By Jeremy Twitchell
Published Thu, Sep 25, 2008 (3:34 p.m.)
Updated Thu, Sep 25, 2008 (4:41 p.m.)
Pfc. Angel Salazar stepped off the bus and planted his unit's standard firmly on the ground, paused briefly, then raised it high over his head, cueing the crowd of anxious onlookers to break into cheers.
And with that, the 72nd Military Police Co. of the Nevada Army National Guard returned home.
Friends, families and dignitaries gathered at the Henderson Armory Sept. 25 to welcome the unit back from a nine-month deployment providing security at a detainee facility in Iraq. It was the 72nd's third deployment since 2001.
"I don't know how to explain it," Salazar said of the moment when he lifted the standard. "I was just tremendously excited."
For friends and family members, the day's jubilation was a welcome change from the somber deployment ceremony held on the same site in November, when the unit left for two months of training at Fort Dix, N.J., before its deployment.
The three deployments since 2001, along with a mobilization for Hurricane Katrina cleanup efforts, make the 72nd one of the most frequently deployed National Guard units in the country, according to the Nevada National Guard.
Capt. David Evans, who was on his second deployment to Iraq, credited the unit's cohesiveness for carrying it through so many deployments and for allowing it to carry out its difficult duties, which involved providing 24-hour security at a facility with 19,000 detainees and safely transporting 20,000 detainees, without a single casualty.
"It's loyalty to the unit, soldiers caring for one another," Evans said. "We've got a lot of soldiers in this unit that have been here for a long time, some as long as eight or nine years."
Gov. Jim Gibbons addressed the troops, saying he would keep his remarks brief to allow the reunions to continue.
"No other country takes such pride in the men and women who serve in uniform as this country does," he said. "And no other state takes as much pride in the men and women who serve in its National Guard as Nevada does."
When the ceremony concluded, the soldiers headed into the armory with their families to have lunch and begin the transition they've been dreaming of since last November.
"It feels very, very good," said Staff Sgt. Todd Simmons, clutching his 2-year-old son, Brayden. "It's a long time coming. It's tough leaving them at this age because you miss so much, but I think we'll pick up right where we left off."
Carey Simmons said she stayed with family in Wisconsin during her husband's deployment and was thrilled at the prospect of a return to normalcy for everyone in the family.
"I'm excited to get back to our family life, to have new things happen," she said. "Brayden is talking now, and he wasn't when (his father) left."
Brayden, meanwhile, basked in the moment. He knew his father from pictures, but still asked his mom if this was his dad just to make sure. When she told him yes, he smiled and rested his head on his father's shoulder.
The return ceremony marked the end of a difficult period for many families. Marlene Pujol said she had to learn how to control her thoughts and feelings while she struggled with daily worry for the safety of her 20-year-old son, Pfc. Salazar.
"I was always anxious to hear from him, to hear his voice and to hear him say, 'Mom, I'm OK. Mom, I'm safe,'" she said.
Now, the soldiers will use their leave time from the military to adjust to normal life before returning to their jobs, or for those who left their job for the deployment, finding new jobs. The soldiers will take anywhere from a week to a month to do that, Evans said.
"It's tough," Evans said. "It's going to take awhile to spin back up and get back up to speed."
The Nevada National Guard is providing courses for the families to teach them how to help their soldiers transition back into civilian life. Though returning home is a joyous experience, National Guard officials cautioned that it can be a difficult one.
But given the challenge that these families faced in the last nine months, this is one that they gladly welcome.
"I just can't describe it in words how happy I am," Pujol said. "I just can't believe that (Salazar) is home safe. And not just him, but all of them — the whole unit is home safe."
Source: lasvegassun.com
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Gracie Claire Sauer participated in her first graduation ceremony Sept. 12, not from a Boulder City kindergarten or preschool, but from the Napa Center, where she received a three-week barrage of therapies intended to help her cope with neuromuscular disabilities.
The accomplishment was no easy chore, though, for the 21/2-year-old girl who suffers from an undiagnosed illness that has stumped doctors for the past 20 months and has affected her neurological and motor skills.
Gracie's Napa Center professional team put her through an agonizing and exhaustive pace of four hours of intensive therapy and 90 minutes of auditory stimulation every Monday through Friday for three weeks, as well as twice-a-week biofeedback sessions.
It was no wonder that with but a few days left in her grueling, 15-day therapy program, the little girl who usually wears a happy smile would pout and cry, seemingly wanting, but unable, to ask when all of this would come to an end.
Even with the long, sad faces, a slight grin would emerge now and then as a therapist worked away on her fragile and sometimes rigid body, making it do things Gracie had never done before -- things her doctors and therapists believe she is capable of doing routinely with a little daily training.
"She's made a lot of progress, but she can make more progress if she wasn't so petite," said her physical therapist Rafael Munoz. "This week, you're going to look at her and she's tired, she's going to fuss and she's going to complain. She's not in any pain at all. She's probably saying, 'What's this guy doing to me?' 'Why am I here?' 'What do my parents want me to do?' 'I don't know why I have to do this.' So it's all resonating."
Accustomed to a moderate therapy regimen back in Boulder City, Gracie had little time during her six-hour daily sessions at Napa to recuperate from the strenuous routine Munoz and his aide, Kelly McGee, put her through that left her tired and sore at the end of each session.
From 8 to 9 a.m. each day, Gracie started with inhibition techniques -- forcing newly used muscles to work while restraining muscles she normally uses -- and soft-tissue techniques employed to loosen her up.
For another hour, until 10 a.m., Gracie would go through a pattern of therapy that would stretch, reach, twist, pull and push her tiny muscles, followed by a 15-minute break.
At 10:15, she'd be back in the therapy room, this time donning a special suit -- a NeuroSuit developed by the Russian space program and adapted for therapeutic use by Napa Center co-owner Trisha Gonzalez -- that had numerous ties and adjustments used to isolate the work needed to be done by a muscle or group of muscles.
Then at 11, Gracie would go to the "spider cage," so called for the four or eight bungee-like cords that attached to the NeuroSuit and held her in an upright position, giving her legs support like she never had before.
Then, at 11:30, it was standing in a special walker designed without a seat, which required Gracie to stand tall and move forward using her legs while McGee sat nearby.
A lunch break came at noon, then at 12:30 it was time to report to Geni King, 51, an auditory trainer, who used the Tomatis Method of listening improvement that played Mozart, Gregorian chant music and children's stories to Gracie to improve the use of the vestibule of her ears, which control various bodily functions.
King calls the vestibule, or the central part of the ear, "the battery to the brain" because it affects much of a person's everyday activities.
The Tomatis Method was named after Dr. Alfred Tomatis, a French-born ear, nose and throat specialist who studied occupational noise problems after World War II and made the discovery that poor learning is associated with poor listening.
As if putting on a set of oversized earphones weren't enough, Gracie also laid on a special electronic mat Tuesdays and Thursdays so Michael Galvan, a 31-year-old biofeedback technician, could register stress points in her body.
While the daily routine was fast-paced and strenuous, the intensity of it all seemed to pay off, Gracie's therapists said.
"The biggest change, I would say, is her trunk control in any position," said Munoz, 26, a University of Southern California graduate with a clinical doctorate degree in physical therapy. "Her mom reported the second or third day that she could sit at the dinner table without her chest harness on, which was a big deal for her because she couldn't do that before, and now she can sit through a whole meal without a chest harness on without being afraid of her falling over and hitting her head. That's a huge, huge difference we've seen.
"Another change is her initiating movements. When she came in, she's never been pushed so hard to do a lot of these tasks, so initiating certain movements with a lot of different activities, developmental activities, that's greatly improved. (What's) also (improved is) her ability to reach with her hands across her body. She would not reach across her body at all when she came, and she does that now with her right hand.
"She's demonstrating protective reactions also with her arms; as she falls toward the mat, she'll fuss and throw herself back. Now she'll throw herself to one side and have an arm to catch her. She's not catching herself yet, but at least it's out there. She's starting that step. There's a lot of subtleties, like the way her hands open, the way her feet are placed," Munoz said.
Gracie's mom, Jennifer Sauer, said she, too, noticed similar improvements in her daughter, giving credit to the use of the NeuroSuit while noting the difference in the therapy routine Gracie gets at home from physical therapist Jason Derryberry.
"I think it's just the intensity," she said. "The big thing here is the suit, and just having the suit on her automatically makes her sit up bigger. I can't really explain what the suit does, but when you put it on her body, suddenly her tone kicks in, she's sitting up bigger, that's the main difference. Jason is great, but I think as most therapists do, they get into a routine and tend to do the same things. Not just with Gracie, but all kids. Here, because what they're doing is geared to Gracie specifically, it just catapults the results forward. You saw her supporting her body weight on her hands and knees; that's huge because she wasn't able to do that before."
When it came to staying the full three weeks in California, Gracie's dad, Scott Sauer, wasn't as fortunate as his wife in that he had home inspection appointments to meet in Southern Nevada. That resulted in him having to commute by air when he could.
As a parent, Scott spoke about what it's like to sit there and watch Gracie go through the rigorous therapy, given the fact that a noted geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles last year told the Sauers he believed it was unlikely Gracie would live to see the age of 4.
"You know what, when you're at UCLA and they tell you to take your child home and you have no hope, this is a happy time. It's a positive step," he said. "Obviously, when we came here, we knew this was the start of a long journey. We didn't expect anybody to fix her on this trip. Her progress is clearly going to be determined by the amount of therapy she has and the quality of that therapy ..."
Jennifer had similar thoughts.
"A year-and-a-half ago, to have a geneticist at UCLA tell us there's no hope, basically what he was saying to us was take your child home and watch her die, which gave us no hope," Gracie's mom said. "So, a year-and-a-half to now is like night and day. She literally couldn't move anything on her own at that point and now that she's taking steps, close to sitting up on her own, she's supporting herself standing, and weight-bearing on her hands and knees, all of those things are things we never thought were possible. So, it just goes to show you can't always listen or believe what doctors tell you because they're human; they don't always have the answers. And in this case, it's a good thing that he was wrong."
Thanks to the generosity of Boulder City residents who supported the Sauers with more than $16,000 in donations and silent auction purchases, this trip won't be their only visit to the Napa Center. Jennifer has already talked to center director Lynette LaScala about coming back at the end of the year.
"Lynette told me before we got here we'll be planning our next trip and we're already looking to bring Gracie back probably the end of November, early December, and luckily, because of the fundraising efforts, it will be possible to do that," Jennifer said. "What we'll plan on doing is just the four sessions, because I think that's the most beneficial, and possibly, the Tomatis again, but we'll see after this time."
For Gracie and her parents, the last of three consecutive Fridays spent in El Segundo, Sept. 12, was a memorable day.
Not only was it the end of a tiring learning experience, but it also marked the completion of Gracie's therapy at the Napa Center.
Gracie and five other children -- Gracie was the youngest and 13-year-old Jonathan was the eldest -- graduated that day with each one receiving a personalized trophy to commemorate their visits.
For Jennifer Sauer, it truly was a happy occasion.
"I think it was a great trip and we made kind of what we made over the last year-and-a-half -- slow, steady progress -- but I think that what she's done in the last three weeks would have taken her months and months to accomplish at home," she said. "I'm just looking forward to bringing her back and seeing what she's going to do next time around."
Rubber duckies numbering almost 2,000 glide down golf course creek ...
Sunrise Rotary's Kenducky Derby fundraising event at Cascata Sept. 13 certainly was all it was "quacked up" to be with few, if any, members ducking the event and those who were there not using one word of "fowl" language.
For starters, just in case attendees weren't sure they were at the right golf course, Rotarians had placed a giant, inflatable, sunglass-bespeckled duck lounging in an equally large inflatable spa courtesy of Diamond Coast Spas at the valet entrance to the clubhouse.
Once inside, the festive air -- many women wore fashionably flappable big-brimmed hats in the tradition of thoroughbred racing fans at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. -- gave way to the first of three events, the golf ball drop.
Promptly at 1:30 p.m., a Las Vegas Helicopters chopper hovered over a special green that had been clipped on the driving range and dropped a test ball.
Then, some 700 specially marked golf balls pelted the greens, falling from the sky like an deluge of hail the size of, well, golf balls.
A special three-person team assembled to government standards -- one to measure, one to record distance and one to supervise -- that consisted of Sunrise President Goldie Begley, event coordinator Doug Scheppmann and his helper, Dr. Robert Merrell, came back with the three closest to the hole.
First place and $1,000 went to the Boulder City Chamber of Commerce, second place and $500 went to Ryan Mechanical Co., and the $250 third-place award went to Parsons Auto Body.
A half-hour later, with Boulder City High School junior Kelsey Ripplinger playing "Call to the Post" on her trumpet, the Corporate Duck Race took off with more than 500 rubber duckies bobbing and weaving their way over the l'orange rills and rapids of Cascata Creek.
Rotarian and Fire Chief Kevin Nicholson, who was stunningly dressed in a pair of Melvin Kline khaki wading boots, waited at the finish line to pluck the winning duck from the specially constructed river chase.
After swirling away in a series of whirlpools created by the chase, Dick Blair Realty won first place and $1,500, Pepper Coombes took second place and $1,000, and Boulder Dam Credit Union took third place and $500.
Then came the granddaddy of all the events, the ballyhooed Kenducky Derby, which saw close to 2,000 -- many were double-dutied -- rubber duckies take a second run down the creek.
A large number of unlucky duckies got caught upstream behind the rocks, but the majority got through, under the footbridge and into the swirling eddies, and then into Nicholson's comforting hands.
For this race, 15 prizes were handed out. Third place and a round of golf for four at Cascata went to Denny Mayes, husband of City Manager Vicki Mayes; second place went to Mary Chaisson of Las Vegas, who won a 50-inch, flat-screen TV, but promptly turned around and donated it to Sunrise Rotary's Wurstfest event coming up this weekend; and first-place with a $1,500 shopping spree at Henderson Harley-Davidson went to John Kist.
Funds raised will cover the costs of buying a Boulder City Art Scape Project statue.
When it was over, there was talk of the USC-Ohio State football game that would kick off later that day in Los Angeles.
It seemed a bit odd since the really big football game of the day for those attending the Kenducky Derby figured to be the one played at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., where the Boilermakers faced the University of Oregon -- otherwise known as the Ducks. It took two overtimes, but the 16th-ranked Ducks triumphed, 32-26.
Source: viewnews.com
Hacker impersonated Palin, stole e-mail password
By TED BRIDIS
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Details emerged Thursday behind the break-in of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail account, including a first-hand account suggesting it was vulnerable because a hacker was able to impersonate her online to obtain her password.
The hacker guessed that Alaska's governor had met her husband in high school, and knew Palin's date of birth and home Zip code. Using those details, the hacker tricked Yahoo Inc.'s service into assigning a new password, "popcorn," for Palin's e-mail account, according to a chronology of the crime published on the Web site where the hacking was first revealed.
The FBI and Secret Service launched a formal investigation Wednesday. Yahoo declined to comment Thursday on details of the investigation, citing Palin's privacy and the sensitivity of such investigations.
The person who claimed responsibility for the break-in did not respond Thursday to an e-mail inquiry from The Associated Press.
"i am the lurker who did it, and i would like to tell the story," the person wrote in the account, which circulated on the Internet. What started as a prank was cut short because of panic over the possibility the FBI might investigate, the hacker wrote.
Investigators were waiting to speak with Gabriel Ramuglia of Athens, Ga., who operates an Internet anonymity service used by the hacker. Ramuglia told the AP on Thursday he was reviewing his own logs and promised to turn over any helpful information to authorities because the hacker violated rules against using the anonymity service for illegal activities.
"If you're doing something illegal and causing me issues by doing this, I'm willing to cooperate," Ramuglia said. "Obviously this is the most high profile situation I've dealt with."
The break-in of Palin's private account is especially significant because Palin sometimes uses non-government e-mail to conduct state business. Previously disclosed e-mails indicate her administration embraced Yahoo accounts as an alternative to government e-mail, which could possibly be released to the public under Alaska's Open Records Act.
At the time, critics of Palin's administration were poring over official e-mails they had obtained from the governor's office looking for evidence of improper political activity.
Details of this week's break-in, if authentic, were consistent with speculation by computer security experts who said Yahoo's "forgot-my-password" service almost certainly was exploited. The mechanism allows customers to retrieve or change their password if they can verify their identity by confirming personal information such as birthdate, zip code and the answer to a "secret question," such as a childhood pet's name or school mascot.
Palin's hacker was challenged to guess where Alaska's governor met her husband, Todd. Palin herself recounted in her speech at the Republican National Convention that the pair began dating two decades ago in high school in Wasilla, a town near Anchorage.
"I found out later though (sic) more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on 'Wasilla high'," the person wrote.
The McCain campaign issued a statement describing the hacking as an invasion of Palin's privacy.
Source: lvrj.com
Southern Nevadans are panicking and considering extraordinary steps to avoid losing more money in the stock market, real estate and even bank savings accounts, according to one local banker.
An 80-year-old man, for instance, said he wanted to withdraw all of his money, $750,000 in deposits, from Black Mountain Community Bank and put it in a safe-deposit box, rather than spreading the money around banks so he would qualify for full coverage under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Peter Atkinson, president of Black Mountain Rock Community Bank, however, told the customer that banks are prohibited from storing cash in their safe-deposit boxes.
Another business owner said he has spread $2 million in deposits among several banks so all of it is under the $100,000 federal deposit insurance maximum. Yet, the businessperson is considering moving it to Bank of America, figuring the bank is too big for the government to allow it to fail.
A retiree with fully insured bank deposits said he wants to withdraw $65,000 and keep the cash at his home for possible emergencies.
So far, all three customers have left their money at the bank, but Atkinson is pessimistic.
"They not only don't like the stock market. They're not sure they trust the government or the banks anymore," Atkinson said. "I've never seen this before, and I've been in banking 45 years."
Military historian Jim Hinds blames the housing bubble and mortgage lending practices for triggering the economic slump.
It was foreseeable that making loans to individuals with bad credit records would lead to loan delinquencies, he said.
"There was a certain recklessness that was involved," he said. "Maybe there was the assumption that the government will bail us out," as it has done in cases like investment bank Bear Stearns Cos. and insurance giant American International Group Inc., Hinds said.
Harvey Cohen, a retired senior executive, also singled out the housing and mortgage industry blow-ups as a catalyst for the country's current economic and financial woes. He also blamed rampant mortgage loan fraud.
Two years ago, "every criminal trying to buy my house was looking for a mortgage-fraud deal," he said.
No one will buy homes now, he said, because they think prices are going lower. As a result, more people are losing their houses to foreclosure and the supply of houses is increasing, driving prices lower.
"You have to stop the supply of new homes coming on the market," he said. "The (federal government) has to step up and make mortgage loans available," he said. Mortgages should have fixed rates for 10 years or more so that homeowners can build equity.
"Nobody knows where this thing is going to end," Cohen said.
Ted Reed, 49, a government worker who oversees an Army Reserve armory, said the stock market makes him "a little nervous" and he is thinking about moving his retirement savings out of the stock market into safer investments.
It's too late to cash out of the market, said Jag Mehta, adjunct professor of finance at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a chartered financial analyst. Investors who wanted to avoid the bloodbath should have sold stocks a year ago, Mehta said.
"At this point, if you're selling out now, you're guaranteeing a loss," said Reed Radosevich, president of Northern Trust Bank, which manages money for wealthy clients.
"We're not going to make big moves to try to time the market," Radosevich said. "If you are constantly moving money back and forth, you may miss a huge up day."
Source: lvrj.com
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