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Valley People

MEET THE SHERIFF. Miriam Martinez reminds us, “The public is invited to a free open forum featuring Sheriff Tom Allman as our special guest speaker. The A. V. Unity Club is hosting this public event, this Thursday, February 3rd, at 1:00, in the Dining Room, at the Fairgrounds, Boonville. Cookies, tea & coffee will be supplied by our hostesses Christine Clark, Vickie Center, and Donna Riley, for all who attend this special event. Anderson Valley's resident Deputy, Craig Walker will also be present. If you are wondering where Craig has been lately, Thursday's meeting will interest you. What is “Sparky,” our Deputy Dog, doing to keep in shape? Merchants, think about coming to this meeting; or at least send an employee to gather information. Parents, while your children are in school, take a few minutes to come to this meeting. Seniors, ask your driver to take you to the Fairgrounds, after lunch. Come to the open meeting with Sheriff, Tom Allman, this Thursday, Feb.3, at 1:00. I hope to see you there.”

MEANWHILE, ERICA LEMONS' junior high girls took what Coach Lemons described as a “heartbreaking” 27-25 loss to Fort Bragg on the home court here in Boonville last Saturday, finishing second to amazonian Fort Bragg quintet in the tournament. Coach Lemons reported that Kaylie “The Mosquito” Mendoza broke her arm when Kaylie took a charge from a Fort Bragg girl three, maybe four times her size. The third time Kaylie placed her 60 pounds between the Fort Bragg girl and the hoop, and the third time the Fort Bragg girl had run over her, Kaylie broke her arm. Kaylie's dad, Chato Mendoza, used to play the same way. His daughter is fearless like her old man. “We've got some really good players coming along,” which you can see for yourself on Saturday when the girls play in Mendocino while Coach Mike Wellington's junior high boys play here Saturday in the Boonville gym.

THE MARVELOUS SERGIO GUTIERREZ, a senior at Anderson Valley High School, master of the bicycle kick, fleet-footed defender on the basketball team, A student, and all-round nice guy, has been named NCL II's most valuable soccer player, an honor Sergio shares with Michel Arroyo of Calistoga. The Sergio-led Boonville boys won the Northcoast's small school championship, the first ever area championship for Boonville, as the Boonville romped the rich kid schools from Marin and San Francisco with their years of soccer camps and the prole schools from places like Point Arena. Rich schools, poor schools, no one could stop Sergio and the Boonville boys. It is not surprising that Hector Cruz, Anderson Valley and Chuy Sanchez, of Anderson Valley were also honored as among the best soccer players on the Northcoast, as were Cava Gutierrez; Christian Mendoza; Manuel Almeida; Omar Solano, Anderson Valley; and Elio Gonzalez.

IN TOWN and driving over the hill for the big basketball game with Point Arena Tuesday night were the Teveseau brothers, Logo and Martin. Martin, a professional football player with the New York Jets, is just back from New York, but his heart is in Boonville where he grew up and graduated from Anderson Valley High School.

WE ALSO HEARD that prevalent rumor that Anderson Valley Market was about to be sold to Tom Honer of Harvest Market in Fort Bragg, so we asked Beryl Thomasson about it when we ran into her at the Boonville Post Office. “News to me,” Beryl said, and she oughtta know, she and Ruben T being the owners of the store.

COULDN'T find them to confirm or not, but we've also heard that Stephanie Gold and Jerry Karp are buying that old paperback book store on North State in Ukiah.

ZOË TRIPLETT will leave for a six-month stint in South Africa on Feb 23rd with the American Field Service. She will live with a host family in a suburb of Johannesburg called Midrand and attend Midrand High School, a public school of more than 1,000 students. To raise funds to pay for the program, Zoe has organized an “Amazing Get Zoë To South Africa” Raffle. 200 tickets will be sold at $10 per ticket. Five Amazing Grand Prizes have been arranged: 1. 24 hours of carpentry from Mark Triplett Construction, a $1,200 value, which must be used by June 2011 in the Mendocino County Area). 2. Two 2010 World Champion San Francisco Giants tickets for April 23 vs. the Atlanta Braves (Value: priceless; seats: Premium Lower Box/section 118, Row 27 seats 14 & 15 — behind home plate!) 3. Dinner for two at The Boonville Hotel (Value: $100, food only.) 4. Two one-hour massages at The Healing Arts Massage Studio by Nahara (Value: $150.) 5. 2.5 hours of handyman service from Jeff Ellis of the Boonville Hotel (Value: $150). Call Zoë at 684-9127 or 895-2066 for more information, or stop by Paysanne Ice Cream Parlor in Boonville to purchase tickets. The Amazing Drawing will be held at Paysanne on Saturday, February 12th 2011 at 4pm; need not be present to win. Thanks for your support! All ticket sales to help pay for the cost of American Field Service program.

THE BOONVILLE GENERAL STORE is closed from Tuesday (February 1st) until Thursday, February 10th. Proprietors Julie and Darius Richmond tell us they'll be closing “for our annual (almost) spring cleaning” and re-opening Thursday the 10th. “Thanks for your patience and come on in and see if you can notice any of the subtle (yet lovely) changes we have planned.”

THE ALWAYS DELIGHTFUL Therese Brendlin dropped by the office the other day to tell us she's available for massages at $30 an hour. Therese can be reached at 895-9911.

I PREFER my crow fried, but I'll have to eat it any old way Mendocino's coach, Jim Young, wants to serve it. No sooner had I said that Mendocino's basketball team was “hopeless verging on pathetic” in last week's paper than Renee Lee tells me, “AV Panthers Squeak by the Mendocino Cardinals. It looked like the Varsity Boys team was going to suffer their first league loss last Tuesday on a gorgeous day in Mendocino. The Cardinals jumped to a 22-10 lead over the Panthers in the first quarter, with Garrett Mezzanatto carrying the team by posting all 10 Panther points. Mendo had smokin' hot shooting from the three-point line and AV simply did not. Mike Blackburn powered in a couple of 3-pointers and Hunter Sagaiga tossed in a few buckets in the second period to help out but the Panthers were still trailing by ten, 32-22 at the half. Coach Slotte must have gave the boys a heck of a half-time talk because the Panthers came back playing better ball. Blackburn and Sagaiga combined for 14 points to narrow Mendo's lead by five points closing the third quarter. The fourth quarter was a real nail-biter. AV would make a basket and Mendo would answer. AV would get ahead a point, then Mendo would get a point ahead. The gym was going AV's shooting got better in the fourth quarter and Sergio Gutierrez made a very important steal and layout to put the Panthers ahead for good. AV walked off with a hard-fought win. Sagaiga led scoring with 19 points. Blackburn and Mezzanatto followed with 17 & 16 points. Sergio Gutierrez and Irving Jimenez chipped in a bucket apiece. Panthers Take Another Win Against Laytonville at Home. The Panthers faced off against the Laytonville Warriors at home last Friday. This match up had been anticipated all season because the Warriors are supposed to be tough this year. From the bystander's perspective, it looked like the Panthers didn't get that memo. Hunter Sagaiga was unstoppable under the basket and Mike Blackburn, Omar Benavides and Sergio Gutierrez dumped in some big 'threes.' AV kept a comfortable lead throughout the first and second quarters, 21-13 and 36-24. The Panther's shooting cooled off in the second half and Laytonville outscored AV in the third quarter but AV retained their lead by 9 points. The Warriors really poured it on in the fourth quarter, putting up 5 buckets that AV failed to answer. With only three minutes and some change remaining in the game, they were only four points behind the Panthers. Then Laytonville went into a foul-frenzy putting AV into bonus land and putting Sergio Gutierrez on the line not once but twice. Gutierrez made all of his free throws to pad the lead. AV won 64-54. Sagaiga led with an amazing 29 points. Followed by Blackburn 19, S. Gutierrez 7, Benavides 6, and Chava Gutierrez and Irving Jimenez 2 each. The Panthers hit the road to the land of fog in Point Arena next and play the Geyserville Broncos on Friday at home.” (— Renee Lee)

AS DEPUTY SQUIRES and investigator Andy Alvarado were taking statements from the four Boonville Tire Shop hold-up victims last week, one of the vics asked deputy Squires, “Keith, can we get our marijuana back?” The deputy and Alvarado had to turn away so they wouldn't laugh in the guy's face. But the case against the three robbers may or may not proceed because two of them are state prison parolees, meaning it's a cost saver for Mendo if they go straight back to the pen for violating parole without being prosecuted in Ukiah. This would also mean these two guys could be back on the streets in about six months, a prospect that causes most of us to throw up our hands and line up at the gun shops ourselves. And there are problems with the case. For openers, the cops didn't find any guns on the bandidos when they were finally stopped in Windsor. Second, the four Boonville victims could only positively identify one of the robbers. Squires said there's a third problem with the case: “Who's going to believe the four stooges who got robbed when they go to testify?” The youngest bandit's mom was in court the other day shaking her fist at her wayward son and promising him that when (and if) he gets home he'll face her wrath which, from all accounts, appears formidable.

DID YOU KNOW that local play-group supervisors Teresa Guerrero-Malfavon and her assistant Martha Gonzales may be saving Mendocino County hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? According to a recent Press Democrat article (“Lessons In Parenting, Press Democrat, January 29, 2011), Avance Inc.’s “parenting class” which “makes playtime an education experience” at an elementary school in Santa Rosa, costs the Sonoma County First-5 program $500,000 over three years. What does Avance Inc. provide for the money? A once-a-week, three-hour class for 25 mothers with kids in one school, and another similar class for 23 mothers at another nearby elementary school. In a typical day the mostly Mexican moms “spend one hour learning how to craft a simple sock-puppet toy, after which they learn strategies for educational play — working on counting, color and shape recognition and sizes with their children. The second hour focuses on emotional, social, cognitive and physical issues that affect families … mothers learn how to recognize and deal with dehydration, fevers and other childhood maladies.” (Hint: Water works real well for dehydration, a fact we think most Mexican mothers already know, and all this stuff seems beyond patronizing. It seems to assume the moms are retarded.) Meanwhile, “Once a week for three hours their kids nap and play on colored rugs and learn the basic social skills of getting in line, sharing toys, sitting still and following directions.”

MS. GUERRERO-MALFAVON and Ms. Gonzales do this and more for more hours for more parents for nothing at the AV Elementary playgroup being conducted under the auspices of the Community Services District’s Recreation Committee. When did helping out in the neighborhood become a $500,000 grant-funded project?

THE MAJOR reports that his excursions to Willits and Ukiah have been “a bit more irritating than usual.” Leaving his car unlocked on a side street in Willits while waiting for your beloved community newspaper to fly off the presses, The Major returned to his battered hybrid — he claims he has no idea where its numerous dents came from — to discover that his portable CD player was gone. Only the power cord to the cigarette lighter remained. “I was on disk five of seven of the very interesting story by the captain of the Maersk-Alabama merchant ship which was hijacked by Somali pirates last year,” The Major lamented, flapping his arms in exasperation as his narrative picked up steam. “Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to have a book ripped out your very ear drums when you're right in the middle of it? What's the illiterate tweek head who stole it going to do with three or four chapters of a non-fiction book? Melt it down and smoke it? What's next? Will they steal my ash tray?”

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