News

There are, of course, perks that come with owning a Major League Baseball team. You get good seats at every game, and your business seems to go up in value every year. Oh, and those wins feel pretty good, too.

But there’s also a downside. Like being approached on the street by wannabe general managers upset that you traded their favorite player, or turning on the radio to hear a sports-talk host rip you for not upping the payroll. And then there are those gut-twisting losses.

News

Los Altos would rather not see Bay Area Rapid Transit come to town than spend any more taxpayer money on what some have called a financially flawed plan.

The Los Altos City Council gave the Valley Transportation Authority a thumbs-down on a proposal to permanently raise sales taxes another half cent to cover project shortfalls. The council also recommended that funding already approved for BART through Measure A in 2000 be removed from the board’s Long-term Capital Investment Program until a feasible alternative is developed.

Fatal shooting case remains cold despite $10,000 reward

The investigation into the murder of a Los Altos High School student shot last September as he walked home from school remained cold Monday, despite a $10,000 reward offered last week to anyone with information about the case that could lead to an arrest.

Police said the reward incentive did prompt a caller to leave a tip this week, but the information was not significant enough to solve the crime.

Foothill College celebrates first groundbreaking in 40 years

Last week’s groundbreaking ceremony at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills didn’t really break any new ground. That’s because the first scoop of earth was dug in mid-February.

Inclement weather on that occasion delayed the celebration of the $45 million project, the first construction of new campus buildings in nearly four decades. But nothing held back the blue sky and bright sun that came out April 13 to welcome guests.

Los Altos Hills pathways map shows trails that dead-end or don’t exist

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina isn’t the only Los Altos Hills resident to obstruct a public pathway in the secluded, affluent city known for its sprawling homes and scenic views of the foothills.

When the Town Crier began investigating claims that a resident had landscaped and piled brush to obliterate a pathway off Baleri Ranch Road that connects to Saddle Court, we discovered that that path and two others designated on the 2004-05 Master Pathway Map terminate abruptly.

Editorial

A few weeks ago, the Town Crier began investigating claims that Los Altos Hills residents were obstructing or obliterating public trails to keep pathway users away from their properties.

The first case that received media attention was former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina’s property where a locked gate blocks a public path. The council directed staff last month to send a letter requesting the gate be removed after neighbors complained.

Letters to the Editor

Vigilant neighbor prevents burglary
Tom and Mary Ann Hogan

On April 7, while my wife and I were away, a burglar entered our home and began to scoop up laptops, cameras and jewelry. Our neighbor observed this individual approach our front door. Concerned, she phoned my wife and got the answering machine. […]

April musings, No. 1 and No. 2

The “One” in the title refers to the column I wrote ahead while it was still March, bad habit! Now, because April itself brings other events, I scrapped “April Number One.” Hey - writing is good for the mind and heart, so it’s never a waste.

It seems everyone wears more than one hat. Mine are varied and colorful, used mainly during aqua-aerobics to protect my skin. The ones I really wear with jaunty self-confidence are the teacher’s hat, the writer’s hat and the “esposa” hat as the wife of a student of Spanish and fellow author.

Ethel Thompson Silva: Dedicated to helping others

Ethel Thompson Silva died of natural causes on April 14. She was 103.

She was a longtime resident of San Carlos, Cupertino and Los Altos.

Obituary Notices

LAURA MAE RHOADES
Laura Mae Rhoades (1908-2005), 96, passed away peacefully February 14, 2005 following a stroke. Mae was born in a log cabin on August 17, 1908 near Monte Vista, Colorado. She grew up on a farm in Manzanola, Co. with her sister, Pearl and brother, Chester.
Mae and her husband […]

Engagements

Benita Rice and Kevin Burke
Benita Rice and Kevin Burke have announced their engagement to be married June 10 at the First Lutheran Church in Montclair, N.J. A reception will follow at Bettonwoods Mansion.
The bride-to-be is the daughter of Ron and Tiina Rice of Cedar Grove, New Jersey. She graduated from Villanova […]

Scouting News

Michael Harabaglia received the Eagle Scout Award from Troop 991 on Feb. 20 at the Epiphany Episcopal Church in San Carlos.

Service News

Navy Seaman Apprentice Derek M. Earhart, son of Cathy J. Earhart of Fremont, Ohio and Tim L. Earhart of Los Altos, recently completed U.S. Navy basic training at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Ill.

During the program, Earhart completed classroom study and practical instruction.

Pilots put ‘expensive hobby’ to work with Angel Flight to save lives, member says

Dorothy, of the town of Quincy in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, found a lump in her breast and went to see her doctor. The diagnosis was bad.

Her doctor informed her that she had a particularly virulent form of breast cancer and that she should get her affairs in order and make peace with her family because she didn’t have much time left to live.

Community Briefs

AAUW holds spring social
Prospective and new members of the Los Altos-Mountain View Branch of the American Association of University Women are invited to the AAUW spring informational meeting and social 6-8 p.m., Tuesday. Participants will learn about AAUW national and state programs, in addition to a wide range of local activities.
AAUW […]

New barn doors bolster town supporters’ commitment toward preserving historic Westwind Barn

Supporters of Westwind Community Barn recently donated eight new doors for the historic Westwind Barn located on Altamont Road in Los Altos Hills.

Jeanne Seeley, representing the supporters and manager for the project, presented the gift to Los Altos Hills Mayor Mike O’Malley, who accepted on behalf of the city, which owns the barn. The doors are a symbol of the opening of the barn to the entire community, supporters said.

Lucille Liewer, 98: Longtime Los Altos resident, community activist

Lucille B. Liewer, an accomplished community activist who has called Los Altos home for 10 decades, died April 13 after a short illness. Mrs. Liewer was 98.

“She had a wonderful life,” said her son, Dick, retired associate superintendent of the Los Altos School District. “She went out peacefully.”

Author Tobias Wolff ‘Speaks Volumes’ at Los Altos Library Endowment event

Renowned author, Tobias Wolff, spoke to a full house at the Los Altos Youth Center last Friday afternoon in an appearance sponsored by the Los Altos Library Endowment. Wolff is the author of a slew of acclaimed books, including “This Boy’s Life: A Memoir,” “In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories Of The Lost War,” and his newest, “Old School.”

His most popular book, “This Boy’s Life,” which was adapted into a movie of the same name starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is the story of a precocious but troubled boy in rural Washington State engaged in a battle of wits and fists with his abusive stepfather.

Local teens can wheel and deal at April 29 ‘Casino Night’

The Los Altos Youth Commission has scheduled a high school Casino Night 7-11 p.m., April 29, at the Los Altos Youth Center.

Students with a valid ID from any high school are encouraged to attend.

Recording for Blind and Dyslexic holds fund-raising ‘record-a-thon’

What would it take to get you to spend a half hour or more shut snugly in a small, soundproof room?

For many in the community, all it takes is the knowledge that the local unit of the non-profit Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D) needs readers for its Record-A-Thon scheduled Monday through April 30.

Hospital launches new campus campaign

The El Camino Hospital Foundation has scheduled a gala celebration, “Above and Beyond,” May 7, at the Los Altos Golf & Country Club. The evening will commence with a cocktail reception at 6 p.m., followed by dinner and the program at 7 p.m.

The celebration anticipates the hospital’s October groundbreaking and provides an opportunity to recognize lead donors, whose early contributions are helping to finance construction.

Free ‘No Solicitation’ decals offered

The Los Altos Neighborhood Network (LANN) is offering free “No Solicitation” decals to all Los Altos residents. In accordance with the new “No Solicitation” ordinance passed by the Los Altos City Council in February, the stickers provide door-side notice required by law to stop solicitors.

The LANN decals display subtext, designed so that neighbors and school children will not be discouraged by the signs. For a free sticker, call 949-5560 and leave a message with your name and address, or send an e-mail to lannline@aol.com.

Winners selected in annual downtown competition

This year’s “Best of Show” award in the April Arts Alive juried art show in downtown Los Altos went to two artists in a split decision.

George Rivera, executive director of the Triton Museum of Art and juror for the show, presented two first-place awards to resolve a deadlock.

Rancho pancake breakfast returns to benefit American Cancer Society’s ‘Relay For Life’

The annual Rancho Shopping Center Pancake Breakfast is scheduled 8-11 a.m., May 7, after having been canceled last year for the first time in 45 years due to a lack of volunteers.

The event is sponsored by Covington School and FIT. Proceeds will benefit the Los Altos-Los Altos Hills Relay For Life.

Entertaining YMCA Youth Dancers want to perfect the art of having fun

The El Camino YMCA Youth Dancers have been thrilling audiences at sporting events around the Bay Area. The dancers range from ages 2 to 13 and perform everywhere from St. Francis High School to Stanford basketball and football games.

They have performed at the HP Pavilion for the women’s collegiate basketball tournament for the past two years.

The Roadrunners in need of more runners

The Roadrunners, an El Camino Hospital-based volunteer group whose members provide transportation for seniors who can no longer drive, needs 10-12 additional volunteer drivers who can donate a half-day of their time once a week.

“We offer a flexible schedule, the camaraderie of other volunteers and affiliation with one of the most reputable hospitals in the country,” said Coordinator Lila Steiner. “The only requirements are a clean California driver’s license, some patience and dependability.”

Foothill students offer ‘A Sense of Place’ through photography exhibit

A photography exhibit, “A Sense of Place,” featuring the works of 13 Foothill College photographers, is being held at Keeble and Shuchat Photography, 290 California Ave., Palo Alto.

An opening reception for the artists is scheduled 1-4 p.m., Saturday. The exhibition runs through May 25.

LA Kiwanis offers scholarships

The Los Altos Kiwanis Club has announced that applications are being accepted for four $2,000 scholarships for students attending local community colleges in the fall. The students must be enrolled in the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District and plan on attending Foothill or De Anza Colleges in the fall.

Applications for the scholarships can be picked up from counselors at local high schools or the Mountain View-Los Altos Adult Education office. Each grant may be used for tuition, fees and books.

New superintendent will head district plagued by financial woes

Los Altos School District trustees may close a deal with a new superintendent by the end of the month.

“We’ve identified a prospect, formulated an offer and started the background check. We still hope for closure in the next 10 days and hope to make an announcement at the board meeting on May 2,” Victor Reid III said last Friday afternoon.

Bullis Charter School feels growing pains

Bullis Charter School’s enrollment for next year has jumped from approximately 170 to 230 students since its application for facilities for next year. The Santa Clara County Office of Education has confirmed that 184 are residents of the Los Altos School District, which provides the facilities.

District Superintendent Marge Gratiot said last week that in a Feb. 7 letter charter school staff informed her that 12 of the 29 first- through sixth-graders who registered after the charter submitted its facilities request Oct. 1 attend district schools - one is at Santa Rita, nine are at Covington, and two are at Loyola. The remaining 17 attend private schools.

Alta Vista students rise to the challenge

Alta Vista High School staff and students met a challenge last week - to strengthen individual students and the student body as a whole through peer-to-peer problem-solving exercises geared to build a sense of community.

Challenge Learning Center supplied the expertise, school staff supervised and encouraged student leaders, and the students did the hard part. They moved past diffidence, self-consciousness, cliqueishness and the horror of looking uncool to learn that they and their classmates were much stronger, more creative and acceptable human beings than they had imagined.

Noteworthies

Nicole Elizabeth Villenueve of Los Altos, a senior at Sacred Heart Preparatory School, and Daniel Paul Wenger of Los Altos Hills, a senior at Woodside Priory School, were recently admitted to Yale University’s Class of 2009.

Arica G. Fong of Los Altos was a member of the Bucknell University team that finished 10th out of 411 schools in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition recently. A junior majoring in mathematics, Fong is a graduate of Mountain View High School.

Los Altos High Math Squares win all rounds

They were close last year, and this year they got it. The Los Altos High School Math Squares captured the Santa Clara County championship in a match against Evergreen Valley High School April 8.

Last year, the Los Altos High team came in second, losing to Homestead High.

10th Klutz Give-It-All-Away School Benefit Day

The Klutz Store in Palo Alto has scheduled its 10th annual Give-It-All-Away School Benefit Day May 7. The store will donate 100 percent of the purchase price of all goods purchased on that day to the public schools of the buyers’ choice. Last year’s event netted nearly $40,000 for public schools (K-12) in the Bay Area.

Crafts will be taught all day. Refreshments will be provided, and entertainers are scheduled to appear at the following times:

Schools Briefs

Local families can host foreign Muslim students
High school foreign exchange students from primarily Muslim countries are seeking host families for next school year.
Academic Year in America, one of the largest and most respected programs in the United States, has been awarded grants for the Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX) and […]

Spartans on the rise in tennis

As coach Frank Smyth watches his Mountain View High tennis team, he can’t help thinking what the future may hold for his Spartans.

Smyth sees underclassmen playing the top four singles spots - and two of them are USTA-ranked players. He glances at the roster and counts only four seniors among his 14 boys. And he hears several varsity-quality freshmen are headed to the school in the fall.

Market down despite good news from Citigroup, GE

Stocks took a knockout punch last week as mixed news on the economy and lower-than-expected earnings from tech bellwether IBM caused jitters. Widespread selling was evident in nearly every sector: Tech, energy, retail and other industries got hit. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 3.6 percent for the week, and the Nasdaq was down 4.5 percent. The small-cap S&P 600 lost on the week, moving into the “down 10 percent for the year” category.

Trading volume was much higher on Friday than the day before, indicating what professionals call distribution or selling commitment.

Dining guide missing one thing - distribution

A well-intentioned proposal last summer by Los Altos Councilman King Lear spurred a $5,000 investment by the city in a restaurant guide intended to lure traffic to Los Altos’ 50-plus eateries. But three-quarters of the 20,000 copies of the guide have yet to be distributed.

Close to 15,000 copies of the guide sit in boxes at the city’s Municipal Service Center warehouse.

Los Altos names new economic development coordinator

Rebecca Zito has been named the new Los Altos economic development coordinator. Zito joined the city April 13, succeeding Abby Veeser who resigned earlier this year.

As coordinator, Zito will look to promote the city’s economic climate. She will be working with members of the Los Altos Chamber of Commerce and the Los Altos Village Association, the downtown merchants group, as well as assisting in the review of development applications.

Terri Schiavo, an avoidable tragedy

Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, Terri Ann Schiavo are three women whose names are well known, not because of their lives, but because of their deaths. Each became the basis for a public and painful legal struggle.

While their deaths may have been unavoidable, the trauma of their deaths could have been avoided had they signed a document stating their wishes regarding life support and appointing someone to make health-care decisions for them if they became unable to do so themselves.

What you should know about heart disease

Q:It seems as if heart disease has been in the media a lot

recently. What should I know?

What to do when your teen shuts down

Q: Should I be concerned about our 16-year-old son who has totally

closed himself off from his father and me? He spends hours in his room with the door closed. If we ask him anything about his life, he mutters as he walks away, saying things like “What do you care? You’re never home anyway.” Sadly, the truth is, his dad works from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. While I don’t have a 9-to-5 job, I am a nonstop volunteer, with evening meetings as well as daytime commitments.

Los Altos resident runs, bikes and swims to cure cancer

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is taking a large Team In Training contingent to the annual “Wildflower” Triathlon May 1 on Lake San Antonio near King City to raise money for research and patient support in the battle against blood-related cancers.

Eight Silicon Valley honorees - survivors of one of the forms of leukemia, such as multiple myeloma, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Type B or chronic myelogenous leukemia - will participate in the triathlon along with other members of the team. The Silicon Valley Team In Training dedicated this season to honoree Johnathan White, who died at the age of 23 in March.

Letters reveal German teen’s view of Los Altos Hills after World War II

Local-history buffs will be interested in this collection of letters from a young German immigrant, Helmut Dost, who lived on a chicken farm in Los Altos Hills in the late 1940s. “Home Alone in America: Letters Exchanged by a Young German in the U.S. and His Family in Berlin from 1946 to 1955″ (Eagle Editions, 2004) offers firsthand accounts of postwar life in California. The sharp, observant Dost wrote the letters while he was a teenager working to make his own way in his new country and bring his family over.

Dost’s widow, Elizabeth Arnswald Dost, a journalist, translated and organized the communications. She has done a marvelous job of preparing them for publication. They are well organized and annotated where necessary for clarity. Letters from Dost’s family in Germany are interspersed chronologically.

Freshly reworked short story, elegant essay read at Stanford

Stanford Continuing Studies sponsored authors David Wright and Audrey Petty in a reading Feb. 23. Both are on the master’s of fine arts faculty in creative writing at the University of Illinois.

Author of the prize-winning “Fire on the Beac Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Life Savers,” Wright read a short story in progress, “Amarillo Boulevard,” loosely based on an encounter he and his sister had with a former classmate turned streetwalker in the Texas Panhandle.

Books Brief

Trees’ author at Linden Tree
Ann Coombs, Los Altos resident and author/photographer of “Trees of Los Altos,” will sign books 2-4 p.m., April 30, at Linden Tree Children’s Recordings & Books, 170 State St., Los Altos.
The book, published last May with the help of the city’s Environmental Committee and the Los […]

How to feel like a local as an off-the-beaten-path traveler

When you’re abroad, it’s generally easier to take the road more traveled by staying at established tourist destinations.

Such destinations are set up for an influx of tourists, directing them to must-see sites and providing them lists of activities that travelers typically do.

Postcards from abroad

The Town Crier wants to hear from you about your travel experiences. Send Travel Editor Lauren McSherry an e-mail “postcard” with travel advice, funny stories about misadventures or off-the-beaten-path suggestions. Postcards should be 400-500 words and accompanied by a photograph. Postcards can be sent to laurenm@latc.com.

Does God speak to us today? Yes, and he speaks boldly in two ways

I was asked if I felt that God was distant and hard to know. After all, even the Bible states that God the Father has not been seen by anyone. Yet, the Bible also teaches that God clearly makes Himself known and speaks to us constantly.

How? I invite you to consider with me how God speaks to us. Here are 10 ways God reveals the truth about who He is and what He wants us to know and do in this life and for eternity.

Spiritual Life Briefs

Discussion on grieving scheduled May 7
Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Los Altos has scheduled “Living Before We Die: A Spiritual Talk for Those Grieving the Loss of a Loved One,” 9:30 a.m. to noon, May 7, at All Saints Chapel, 22555 Cristo Rey Drive.
Clayton Barbeau, MA, MFT, will address some […]

Datebook

Datebook items are run on a space-available basis for entertainment, non-profit events, low-cost classes and groups of wide interest in our circulation area. The deadline is noon, Tuesday, for the next week’s paper. Notices must be typed and include a contact name and phone number. Items may be submitted via e-mail (peteb@latc.com); fax (948-6647) or post (138 Main St., Los Altos, CA 94022).

THEATER