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Summer is usually when news takes a nap.
Not this year. Not with a presidential race in turmoil, a city election bigger and more complex than any in Portland history, and local officials struggling to control camping and drug use on the sidewalks.
Not when Bill Walton died. When Naomi Pomeroy drowned. Or when two dozen kids dangled upside down on an Oaks Park ride for 25 minutes.
And that’s not even to mention the heat and wildfires that are the new (catastrophic) normal.
Amid all this tumult, some significant stories remain just below the surface, like summer steelhead swimming up the Sandy River beneath the inner-tube traffic.
In the following pages, you’ll find three mysteries, stories that may raise more questions than they answer.
One is about a family trying to remain anonymous while taking back an occupied burial plot.
In the next, we think we figured out why a dozen men moved into one East Portland home last April. And the last offers more insight into the puzzling relationship between U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.) and the co-founder of a troubled cannabis outfit.
As always, if something you observe in Portland perplexes you, send a tip to WW. We love a mystery. —Aaron Mesh, Managing Editor
One of Oregon’s Most Prominent Families Appears to Want Another Family’s Burial Plot
An Out-of-State Investor Bought an East Portland Home. Then a Dozen Struggling People Moved In.
Texts Show an Unusually Close Relationship Between Now-Congresswoman Val Hoyle and Rosa Cazares