A View From The Brink ... the beach is backwards

Lawton Alternative School's coach honored for community service

 

Brenda Joyce Richard as a college tennis player. (Courtesy Photograph)

 

(Originally published in the May, 2012, issue of the Sunset Beacon newspaper, a community news source serving the Richmond District of San Francisco.)

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

Perhaps they'll eventually find DNA proof that some people are just born with a competitive streak. Until then, we have Brenda Joyce Richard for evidence of the fact. 

A couple of month's ago at the SF Board of Supervisor's Black History Month celebration, Richard, the coach and athletic director at Lawton Alternative Middle School, was honored with an Outstanding Service to the Community award by District 4 Supervisor Carmen Chu.

For the record, it wasn't Richard's idea; she is just doing what she likes to do. 

Richard has been at the little school at 30th Avenue and Lawton Street for five years, where she manages the boys and girls basketball; girls volleyball, boys baseball and boys and girls track teams. Next year, the plan is to add a soccer team for boys and girls.

A four-year championship reign by the girls volleyball team recently came to an end when their much larger archrival, A.P. Giannini, beat them in the finals. 

This rivalry has been a classic David vs. Goliath match-up during the last few years, which the 200-student Lawton Alternative started by taking their first championship when they toppled A.P. Giannini, which has more than 1,200 students. 

Coach Richard seems confident her girls will be taking that championship back next year. 

She knows a few things about championship competition. Richard played in the U.S. Tennis Association until she was 50 years old and for five years, when she was in her 20s, she played on the same pro tennis circuit as the legendary Billie Jean King. 

 

Go here for the full story   --->>>

SF cops: Crooks targeted superstitious Asian women

 

Vivian Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle reported that what began as a scam targeting elderly Asian women in San Francisco who believed themselves cursed by bad luck has unfolded into a possible nationwide organized crime ring.

Police said San Francisco officers arrested five women last week who they believe targeted elderly Asian women and took advantage of their superstitions to bilk them out of a total of $850,000 in cash and valuables. The investigation led authorities to suspects who were involved in similar setups in New York, Boston and possibly Chicago, police said.

Police arrested the five women May 10 as they tried to board a plane for Hong Kong at San Francisco International Airport. In their luggage, authorities found about $50,000 in cash and jewelry, cell phones and foreign currency of unknown value.

"We believe these arrests have tremendously impacted this organized crime ring and are hopeful that more victims will come forward," said Police Chief Greg Suhr.

Twenty-five women - 13 of whom were over age 65 - reported being swindled over the past few months in San Francisco by three middle-aged, Cantonese-speaking Asian women who claimed they could help them get rid of a curse or bad luck.

The suspects would approach women who were alone on the street and tell them they had ghosts or a curse attached to them. The only way to remedy the situation, the women were told, was to collect their money and jewelry and give it to the thieves, according to police.

Huifei Lin, 42, Caiqiong Chen, 43, and Lirong Lin, 57, will be arraigned June 14 on charges of grand theft, extortion, robbery and defrauding an elder, the district attorney's office said.

Two other women - Feiyan Wu, 45, and Qinying Ke, 47 - are being held on out-of-state warrants, police said. Investigators believe 15 to 20 people were fooled by similar scams in Boston and New York.

 

Go here for the full story on SFGate.com   --->>>

 

Retired CHP gumshoe's Zodiac suspect is dead

 

Lyndon Lafferty (foreground) and the other former law enforcement officials he says have cracked the Zodiac case. In the background are Bob Jernigan (left), Jerry Johnson (center) and James Dean. Lyndon Lafferty, an ex-CHP officer, and several others believe they have solved the Zodiac case, fingering a 91 year old man in Fairfield, Calif. (Photograph by Brant Ward/Chronicle)

 

Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that the man fingered as the Zodiac serial killer by a retired California Highway Patrol officer in a new book has died - leaving the mystery as alive as ever, and adding yet another figure to the long list of deceased men associated with the case.

The man was a 92-year-old former real estate salesman who died in Fairfield in February. The Chronicle is not naming him because law enforcement agencies do not consider him a suspect, even if former CHP Officer Lyndon Lafferty does.

The Zodiac shot or stabbed five people to death in Solano, Napa and San Francisco counties in 1968 and 1969, slayings that have never been solved. The killer taunted police and newspapers, including The Chronicle, with letters bragging about his lust for murder and challenging investigators to crack ciphers he said would reveal his name.

Lafferty, 79, wrote in his new book, "The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: AKA the Silenced Badge," that he first encountered the man in 1970 while on patrol in Vallejo. He gave the man the pseudonym George Russell Tucker in his book, and went to check up on him at his home four months ago - spotting him in the driveway - before sending his book to press.

Lafferty wrote that he focused on "Tucker" while working with the late Solano County sheriff's Sgt. Leslie Lundblad. He wrote that the man's wife had been having an affair with a judge and that the affair had led officials to halt investigations of the man in the Zodiac killings.

The judge and the wife are long dead, Lafferty said.

Lafferty learned this week that "Tucker" is also dead - as of Feb. 2. A Solano County sheriff's investigator said he died of a heart attack.

 

Go here for the full article on SFGate.com   --->>>

Police log excerpts from SFPD stations on the west side of town

 

Here are some choice items culled from police log reports of the San Francisco Police Department’s Taraval and Richmond stations on the city’s west side, for the last week of April and the first two weeks of May, 2012.

Please note that sub-headings in bold type are commentary from the reporter and not part of the original police log item.

 

A hammer to the ribs needs no translation

April 29, 2012

Assault with a deadly weapon and robbery

10:45 p.m., Geary Boulevard and 17th Avenue.

A man got onto an outbound 38 Geary Boulevard MUNI bus in the downtown area. He noticed two other men get on the bus at Powell Street, and one of them sat directly behind him. When he got off the bus at around 17th Avenue and Geary Blvd., so did the other two men. They stood next to him and one of them tried to talk to him.  Since he speaks very limited English, he told them that he didn’t understand. When he began to cross the street they followed him and he noticed that one had a hammer in his hand. They demanded that he give them his phone, so he got scared and began to run but one suspect used the hammer to hit him in the arm and rib cage.  He continued to run and but was tackled to the ground.  One began kicking him, while the other took the victims phone from his pocket and rosary bead bracelet from his wrist.  They then fled east on Geary Blvd.  The suspects were described as either Hispanic or white males, 18-20 years of age, one wearing a black beanie and white t-shirt, another with a black hooded sweatshirt and dark pants. The victim refused medical treatment.

 

Go here for the rest of this police log on Examiner.com   --->>>

 

Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business

 

 

David Horsey of the Los Angeles Times newspaper opines that if money is the mother’s milk of politics, then America’s big corporations are Big Mama and Big Baby is the Republican Party suckling at the enormous bosom of business. Democrats, meanwhile, are abandoned brats scrounging for nourishment wherever they can find it.

During the long decades the Democrats held a solid majority in Congress, campaign donations from the corporate world were spread around among incumbents in both parties – not evenly, but at least the D's got their share. Since the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, however, corporate dollars have increasingly flowed in one direction.

This happened, in part, because Republican leaders like Tom “The Hammer” DeLay instituted a program to punish corporate lobbyists who were too bipartisan with their donations. Even more significantly, the evolution of the GOP into a militantly anti-tax and anti-regulation party has made Republican policy goals and the political aims of big corporations indistinguishable. 

Now, in 2012, the discrepancy in campaign contributions is stark. Where once big business favored the GOP by 2 to 1, a survey by the Center for Responsive Politics has found Republicans enjoying a 7-1 advantage in some sectors. Energy companies, in particular, are giving heavily to Republican candidates, but so are financial institutions, insurance companies, real estate firms and agribusiness.

In addition to direct contributions, corporate givers -- unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling allowing unlimited contributions to independent political action committees – are dumping massive amounts of money into conservative "super PACs." And those super PACs are certainly not coming to the aid of any Democrats. 

Even as an incumbent, President Obama is having a tough time attracting corporate dollars. Hedge fund managers who gave big to his campaign in 2008 are putting their political investments elsewhere in 2012. He may have saved Wall Street from its own excesses and provided the bailouts that allowed the financial moguls to hold on to their fortunes, but they are not showing Obama any gratitude. They would prefer to have one of their own, Mitt Romney, in the White House.

Go here for the full article at the Los Angeles Times newspaper's website   --->>>

San Francisco union sends members to picket Fresh & Easy market

 

(Originally published in the April, 2012, issue of the Richmond Review newspaper, a community news source serving the Richmond District of San Francisco.) 

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

People living around the Lincoln Park and Seacliff neighborhoods of San Francisco have probably noticed a few picket signs in front of the new Fresh & Easy market at Clement Street and 32nd Avenue. 

The store has about 25 employees and none of them belong to a union, which the United Food and Commercial Worker's Union (UFCW) Local 648 takes issue with. The union represents retail clerks throughout the City in stores like Safeway, Luckys and Mollie Stone's.

According to a flyer handed out on the picket line, the union is asking the public to boycott the store. It says Fresh & Easy's parent company, the United Kingdom's Tesco, "is pulling money out of our community, state and country. It's bad enough that good American jobs are being outsourced to other countries, but now this global giant from the U.K. is taking advantage of American workers."

 

Go here for the full story at the Richmond Review newspaper's website   --->>>

San Francisco mayor optimistic despite $482 million deficit

 

(Originally published in the May, 2012, issue of the Sunset Beacon newspaper, a community news source serving the Richmond District of San Francisco.) 

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

Despite a projected $482 million deficit over the next two years, city officials told people at a recent Town Hall Meeting at the San Francisco Zoo that the city's budget situation is improving compared to the last few years.

The City recently switched from using an annual budget to a bi-annual budgeting process. This coming fiscal year the deficit is expected to be about $170 million, while next year it is projected to be almost twice as much, at $312 million. 

Nevertheless, revenues are up this year to $6.8 billion, the most the City has ever taken in. 

Cindy Czerwin, a budget analyst in the city Controller's Office, said about half of the City's $6.8 billion in revenues are from dedicated sources that can only be used for certain expenses. This leaves the other half, about $3.4 billion, for everyone else tethered to city coffers.

"We are seeing some amount of recovery in our economics this year, which is really exciting and a very different story than we've dealt with the last few years. We're no longer in a downturn. We're actually seeing our revenues improve," said Czerwin. "However, our expenses are really increasing faster than our revenue stream. It's as if we were to get a small boost in our paychecks and then go home to get letters from our landlords with an increase in rent; letters from our health insurance company telling us that our health insurance premiums are going up; going to the gas station and knowing that the price of gas is rising. It's more than eating up that little boost in the paycheck that you're getting."

 

Go here for the full story on the website of the Sunset Beacon newspaper   --->>>

Teen Suspect In SF Lamborghini Theft Had Stash Of Weapons

 

KCBS reported that authorities say a San Francisco Bay Area teenager charged in a drive-by shooting and the theft of a celebrity chef’s Lamborghini kept an arsenal that included assault rifles, phone-jamming equipment and a police uniform.

Court documents show that the items were stashed at a storage locker rented by 17-year-old Max Wade. That’s where authorities found a motorcycle linked to the April 13 shooting and the yellow Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder owned by chef Guy Fieri.

Authorities said they believe Wade stole the Lambroghini from a San Francisco car dealership on Van Ness Avenue last year and believe he is also responsible for a drive-by shooting in Mill Valley last month, shooting at two people who were in a parked vehicle.

“We located a motorcycle which we believe was used in the drive-by shooting in Mill Valley,” said Sgt. Mark hale with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office. “And we recovered other items that we think are related to our shooting.”

Hale said among the other items they found in a rented storage container were false ID cards from several states, a full San Francisco Police Department uniform with a badge and duty belt and a dismantled AK-47.

 

Go here for the full report on the KCBS website   --->>>

Seau’s relentless drive to succeed

 

'No matter what he did, he was going to win.'

Former Chargers linebacker Junior Seau announced his retirement at an August 2006 press conference at Chargers Park. Four days later, he signed with the New England Patriots. — U-T

 

John Wilkens of the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper reported that the Chargers former all-pro linebacker, Junior Seau, was always hard on himself.

When he got a scholarship to play football at USC, he had to sit out his freshman year because his SAT scores were too low. He went back to his high school and apologized to the principal and the teachers.

When the Chargers lost a game to the Kansas Chiefs on a last-minute field goal, he couldn’t sleep afterward, anguishing over a pass he didn’t knock down on the final drive. “It’ll never happen again,” he said the next day in a team meeting, breaking into tears.

“Junior expects perfection out of everybody, but especially himself,” teammate Gary Plummer once said.

Seau’s suicide four days ago in his Oceanside home at age 43 left family, friends and a community that adored him reeling from grief and searching for answers. They celebrated his life by talking about his athletic prowess, his generosity, his smiling exuberance — his relentless drive to succeed at everything he did.

 

Go here for the full story from the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper   --->>>

Suspected burglar charged with attempted homicide

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

San Francisco police announced the arrest of a man suspected of severely beating a 32-year-old San Francisco resident with a pipe, while burglarizing the victim’s house on the 1100 block of Ingerson Avenue.

The SFPD says De Angelo Winston, 22, of San Francisco, was booked on suspicion of attempted homicide, attempted robbery, burglary, possession of burglary tools and resisting arrest.

Police say that on April, 23, 2012 at 8:21 a.m., officers from the Bayview Station responded to a report of a break-in and beating. The victim told police dispatch that a man broke into his house and beat him. He was in the shower bathing when the suspect suddenly appeared and struck him repeatedly with a metal bar before fleeing the house. 

When police arrived they found the victim injured and bleeding.

 

Go here for the full story on Examiner.com   --->>>