Off the I-15

It started a couple of days ago, at about 4 p.m., with a call to the newsroom from a concerned citizen who had just seen several undercover police cars speed by with lights ablaze and thought we might want a heads-up. I turned up our newly-rehabilitated police scanner and listened intently for a sign of what excitement might be afoot. Was it a drug lab? An explosion? An alien abduction?

A few minutes later, a report came across the airwaves. A woman was at Wal-Mart “throwing chairs,” the dispatcher said.

“Were they her chairs or the store’s chairs?” on of my newsroom associates wanted to know.

A good question, and if I had been a little less pressed for time, I might have gone over to check the situation out. Despite the appealing thought of getting a photo capturing the irate customer in the act of launching furniture, I figured that she would probably be disarmed and possibly in handcuffs by the time I made it over to the store, so I didn’t bother to make the trip.

Looking through the printout of police logs the next day, I noticed there was a report of an incident at Wal-Mart’s address at about 4 p.m. So how did “woman throwing chairs” get translated into police-speak? The call was listed as a “suspicious circumstance.”

I’m not sure how I was supposed to decode that one.

From the Associated Press

Casinos in Nevada took $969.9 million from gamblers in May, according to a report from the Gaming Control Board. That is a 15.2 percent decline over May 2007 and a sign that people aren’t rolling away their life-savings on the craps tables like the used to.

The drop in winnings, remember that’s how much the casino wins off of you, is the fifth consecutive monthly drop in the state.
Here’s a breakdown of popular Nevada destinations:

—STATEWIDE: $969.9 million, down 15.2 percent.
—LAS VEGAS STRIP: $513.5 million, down 16.4 percent.
—DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS: $48.2 million, down 17.3 percent.
—LAUGHLIN: $48.6 million, down 7.8 percent.
—STATELINE: $24.4 million, down 24.1 percent.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

A year ago today, the Desert Dispatch learned that Petty Officer First Class Steven Phillip Daugherty, a Barstow High grad, had been killed in Iraq. Below are my memories of that day.
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I came into work that Tuesday morning knowing there would be a message on my phone that would either make or break my day.

On July 6, Petty Officer First Class Steven Phillip Daugherty, a code breaker assigned to a Navy Seal group operating in Iraq was killed. Daugherty grew up in Barstow, Calif., graduated from Barstow High School in 1997. He planned to come home for his 10-year class reunion scheduled in August and to see his mother and father. He had a wife and a little boy who lived in Washington. The nature of his work kept the details of his death secretive. He was 28, and the first local casualty from the Iraq war I had to write about as a reporter for the Desert Dispatch, Barstow’s daily newspaper.

At the time, an easel stood in the corner of our news room with a large memo pad on it. Written on the pad was a list of potential big stories that the reporters had to be prepared to cover – wild fires, flash floods, city officials resigning, police officers shot in the line of duty, a local politician elected to national office, the announcement that an Indian gaming casino was coming to Barstow and the death of a local soldier in Iraq. We had to develop a plan to cover these stories effectively. Who would we call? What reporting could we do ahead of time? How would we organize the story? Web version? Print version? Graphics? Photos?

As the paper’s military reporter, the eventual Iraq death of a soldier from Barstow was my story. A few weeks before Daugherty’s death, a soldier from Grand Rapids, Mich., near where I grew up, was killed. I read the stories in the Grand Rapids Press and took notes. They called the soldier’s family, talked to teachers from his high school, city officials and military personnel. I made my own list.

I found out about Daugherty’s death on July 9, the following Monday. I put the story I planned to file that day on hold as well as a phone call to my sister. It was her birthday. I forgot the plan I made and just started to react. The first story, posted online that morning, came straight from the Naval press release.

“Daugherty, 28, a cryptologic technician, was killed by an improvised explosive device while supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom,” I wrote.

I did not know what a cryptologic technician did. Later that morning, a sailor at his base in Virginia Beach, Va. filled in the details. The Daughertys listed in Barstow’s phone book were not related to the sailor. Some, if the conversation went that far, said how sorry they were to hear about his death. One man said he was proud to share his last name. Someone gave me the number of another Daugherty not listed in the phone book. Someone in the newsroom thought she had a son in the Navy.

I waited to make the call.

I write about deaths frequently, among other topics during my daily grind. I cover court trials, graduations, environmental clean-up programs, the heat during desert summers and new literacy programs for teens at the county library. I break down municipal ordinances, peg facts to trends and make sure those who work for us actually work for us. I am a daily source for the news, but the one time my words mean something rather than just inform is when I memorialize someone’s life in death on the front page of the paper.

The act of dying does not entitle someone to an elegant eulogy; nor does it guarantee column inches in the local paper. Some deaths do make headlines, and then there are formulas: the friends and family portrait of a homicide victim, the retrospective of a local celebrity who passes, and the somber culmination of life and duty for those who served – he was a soldier and father; she was a police officer and a mother. The reporter takes the formula and uses it to create a lasting memory. The death grabs the readers, and now the journalist has the final say on the departed.

Meanwhile, the family just hopes you spell the names right and say something nice.

Mrs. Daugherty asked me to do that when I finally made the call that afternoon. She begged me not to politicize Steven’s death to make commentary on the war, not to say anything that would jeopardize the safety of his fellow sailors – Steven wouldn’t want that, ever, she said – to say how much Steven liked being a sailor and how proud his family was of him.

“He loved the Navy. He loved everything about it. He was just proud to do his job,” she said.

She passed the phone around the room, brothers and a sister made similar pleas. I assured each that this was not about the war but about Steven. They continued sharing. His story, at least the version I would put on the front page, began to weave together. An honor roll student who wanted to join the Air Force. A community college graduate who enlisted in the Navy to see the world.

“And he did,” his mother added.

A cryptologic technician, an enabler according to people from his base, who provided critical intelligence to the Navy’s finest, the Seals. A musician, a son, a brother, a husband and a father.

I tried I captured it all, but I did not. You never do. The task of capturing a life through phone calls, past photographs, press releases and about 20 inches is admirable, formidable and impossible. I just hoped I spelled the names right and said something nice, something meaningful.

I had two messages on my machine when I came into the office the day the story ran. Steven’s sister called to thank me for the article. The family read it and were proud of Steven, she said.

Steven’s wife called too. I could not reach her for the article; this was the first time I heard from her. She asked me to send two copies of the article to her in Washington. One for the family’s refrigerator and one to put in Steven’s 5-year-old son’s scrap book.

“So he can remember his father,” she said.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

The Desert Dispatch is not the only media outlet interested in the happenings at Fort Irwin. Each rotation, more than 20 different television stations, newspapers, magazines and other media-types trek out to the desert to capture the training the occurs there.

Recently, CBS News and “Army,” the magazine of the Association of the United States Army, have published looks at Fort Irwin.

The CBS News piece, “Turning Enemies into Allies,” can be seen here. It was filmed during a rotation in June and features footage of some of the role players from the Barstow area who now work in the box.

The AUSA Army piece is in their July 2008 issue. “Between Hollywood and Hell,” by Dennis Steele is an in depth look at how the Iraq war is recreated in the Mojave Desert.

How many cups of coffee do you drink? If you’re like me, you probably drink a lot.

I like a cup of coffee in the morning, and sometimes in the afternoon and sometimes in the evening. In fact, I plan to brew a pot when I get home from the office tonight. If there is coffee in front of me, I’ll probably drink it. I even like gas station coffee.

Well, fellow java chuggers, there’s good news. According to researchers in the United States and Spain:

“Drinking two or three cups of coffee a day did not increase risk of death in either men or women and in fact both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee were linked with a slightly reduced risk of death from heart disease. “

The study was funded by the US National Institutes of Health and published in the 17 June issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

But we’re not out of the woods yet. The study suggests more investigation into the results.

And to be fair, I found out about the report from the Barstow Community Hospital monthly newsletter.

Sorry kids, I might have been a little harsh — or just a jerk.

On Friday, Rosa at the Desert Discovery Center invited me to judge the entries for the city’s recycled art competition. Quite an honor considering my extensive background in art — one required course in college — and recycling — three years working for the recycling program in college.

I judged the pieces on use of recycled materials, portrayal of theme (it was something patriotic) and creativity, and I guess I was pretty harsh. I glanced over at few fellow judges sheets and saw that my scores for all the pieces were a few points lower than the rest of the judges.

Still, the best pieces got the highest scores, just not as high, but I guess I was fair, which I have to be because I am journalist.

The theme this year was being patriotic through recycling, which appeared to mean to many kids — the military. There were some great reconstructions of tanks, helicopters and jets all from recycled materials. Considering the new study of Fort Carson’s CO2 “bootprint” opposed to a footprint and a commitment to reduce emmisions in the next year, the Army may want to take notice.

But strange how so many young people immediately equate patriotism with the military. I shared my observations with some of the other judges, and we wondered if it was a phenomenon unique to Barstow, with its many soldiers, many veterans and many jobs at Fort Irwin or the MCLB, or if across the country the word patriotism now means tanks, jets and helicopters.

Beyond all that thinking, the projects were a great display of one of the legs of the recycling triangle, reuse.

And if reusing household items is your thing, I recommend checking out the magazine ReadyMade. The magazine can show you how to make almost anything, from a cork doorstop to a couch from what you would normally throw away.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

During our 11 a.m. staff meeting today, it dawned on my that the Desert Dispatch staff has been devoting considerable barrels of ink and time to writing about budgets. And the good news, more stories about how the state cuts could affect Barstow are on their ways.

Google helped me realize just how much of my work has been focused on the Barstow Unified School District’s budget. When you do a Google search and it lists a bunch of Web sites, the number of times you’ve visited a site appears next to the URL.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that number next to the site of the Barstow Unified School District was around seven or so. I thought it strange. I cover education and have only been to this site a handful of times.

No more! As of Wednesday morning, the morning after the board approved the BUSD budget, I have visited the district site 52 times, and I suspect that number will increase.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

Working in the news business, you just have to resign yourself to the fact that sometimes you will be wrong. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a story predicting that regular unleaded gas in Barstow would hit $5 a gallon in the near future.

I don’t want the average unleaded gas price to hit $5. I drive a car, too, after all. But ever since the story ran, I have been driving by the 76 station on East Main Street daily, staring at the sign that has stubbornly remained at $4.99 a gallon ever since I predicted it would hit that fateful $5 mark.  In fact, I don’t think a single gas station in town has raised its prices since the gas-prices story ran. It’s as if every station in town decided to get together and make sure the paper would be wrong on this one.

On the other hand, I’m not really sorry to be wrong on this one.

The last name has been called; the last diploma given, and the Desert Dispatch has written its last graduation story — until next year.

At the end of it all, we wrote about six different graduations and watched nearly 1,000 students walk across stages, take next steps in life and hug family members. We met people off to college, joining the military, sticking around in town and looking for any way to get out of Barstow.

But at the end of it all, after the six ceremonies, the diplomas and the hugs (I think Desert Dispatch staffers even got a few during the course of our coverage), we wrote about the class of 2008.

Graduation coverage is not easy. Chances are any good idea a reporter comes up with when assigned a graduation story is old news, played out and on the verge of becoming cliché. People have been graduating for centuries, and while that does not diminish the accomplishments of each individual graduate each year, it does make the desire for fresh graduation coverage more difficult to satisfy.

Before the first graduation this year, the staff at the Desert Dispatch talked about how to cover them. We considered writing in depth stories about the characters in each class, the hardships they will face stepping into a real world of $5 a gallon gas and a sinking economy, and the memories they will take with them. We considered not covering them at all or maybe just taking a photo and letting our readers write their own stories of graduation this year as they looked through the paper.

Finally we decided to cover the each class a whole. We focused on themes and tried to talk to as many members of the class as possible. We covered the speeches, a mainstay of graduation, but discarded the congratulations and thanks-yous in favor of advice and prospects for the future.

Yes, we missed some of the great individual stories from the pool of graduates, but I think we gained a good perspective. We learned that more Barstow High graduates are going onto college than usual. We learned the more Central High graduates graduated than usual. We learned that each Silver Valley graduate, whether from the high school or the alternative education programs, has got a unique story behind them and all you have to do is ask and be amazed. And we learned, from the Barstow adult graduation and the Barstow Community College graduation, that it is never too late.

So at the end of it all, I think we covered graduation for what it is: the accomplishments of nearly 1,000 people around Barstow.

Congratulations class of 2008 and best of luck.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

For a look back at photos from this year’s 2008 graduations, visit the Desert Dispatch’s graduation and prom gallery. Have a photo of your own, sign up and share it with the community.

This item showed up on the sheriff’s log sheet from Sunday, and although it was an interesting story, it didn’t make it in the paper because nobody at the station could confirm that it actually happened anything like the way it was reported.

Still, it is a good story, and I wanted to share it with you, dear readers, in some form, because I love a good narrative.

A man calls his wife on Sunday evening and tells her that he was minding his own business, eating lunch and smoking a cigarette in his car somewhere in Barstow when a mysterious assailant tied him up and put him in the trunk of his own car.

The driver says he blacked out and woke up somewhere out in the desert, in the trunk of his car, looking up at an unknown person wearing black gloves, who apologized before shutting the door on him.

He says that he somehow managed to get his phone out of his pocket and dial the wife’s number with his tongue. Having managed this tricky feat, he then freed his hands and escaped by pulling the emergency cord inside of the trunk.

According to the account as reported in the sheriff’s logs, the mysterious assailant left the car keys in the ignition, enabling the victim to drive himself away from the scene. Although the supposed motive for the abduction was unclear, the man said his attacker stole eight cigarettes.