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Opinion
- Details
- Written by: Candie Johnston
I am writing to express the gratitude of a grieving family. We are from all over these great United States, but we are grounded in California. Our grandmother raised four generations right in Clearlake. The branches of our tree may stretch for miles and miles, but our roots have always been right off Highway 29 – For as long as I can remember, anyway.
And so it goes, people leave and start families, visit less and less, letters are a rarity and holiday cards become the common means of communication. That does not mean, in any way, that the bond is broken or even cracked. It does not make relationships less valuable. It does, however, make the guilt and regret more profound when you lose a leaf from your tree. Especially when your loss comes too soon and so unexpectedly.
Leah Leister was my cousin. I have beautiful memories of my childhood visits with her, where my sisters and parents would pack into a car and drive eight straight hours for a week of catching up. I love all of my family, but Leah and I were bound by a sisterhood. Too young to join the rest of the commotion, and not really caring that we were missing it. We had so much else to do than talk about uncle so-and-so or great aunt what’s-her-name.
As we got older, we settled for letters and visits that came only every few years, but we always kept in touch. We always knew what the other was doing. Always. She was so full of dreams. She always talked of bigger and better things. She was so ready to begin her life. When her son was born, I only heard a stronger motivation for a change.
And then she was murdered.
I was able to attend one court proceeding. I drove from Oregon and sat in the courtroom next to Amy, Leah’s mother. I held her hand when Leah’s attacker looked Amy in the eyes and laughed and mouthed the words “you’re next.” I was with her when an officer of the court told us there was nothing that could be done to stop the accused from threatening her. There are laws, however, that protect the accused from being threatened by victims.
It was then that I first tried to block out Leah from my mind. I didn’t really believe there would be any justice and it hurt so bad to see my family tormented. Not just Amy, but everyone. I can’t even comprehend what her son lives with. Or her grandma, my Aunt Joy. How does a person make sense of that? I’d rather not deal with something so painful and since I live so far away, I could do that. I’m sorry to say that is exactly what I did.
I hear things from time to time through the grapevine. I begin to grieve and again just file it away. Too hard to deal with.
Then I hear from my mother that it’s over. He’s guilty. He’s going away for life – no parole for him. Ever. That is it. I can’t bury it any longer and I grieve. I’m still grieving. I think I always will.
So, I read an article by Elizabeth Larson that tells of Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff’s tireless effort. I think of the detectives that won't let Leah’s case go. I think of the jurors who hugged my family when it was finally over. I think of it every day. I will not ever be given the words to tell those people what that means to my family. All of us. Not just those in Lake County, but every one of us. I was not able to be there for Aunt Joy or Amy or William, but this community was. You didn’t know then and I don’t think you ever will really know what that means to me and her extended family.
I realize murder happens every day. Death is a part of life. My family isn’t the only one that grieves. Yet this community has made me feel as though they were personally taking care of my family for me – a and those who could not be there. How do you thank someone properly for that?
Thank you to the district attorney. Thank you to the detectives and police who did their part. Thank you to the group of peers that made up the jury that did the right thing.
In the end my cousin has been honored. She may never be able to live out all her dreams, but her dreams will never be forgotten.
Leah Leister was my cousin. I miss her and I love her.
Candie Johnston lives in Madras, Ore. Johnston's cousin, 26-year-old Leah Leister, was murdered in her Clearlake apartment in March 2002. More than five years later, on June 27, 2007, Edward James Munoz was convicted of Leister's murder. He is facing life in prison without the possibility of parole. Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff prosecuted the case, persevering in the case's prosecution despite a hung jury in a previous trial in late 2006.
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- Details
- Written by: Kevin Engle
Six persons, including myself, embarked from Highlands Harbor by boat to watch the City of Clearlake fireworks. We were presented with a spectacular display of pyrotechnics that evening from a spot on the lake where the show was just overhead.
As we were heading back home, traveling at an estimated 20 knots, we had a near miss with a boat towing a teenaged kid on a disabled jet ski. We came within a few feet of hitting the kid on the jet ski as it had no lights at all and the boat towing the jet ski was poorly lit with only a dim bow light. Needless to say, we were all very shook up by this near miss.
What might have happened had we hit the boat and/or jet ski? Would the Sheriff's Boat Patrol have been unequivocally able to determine the cause? Could we have been erroneously charged? Fatalities would likely have occurred. It is a sure bet that the operator of our boat and myself would have been ejected from the vessel upon impact as we were standing nearest to the bow of the boat. The effects such a collision would have had on the passengers of the other boat and jet ski that had crossed our homeward path would also have been devastating. Thankfully, we will never know what might have transpired.
Despite attempts every year by local, state and federal legislators to create new ordinances and laws to keep us safe and sane, officials who set these standards and the agencies assigned to enforce these laws can never be sure that all scenarios will be covered by any legislation. There will always be "special circumstances" that do not fit into a specifically prescribed legal category. Let's face the fact too that not all laws are well written to begin with. Many laws are eventually modified by additional legislation, scrapped entirely after experience flushes out their follies or high court rulings.
Sometimes, family wishes and extenuating circumstances must be taken into consideration despite the letter of the law due to the inadequacies of legislation and the inability to consider the unforeseen, personal circumstances of innocent human error. The real question is if justice will ever really be served if this case is prosecuted. Sometimes the families of victims would prefer closure instead of a long, drawn out court case.
It would appear that the Dinius case may be one that requires consideration as an "incident of unusual circumstances."
If the family of the deceased Lynn Thornton and Deputy Perdock all agree that this unfortunate and tragic accident was just that, why can't the District Attorney's Office drop the case? I have no knowledge of the Thornton family's feelings in this matter nor Deputy Perdock's viewpoint. I would offer my condolences to the affected parties at this time though. It is a miracle that no one else was killed.
I realize that District Attorney Jon Hopkins has a difficult job to do regarding this case and I do not envy him, but surely all persons involved have suffered a great deal already. It would be nothing short of devastating to all involved to prosecute either party for an unfortunate event that was truly a tragic, uncontrollable accident.
The big picture here and the real issue is that new standards and equipment need to be required by the Coast Guard and/or our local and state officials. With all the new lighting technology and long-life batteries that are now available to the general public, it would seem that the flare gun and small, dimly lit, inadequate running lights should be a thing of the past. The standards currently used for visual location of stranded vessels and normal boating traffic must be updated and lighting redesigned. Call it the Lynn Thornton Maritime Bill in honor of this innocent victim.
A few years ago, I experienced the helpless feeling of being in a boat that was broken down on a moonless night in the middle of Clear Lake. The water was very choppy and our running lights would not work. The emergency flares were found to be damp and the batteries of our flashlight soon ran low. We were luckily rescued by a "Good Samaritan" in a passing vessel that towed us to shore, but this scenario could have easily gone sour, too.
It is time that all recreational boating vessels be required to carry emergency strobe lights that have a long-life battery and/or backup power that is independent from a vessel's primary operating systems. The old maritime emergency technology has been around for almost a century. Flares are not always dependable and they are also highly flammable. Standard marine batteries are still behind the times. Brighter, larger and more visible running lights with backup solar power or another type of reserve battery system should also be required.
In addition, solar-powered channel markers and shoal markers should be mandatory on Clear Lake too. This would be a sure-fire method of reducing the nighttime dangers of disabled vessels and the normal nighttime travels of all boating traffic respectively. This proposal would be a reasonable, fairly low cost way to insure the safety of all boaters and is surely overdue in all of the inland waterways of America.
Let's not prosecute the unfortunate victims of outdated maritime safety laws and lighting requirements. We must demand safer, updated standards of our legislators and boat manufacturers.
Author Kevin Engle has been a resident of Lower Lake for the last decade and grew up boating, scuba-diving and fishing in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
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- Written by: James BlueWolf
Having been a landscape contractor myself, I know how difficult it is to design systems that are always “perfect” when it comes to the controllability of the ratio of how much water is needed to how much is applied. New technologies make these problems less difficult to solve.
I want to take this opportunity to encourage the county to consider what types of voluntary and mandatory water conservation steps can be taken to insure that the quality and availability of our water resources is maintained.
A panel of landscape contractors could make suggestions for technologies that could be required as code to insure that sensors, timers and other automatic monitoring technology be utilized on new projects – with the possibility of additional credits to homeowners and businesses for the retrofitting of existing systems considered.
Any increased costs to implement these types of systems would not substantially affect competition if everyone was required to use them. Anyone that’s driven by a water system functioning in a driving rainstorm can testify to the waste unmonitored systems can produce.
Even our groundwater is precious. Well systems should have some sort of guidelines and safeguards to insure that people with these types of systems are not lulled into thinking they have unlimited access to these resources simply because they’re not paying to city water companies.
Once again, I know this infringes on the time-honored feeling that individual ownership entitles one to unlimited use of natural resources – but this is an obsolete philosophy given the realities of limited resources.
A second concern is that despite the county’s progress with recycling – a significant amount of usable resources are still being sent to the landfill. Construction materials that might be recycled at the landfill gates free of cost might give our commercial contractors a way of getting rid of their waste and allow subcontracted handling companies to re-market these materials at reduced costs to citizens unable to purchase new materials.
Additionally, it seems that many of our resorts and communities are not required to recycle at all but still dump all their garbage – plastic bottles, cardboard and all – together with nonrecyclable trash. These gaps in our system need to be addressed by making tenants and/or resort owners responsible for the same efforts at recycling the rest of the populace is now required to participate in.
Finally, we need to make more of an effort to provide additional locations for people to get rid of common hazardous waste materials – i.e., batteries, light bulbs, electronics equipment, etc. – so they aren’t tempted to “hide” these items in their regular landfill wastes. My wife and I very much appreciate the plastic bag recycling cans out in front of a number of our more progressive food markets. The recycling of plastic bags and bottles must be at the forefront of our efforts.
In the same way that public and commercial trash receptacles are located outside businesses and public areas for trash – we need to begin to allow the concept of having more public receptacles for specialized and separated wastes creep into our social consciousness – even if it requires more and more cans.
The results of these efforts will be felt for generations and the need for them surpasses any reticence we have about the visual impact these extra facilities might have in our immediate surroundings. Personally, I’d rather see an abundance of garbage containers wherever I go than imagine that these materials are being deposited onto and into our lands and water systems.
Budgeting and planning for the appropriate amount of workers and resources needed to keep our communities clean and safe and our disposal and recycling systems effective are part of the greening and sustainability movement we are embracing.
Yet we should not expect that county government will do all these things for us – as citizens we have the ability, without much of the red tape – to take the lead in these efforts. But that’s an issue for another commentary.
James BlueWolf lives is an artist and writer. He lives in Nice.
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- Details
- Written by: Sophie Annan Jensen
Would somebody please give me a map?
As a retired senior with some physical disability and a chronic illness, I'd really love to know where the facilities are.
I know there are golf courses, but I'm not interested in golf and wouldn't be able to play it anyway, for both physical and financial reasons.
I know there's a public swimming pool somewhere, but I gather it's only open in the summertime. Is there bus service that would get me there from the Northshore?
I know there are libraries and I am, thankfully, still able to drive to one. But where is the bookmobile for those who are not so fortunate?
There is a nice little art gallery in Lakeport and some pretty decent amateur theater from time to time. Are there any traveling shows or any simple entertainment in other areas, like Readers' Theater?
The city of Clearlake has a pretty snazzy community center, but I didn't notice any recreational facilities there for seniors or anyone else. The county's other senior centers don't look so snazzy. I believe the one in Clearlake Oaks is open only for lunches. I know the one in Lucerne, near me, is usually open only until mid-afternoon, and never on Sundays.
Is there any air-conditioned place in the county that's open in the very hot late summer afternoons for a cooling off respite? The city of Chicago established some of those centers after 700 people died in a heat wave a few years ago. Would it be so hard to take some preventive action here?
Am I on totally the wrong track here? Is the goal to attract only those affluent seniors who can afford air-conditioning and their own boats? Whose main interests are golf and gambling? Who will never become disabled or unable to drive?
If that's the case, just tell me and I'll go away.
Besides, why are we so anxious to attract seniors? Why aren't we focused on attracting businesses that will employ productive young people at a decent wage? Silicon Valley is the richest area in California. I bet some of those folks would love to cash out and come here, if there were jobs here.
Sophie Annan Jensen lives in Lucerne.
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