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EVENTS
Obese paraplegic Steven Dons shoots and kills Portland Police Officer
Colleen Waibel at his home during a pot bust gone bad. Dons later
strangles himself in his jail cell.
Institute for Brewing Studies reports flat sales among Portland microbrewers,
after seven years of double-digit growth. Several factors are to blame:
a severe drop in out-of-state demand and the persistent advertising of
megabrewers such as Anheuser-Bush.
Farmworkers union PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste) signs
the first union contract in Oregon history between farmworkers
and growers. Twenty workers at Nature's Foundation Farm, an organic berry
farm in Woodburn, are now guaranteed breaks, overtime, holidays and seniority.
The Princeton Review names Reed College the country's top
academic school for undergrads. Reed places third in the "reefer madness"
category.
After shooting his parents, 16-year-old Kip Kinkel goes on a rampage
at Thurston High School in Springfield, killing two students and wounding
22.
Business Week reports that Portland's cost of living is
rising at a faster rate than in any other city. Since 1991, life's necessities
for the average Portland resident have jumped 25 percent, while national
prices rose only 15 percent.
Responding to reports of a street fight on North Lombard, police detain
Richard "Dickie" Dow, a 37-year-old paranoid schizophrenic, who
was hurrying toward his home a few blocks away. Dow becomes agitated;
his mother hears him shouting and comes running, but to no avail. Dow
collapses and stops breathing; officers have trouble performing CPR. He
dies later that night of what the medical examiner calls "positional asphyxia."
Roughly 400 demonstrators march to protest the way police deal with mental
illness, prompting the bureau to step up CPR training.
Sure, no one wants a homeless shelter or a sewage-treatment plant in
their neighborhood. But westside NIMBYs break new ground when they oppose
a Holocaust memorial in Washington Park. The City Council won't
kill the plan; neighbors appeal to the state; and the outcome is still
in limbo.
Almost nine years after the disappearance of former Reedie Tim Moreau,
a Multnomah County grand jury indicts Larry Hurwitz, former owner
of the Starry Night club, on five counts of aggravated murder. Hurwitz
pleads not guilty.
After 17 years in captivity, Keiko the killer whale is hoisted
out of his tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, packed in ice
and flown in an Air Force C-17 cargo plane to Iceland, near his original
diving-grounds. Departure of the cetacean star of the 1993 movie Free
Willy makes Oregonians blubber and--er--wail.
Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie--swing is
in, man, and all the hep cats are dressing zoot and cutting the rug.
Eugenesters the Cherry Poppin' Daddies' new album, Zoot Suit Riot,
climbs the charts.
Some 160,000 metro-area residents greet the long-awaited opening of the
18-mile westside MAX. Tri-Met's 20-station line, which includes
a three-mile tunnel through the West Hills, is an engineering triumph,
but draws fire from local Buddhist clerics who fear that the tunnel, which
runs beneath a cemetery, may have disturbed the souls of the dead. Later
the clerics hold a ceremony to reassure ancestral spirits that all is
well.
Hold your breath: Oregon voters approve the use of marijuana as medicine.
By June 1999, infirm inhalers can sign up for an official get-out-of-jail-free
card with the Oregon Health Division if they can get a doctor's note. Registration
fee: $150 a year. |
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THE GOVERNMENT DENIES ALL KNOWLEDGE
BY CHRIS LYDGATE
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He was always something of an enigma,
this rough-hewn, backwoods, chain-smoking journalist with a voice
like a Douglas fir, who lobbed his fulminant jeremiads at government
gone awry. But there's no question that ACE HAYES was the grand-daddy
of Portland conspiratologists. As editor of the far-out Portland
Free Press and longtime host of the monthly Secret Government
Seminars (held at the Clinton Street Theater), the 58-year-old Hayes
was a walking catalog |
of cover-ups who attracted a bizarre following of tax resistors, mutant
hippies and gun-totin' computer geeks. But although Hayes was unflinching
in his criticism of covert government operations, he never descended into
black-helicopter paranoia. Portland lost an original voice when this former
logger, machinist and union organizer died of a brain aneurysm--on Friday
the 13th.
IT'S 1998: DO YOU KNOW WHO
YOUR PARENTS ARE?
BY PATTY WENTZ
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It was the ultimate in identity politics.
In 1998, a group of political neophytes, led by an art teacher from
Nehalem, did what had never been done before in the United States:
They convinced the voters of Oregon that they, too, had the right
to look at their own birth certificates in order to answer the age-old
question, "Who am I?"
Measure 58 was a longshot about an issue no one had ever heard
of.
It passed largely because chief petitioner Helen Hill had the money
(nearly $100,000 of an inheritance from her adoptive father) and
the smarts (she hired veterans of Bill Sizemore's signature-gathering
camps). And she had Bastard Nation, a
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national group of adoptee-rights activists who used the Internet to spread
the word, give her legal advice and send in the troops to hold rallies in
Pioneer Courthouse Square.
As soon as the measure passed, six "Jane Doe" birth mothers, backed by
a national closed-records group, filed suit to block it, arguing that
opening birth records would invade their privacy. The court battle is
not expected to end until 2000, frustrating the thousand-plus Oregon adoptees
who have applied for their birth certificates. Meanwhile, Measure 58 has
sparked a similar initiative in Washington state and inspired other groups:
Now the progeny of anonymous sperm donors, fondly dubbed Baster Nation,
are starting to rally for their identity rights.
THE BOYS NEXT DOOR
BY PHILIP DAWDY
Soon after Kip Kinkel's rampage in Springfield, when the intensity of juvenile
crime in America had everyone looking for answers, WW broke the story
of two schoolboys from Grant High who had committed as many as 20 armed
robberies. What made the case so unsettling was that the young men involved,
Tom Curtis and Ethan Thrower, weren't typical misbehaving youths.
Curtis was Grant's student body president; Thrower was a choir boy. They
were both from two-parent families. They weren't poor. They weren't gang-bangers.
Indeed, they were both downright all-American: Thrower was a star runner
with a college scholarship in his future, and Curtis was an Eagle Scout.
As underclassmen, they were both homecoming princes at Grant.
But beginning in November 1996, police noticed an unusual number of robberies
near the school. The thieves often wore ski masks and brandished weapons.
Detectives knew that was odd. Most robberies are stick-ups on the street;
the perps don't wear ski masks, and they certainly don't count down how
much time someone has to hand over a cash drawer "or else"--that's for
television.
The teenagers' downfall came in November 1997 when, after robbing Rustica
of $454 at gunpoint while diners hit the floor, Thrower accidentally shot
himself. Curtis called 911 for help and later filed a false police report,
saying that gang members had shot his pal; Thrower told police a different
version.
What detectives figured out was that the Rustica robbery had happened
moments before the 911 call. They also found a ski mask and a pool of
blood inside a stolen Chevy Suburban abandoned nearby. Witnesses had reported
seeing the gunmen drive off in just such a vehicle.
Thrower was arrested for the Rustica robbery on April 16, the day before
Grant's senior prom. Curtis went to the prom, but skipped town soon after.
A nationwide media circus ensued, with Curtis turning himself in to authorities
in Las Vegas that July after his case was aired on America's Most Wanted.
Why did two young men with bright futures turn to a spree of armed robberies?
The answers rest with Curtis and Thrower themselves. Curtis is serving
a 12-year sentence at Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario,
while Thrower, who cooperated with prosecutors, was sentenced to 8 1/2
years and is sitting it out at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution
in Pendleton.
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