrated Emma Harman’s 97th birthday today, May 5, Cinco de Mayo. The Bakery is a place where, over time, folks become acquaintances, then friends. This is how I got to know Emma. Readers probably have such a place in their corner of West Seattle.
These informal groups drop in on a regular basis, share experiences, vent frustrations, gossip, tackle the problems of the world and celebrate things like folks’ birthdays. Books and articles are shared and talked about. Emma and her friends meet every Tuesday and sometimes Thursday as well.
Bernie Alonzo, owner and baker at the Original Bakery, prepared a cake for our remarkable neighbor, Emma.
Emma Taylor (her maiden name) was raised in the Eastside mining town of Newcastle. When she was a young girl, her family experienced a harsh mining strike. That experience produced in Emma a keen sense of right and wrong and launched her into the struggle for social and economic justice for the underdogs. These were the Depression years, and she was determined to enter into the struggle to create solutions.
By the late 1930s, Emma was elected to the Washington State House of Representatives.
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West Seattle business news: 2 more Admiral arrivals
FIRST ADMIRAL NOTE: The second business to move into the long-empty space at 42nd/Admiral is finally ready to go public – joining CF West Seattle (here’s our previous story on CF-WS) will be Muttley Crew Cuts, currently located further south on California. Muttley Crew Cuts’ Kelly Rothenbuhler tells WSB they’re planning to move into the new space June 15, and it makes more growth possible for MCC: “It is a much bigger space at 3000 square feet. We will be able to do a lot more day care because we have more room for the dogs to run. There will be separate areas set up for different play types. There will be 2 larger areas and 1 puppy area and a senior dog area. The space also will allow for more retail area in the future. We will be open 7 days a week Monday through Friday 7 am to 7 pm and Saturday and Sunday 9 am to 6 pm.” A banner marking the new location might be up as soon as tomorrow. By the way, Muttley Crew Cuts and CF West Seattle are BOTH participating in West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day this Saturday, at the new space at 42nd and Admiral (their sales are #14 and #15 on the map – get it here) — CF is selling to benefit the Liver Foundation, Muttley Crew’s sale will benefit English Springer Rescue America.
SECOND ADMIRAL NOTE: Thanks to Forest for the tip on this – a short distance from the spot we were just discussing, Bloom Preschool and Transitional Kindergarten is opening in The Admiral (the building with Bartell Drugs). Here’s the school’s website with more info.
Got flu questions? County beefs up the hotline
A note from King County Public Health:
Starting tomorrow, Wednesday, Public Health’s Flu Hotline at 877-903-5464 will provide expanded service by offering callers an opportunity to speak with registered nurses. Hotline nurses will tell callers how to manage their symptoms at home, tell them if they need to see a doctor or health care provider and answer other medical questions about H1N1 flu. The Flu Hotline number is 1-877-903 KING (5464).
Also tomorrow, perhaps coincidentally, county political leaders plan a media briefing to “call for state legislators to provide dedicated public health funding to help counties statewide.”
Sheriff’s deputies investigate death outside Roxbury Safeway
(photo of Sheriff’s Office and Medical Examiner units at store, added 4:36 pm)
Thanks to Heather for sending us a note saying she had just seen King County Sheriff’s Deputies and what looked like a body outside Roxbury Safeway (map). We called KCSO’s media spokesperson Sgt. John Urquhart and he confirms, yes, it’s a body. Two men walked up carrying what was at first described as an unconscious woman; medics arrived and reported obvious signs she was already dead. Sgt. Urquhart says it’s too soon to speculate on the circumstances and whether a crime was involved, but he does say the investigators are looking into the possibility that the men and woman might be related to a “nearby homeless camp.” We’re on our way over to try to find out more. 4:14 PM UPDATE: Medical Examiner staffers are at the scene, investigating with deputies. Shoppers are being routed around the scene, which is out in front by the soda machines.
Morgan Junction park officially named “Morgan Junction Park”
We broke the news a week and a half ago that the city Parks Department had recommended naming the new Morgan Junction park “Morgan Junction Park,” pending Superintendent Tim Gallagher‘s approval, and today the department announced that’s been finalized as its official name. The park, which opened last month after construction concluded, is to be dedicated June 13 during the Morgan Community Festival. The official announcement explains, “The Parks Naming Committee considered some 17 nominations, and after applying the criteria in the Park Naming Policy, unanimously recommended the name Morgan Junction Park because it acknowledges the history and location of the park.” (Among the other nominations was, of course, Tim St. Clair Park, in honor of the longtime West Seattle journalist who died last year; department naming policy says it can’t be done till someone’s been gone three years.) The park is on California SW, just north of the newly revitalized business block with Zeeks Pizza (opened May 1st), Feedback Lounge (opened April 25th) and Beveridge Place Pub (moved a year ago), near the Morgan/Fauntleroy/California “junction” intersection, and was the former site of an auto-repair shop, once purchased with the intent of development as a future monorail station before that transit project was killed. West Seattle still has three more new parks in the works — Junction Plaza Park, the newly covered Myrtle Reservoir site, and new parkland where West Seattle Reservoir in Westcrest Park is being covered. P.S. Got ideas for where money from last year’s Parks Levy should be spent? Wednesday night is your chance to offer comments at a meeting at West Seattle Golf Course, 7 pm.
ADDED 5:22 PM: Couldn’t resist asking Dewey Potter at Parks what the other name suggestions were. The reply:
Morgan Park
Deputy Steve Cox Park
Eddie Alvarez Park
Charlie Chong Park
Beveridge Place Park
Bicycle Park
The Whistle Stop Plaza
Walter R. Hundley Park
Quincy Jones Park
or after:
Ken Griffey Jr.
Tina Turner
Dorothy Dandridge
Lena Horne
Jesse Owens
West Seattle woman dies in Thailand; food poisoning suspected
Shannon Felix, proprietor of Avalon Glassworks in the Luna Park district, sends this news: 27-year-old 
West Seattle resident Jill St. Onge has died in Thailand, one of two tourists whose deaths are suspected to be linked to food poisoning. Ms. St. Onge worked at Shadow Land, where we took the photo at left during last year’s Junction Trick-or-Treating. She and the other woman who died, a 22-year-old from Norway, were staying at a guest house on Phi Phi Island, according to this article from a local news site, the Andaman Times. The story quotes Ryan Kells, Ms. St. Onge’s fiance, an Avalon Glassworks employee who was traveling with her. Ms. St. Onge had been writing about their travels on this personal website; the last update was a week before her death. The Andaman Times article says an autopsy is being done in Bangkok to find out more about what killed her. Ms. St. Onge and Kells were supposed to return home next week after 3 months overseas. ADDED 4:48 PM: Thanks to Shell for finding and sharing this link – a website set up by family/friends to tell more about what happened to Ms. St. Onge and what’s happening now.
See where West Seattle’s 3 new traffic cameras will go
Right now, the city Transportation Department (SDOT) has just three West Seattle traffic cameras that you can see online – not counting the ones on The Bridge. One is the camera shown above, at Fauntleroy/Alaska (all city traffic cameras are viewable from the Travelers’ Information Map). We’ve just learned that the number of West Seattle traffic cameras, viewable online, is about to grow. We discovered this while checking out an online notice about the city taking bids for more work in a traffic-technology program, with a mention of West Seattle. Subsequent checks directly with SDOT yielded information about the program, and the locations of the next three West Seattle traffic cameras: two in The Junction — California/Alaska and 42nd/Alaska — and one near the Fauntleroy ferry terminal, at Fauntleroy/Trenton – we’ve mapped the three locations here:
View Untitled in a larger map
The ITS contract that’s going out to bid also lists work at other spots where sensors will be installed for real-time traffic information, plus a role in the forthcoming Metro RapidRide bus service — with the first bus unveiled yesterday (here’s our coverage, with photos) — as explained by SDOT spokesperson Rick Sheridan:
… the advertisement for bids refers to Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) components that SDOT is installing citywide. We are adding devices to improve traffic flow efficiency and provide roadway related information to the city and travelers. These enhancements help improve safety and travel times, and reduce fuel consumption and pollution.
SDOT is currently updating many signal cabinets to facilitate future Rapid Ride corridors. For West Seattle these changes will occur along SW Alaska Street, 35th Avenue SW and Fauntleroy Way SW. The cabinets and associated fiber optics will let our system detect buses as they approach signalized intersections. If a bus is detected and the signal is about to turn red for the bus, the signal instead will extend the green for the bus in order to reduce delays for riders.
No date yet for when the three new cameras will be in operation; you can see the existing ones, plus a few state/county cameras of relevance to local drivers, “live” any time at the WSB Traffic page.
West Seattle Weather Watch: Wind advisory till 11 am
If you’re seeing this close to the time we’re publishing it, you know it’s blustery out there, to say the least. Here’s the advisory reminder issued by the National Weather Service late Monday night:
A WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE PUGET SOUND AREA AND NORTHWEST INTERIOR UNTIL 11 AM PDT TUESDAY.
SOUTH WINDS OF 20 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 45 MPH WILL CONTINUE TONIGHT AND TUESDAY MORNING. THE WINDS WILL BE SOUTH OR SOUTHEAST THIS EVENING…THEN SHIFT TO SOUTHWEST OVERNIGHT. THE WINDS WILL GRADUALLY DIMINISH BEGINNING MIDDAY TUESDAY.
We’ll be watching the morning commute even more closely than usual, just in case of wind/water trouble; please post a comment here (or call us, 206-293-6302) if anything notable happens in your neighborhood.
Trial set to start for West Seattle officer’s accused attackers
It was a story we covered last summer, starting with the story of a shocking attack, continuing with a heartening community outpouring of well-wishes: Southwest Precinct Officer Jason McKissack was attacked and seriously injured eleven months ago while responding to a call in High Point. Days later, in an effort led by the West Seattle Crime Prevention Council, hundreds of people sent him get-well wishes and messages of gratitude. Fast-forward to yesterday: While talking with Southwest Precinct Captain Joe Kessler about Alki police presence, for this followup to last week’s shooting, we learned that not only is Officer McKissack still not back at work, but that the trial of his accused attackers — identified at the time as two 16-year-old boys and a 17-year-old girl — is about to begin. According to information we subsequently obtained from the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, trial is set to start today, before King Co. Superior Court Judge Tim Bradshaw at the county courthouse downtown, and will likely last about a week; we have heard from at least one West Seattle resident who is scheduled to testify as a witness.
West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day: The map’s online!
Just four days till the big shopping/selling day this Saturday! We handed out the first 200 copies of the map/listings for Saturday’s West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day at the Sustainable West Seattle Festival on Sunday – but now, even if you didn’t get a copy today, you can get yours: Here’s the printable version, an 8-page PDF, with — same as last year — the map and listings split into 3 sections. Improved from last year, we’ve numbered the sales so you can cross-reference the map and listings. If you ‘d like to see the sales in Google Map format online, you’ll find the G-map version here – it’s not printable, but if you know how to tweak G-maps, you can use this to customize your own itinerary for Saturday, among other possibilities. Meantime, if you or someone you know is printer-less but needs a copy, this morning we will be distributing hundreds more copies to these pickup spots (the first five are WSB sponsors):
Hotwire Coffee
Fauntleroy and West Seattle YMCA
Illusions Hair Design
Stor-More Self-Storage
Brunette Mix
Senior Center of West Seattle
Delridge and WS (Junction) Neighborhood Service Centers
Southwest Community Center
Southwest Library
Saturday is already a great shopping day because of West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day (
State championships aren’t just about sports and academics – there are the arts, too! Congratulations to
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