APRN Alaska News

A man accused in a cold-case Utah murder was arrested in Haines on Wednesday.

Haines police and Alaska State Troopers assisted Ogden, Utah police in apprehending Stephen Ellenwood after he eluded law enforcement on a foot pursuit through a wooded Haines neighborhood.

The 40-year-old man is wanted in the 1993 murder of an elderly Ogden woman. According to charging documents filed in Utah and a cold-case report, Ellenwood is accused of climbing through a window of a retirement home, sexually assaulting and beating a 92-year-old woman. An employee of the retirement home walked in the room and the suspect, now identified as Ellenwood, fled through the window. The woman died from her injuries six days later.

About three hours later, at a bus stop only two blocks from the retirement home, a suspect also matching Ellenwood’s description sexually assaulted a 57-year-old woman. Authorities have not yet charged Ellenwood in that case.

An arrest warrant and aggravated murder charge were filed against Ellenwood on April 26 in Utah. Weber County Attorney Dee Smith on Wednesday told The Salt Lake Tribune that Ellenwood’s DNA matched evidence found in the slain woman’s room, although details of how authorities tracked him to Haines are still unclear.

Acquaintances and former co-workers of Ellenwood told station KHNS in Haines that he moved to Haines from Idaho less than a year ago. He worked at a Haines liquor store up until a few months ago.

According to Haines Police, Ellenwood was transported to Lemon Creek Correctional Facility in Juneau where he will be held without bail while awaiting extradition to Utah.

A former Bethel police officer is being charged with being intoxicated while on the scene of a police shooting last fall.

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Last October, a Bethel police officer shot and killed a man in a neighborhood near Brown’s Slough. The man, 24-year-old Sam Alexie Jr., was intoxicated and pointed a rifle at the officer who then shot him.

Now, the situation has grown more complicated as one of the officers on the scene was allegedly drunk.

Charges have been filed against Samuel Symmes, also known as Colin. He’s no longer a police officer but was the night of Oct. 2, and he wasn’t the shooting officer, but was assisting at the scene. The state is charging him with three misdemeanors: two counts of DUI and one count of misconduct involving a weapon.

Symmes now works for the city as a dispatcher and City Manager, Lee Foley, says they’re going to keep him on the job.

“Until a decision is reached, whether it’s for an employee or against, the city supports that employee through that process,” Foley said.

According to the District Attorney’s charging documents, this is what happened that night: Symmes was off duty when he responded to a call to assist. He arrived to the scene in his police car, wearing a firearm.
Initially, his behavior seemed normal to other officers and he was tasked with securing the scene.

However, he fell down a couple of times before becoming unconscious. The first time he fell on his knees and said he was fine. The second time he hit his head and again said he was fine, but was later found in his car, slumped over the driver’s seat. He was taken to the Bethel hospital by ambulance.

Police said it was slippery that night. In a press release following the incident, police did not identify the officers present, but said one of them had fallen on slippery stairs at the home and was treated at the hospital for a severe concussion.

At the hospital, Symmes was also given a blood test which showed alcohol present. The state crime lab analysis showed his alcohol level was three times the legal limit.

Symmes does not believe the test was accurate and neither does his attorney, Myron Angstman of Bethel. The State has requested DNA sampling from Symmes to prove the accuracy but the defense is trying to suppress that request. In court documents, the defense argues that it’s the state’s responsibility to prove Symmes guilt and to get a sample done now—months later–would go against his right to privacy.

That’s where the case stands now, as the judge, Dan Ogg, has yet to decide on the DNA issue.

Symmes worked as a police officer for nearly 3 years before voluntarily resigning 6 days after the shooting. A few months later, he was hired back as a dispatcher.

Meanwhile, City Manager, Lee Foley implores the community to not jump to conclusions. He says Symmes did not contribute to what happened that night.

“And he shouldn’t be judged in the community. If we’re going to judge somebody, let it be done in an official capacity and then let’s see how everything falls out,” Foley said.

The next court procedure in the case is a calendar call May 14 at the Bethel Court House.

The state of Alaska leased nearly 150,000 acres to oil and gas developers in a sale on Wednesday. The sale represents a continued interest in development in Cook Inlet that could focus on oil drilling in the coming years.

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State Presses BLM on Legacy Well Issue

Across the North Slope, there are over a hundred oil wells drilled by the federal government that are no longer operational. At some sites, there are abandoned drums sunk in oil seeps; other wells have gas leaking from them. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management released a draft plan identifying 50 of these so-called “legacy wells” for clean up.

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Bud Cribley directs the BLM’s Alaska office. He says the plan is to start with the 16 wells in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that pose the greatest risk to human and environmental health.

“It’s going to take time, but we are committed to accomplishing that clean-up.”

Cribley says that the timeline and the budget for the well clean-up are still being figured out, and that sequestration may affect the pace. Still, it’s possible that work on wells near Barrow could start as early as next year.

Of the remaining NPR-A wells, BLM has determined that 68 do not pose any risk to humans or the environment and that 18 are still in use.

Environmental groups like the Wilderness Society described the draft plan as a positive step forward, but a number of Alaska lawmakers say it doesn’t go far enough. Rep. Charisse Millette, a Republican from Anchorage, says she’s happy that the federal government wants to clean up some of the wells but that more should be targeted. She also has concerns about a recent proposal to use some of the revenue-sharing payments that Alaska gets for NPR-A oil to help pay for remediation.

“The BLM has not really come out with anything other than what they’ve been doing, patting the state on the head and then pulling our revenues away from us.”

Alaska’s congressional delegation also opposes the idea of making Alaska pay for remediation, since the wells were drilled by the federal government on federal land. Sen. Lisa Murkowski describing such a plan as “dead on arrival.”

The clean-up plan is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks, after key stakeholders get a chance to comment.

Sitka school board president Lon Garrison (r) congratulates student representative Jesseca Bartelds on her year of service on the board. The two agreed in principle — if not in practice — that absenteeism due to travel was a problem. (KCAW photo/Robert Woolsey)

The high cost of travel for extracurricular activities in Sitka’s schools has been an ongoing debate for years. Now, the school board is going to take a hard look at whether travel costs students and parents more than just money.

At its regular meeting Monday night, the board officially opened the question of whether Sitka’s students — and the teachers who coach them — spend too much time away from class.

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For some kids, it’s a trip here and a trip there. For junior Ryan Apathy, who participates in Cross Country in the fall, and then in Drama, Debate, and Forensics through early spring, it can be consecutive weekends of competition. If those events are out of town, Apathy and his teammates will likely miss Thursday and Friday of school for travel.

And Apathy is also in Music, which accounts for three out of a total of:

“Ten trips this year, and missed 22 days.”

Nevertheless Apathy is succeeding in school, and excelling in the activities he’s involved in. Sitka’s school board is concerned that Apathy, and kids like him, are the exception, rather than the rule.

“We had a math audit that said that by the time a high school student is a junior, they’re already a year behind in Math. In terms of the amount of time they have been in class if they’re involved in activities,” said board president Lon Garrison, who’s interested in exploring a policy implemented recently in the Unalaska School District. The policy limits students to twenty absences from school per year for activities.

“It’s not a policy coming from a district that is just kind of doing ho-hum. It’s a policy coming from a very remote district that deals with logistical issues like we do, but is also very high-performing.”

The Sitka School District doesn’t have a policy in place that specifically limits absences like this. It covers only excused and unexcused absences. Setting a hard cap is new.

Speaking from the audience, Sitka High activities director Mike Vieira wondered if it would have any impact. “I would be shocked,” he said, “if we had more than a handful of students who had missed twenty days.”

Student board member Jesse Bartelds, in her final meeting, wondered if the policy was missing the point.

“We already have a policy where if you have a certain grade in a class, then you can’t go on a trip. And I think it’s the student’s job to maintain that.”

Bartelds is also in a lot of activities, in which she excels. And she keeps up her grades. She and Ryan Apathy get that they’re not necessarily the kids the board is worried about. But they both have insight into the problem.

KCAW – Is it true that for some kids, being in class is a make-or-break thing for their grades?

Apathy – Absolutely. If you’re not there to hear what the content of the class is, you’re not going to do well on the test, or whatever it is you’re required to know to get the credit for the class.

Bartelds – I know that at the beginning of the year a lot of teachers were gone due to coaching activities, and it was tough not having them there, and needing them. The sub couldn’t really answer questions. I don’t want to be unfair in saying that there should be more restricted days for teachers than for students, but it is a detriment to the student body as a whole if teachers are gone as much as the students are.

Schools superintendent Steve Bradshaw agreed to collect data on how many students are gone, for how long, and for what reasons, before the board reopened the question of a hard cap on absences at a June work session.

Bradshaw has always expressed a belief in whole-student education. He has reservations about boxing students — and educators — into limits that may somehow backfire.

“I’m real concerned when we go down that path of setting hard policy, because normally it ends up trapping the school board, superintendent, and principals more so than the students. So you’ve got to be cautious with it.”

The Sitka School Board will hold a work session on attendance on Tuesday June 4, 7 PM in the district office board room.

Former Alaska Governor and U.S. Senator Frank Murkowski is laying blame on environmentalists for a range of U.S. problems.

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In an address to the Fairbanks Chamber of commerce on Tuesday, Murkowski said green leaning liberals driving federal policy are out of line with economic reality.

“They have the belief that they can create an ideal society and still support the government that tries to create it,” Murkowski said. ”Wealthy, liberal environmentalists simply ignore the reality of the soaring price of gasoline, if you’re working in Los Angeles and have to drive a hundred miles back and forth every day.”

Murkowski attributed everything from U.S. national debt to terrorism on environmentalists. He said they’re blocking resource development on federal lands that could break U.S. dependence on mid east oil that he said indirectly funds terrorists.

“Why don’t we prioritize the responsible development here at home? We’re sending our men and women over there in the military to protect the oil flow to the western world. Well, I’ve given you a few good reasons to move ahead in Alaska, in the arctic, ANWR, NPRA, OCS and so forth,” Murkowski said.

Murkowski said the three Alaska areas could fill the Trans Alaska Pipeline, but a government influenced by a powerful environmental lobby is preventing their development. He says the same thing is happening with logging in the Tongass National Forest, construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and development of the Pebble Mine. Murkowksi said he’s devoting a portion of the summer to travel and speak on the issue.

A Southeast village Native corporation wants to export its cultural tourism expertise. It’s opened a consulting business to build on more than a dozen years in the business.

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Wrangell’s Shakes Island Clan House was rededicated over the weekend. Hundreds of visitors from across Alaska, Canada, and the Lower 48 poured into the small island town to witness the historic event.

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The Interior Department says a test of an offshore well capping system in the Gulf of Mexico was successful.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement says Noble Energy and the Helix Well Containment Group have shown the device could contain a deep-water blowout.

The unannounced test began April 30. It involved waters about a mile deep and pressures of 8,400 pounds per square inch. The device is 20 feet tall and weighs 146,000 pounds. It was not announced so that it would test the full mobilization capability of the system.

There is a state oil and gas lease sale for tracts in the Cook Inlet area on Wednesday. The state Oil and Gas division opens bids at the Convention Center at 9 this morning.

Early Tuesday, a woman flipped her four wheeler in Alakanuk and died in the crash. State Troopers say it looks like alcohol was involved. Lois Chikigak was 30. The crash was reported at 1:43 Tuesday morning.

Union supporters watch as the Assembly deliberates passing Mayor Dan Sullivan’s controversial labor ordinance. Photo by Daysha Eaton, KSKA – Anchorage.

The Anchorage Assembly heard from the public on an ordinance that would change the way public testimony conducted, last night. Despite the issue being placed at the end of the agenda and testimony beginning after 9 p.m., many lined up to speak.

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Ernie Hall made the proposal after a controversial ordinance that sought to limit unions resulted in what he perceived as several endless nights of public testimony. Eventually the Assembly voted to close testimony before everyone had a chance to speak. Sabrina Martino said she liked the way testimony was conducted during the consideration of AO37 and that she felt the new ordinance would discourage public participation in city politics.

“I kind of think that this is almost like a rebuttal for the attendance shown for Anchorage Ordinance 37 as if maybe you are trying to maybe discourage people from actually coming and speaking your two sense,” Martino said. ”And that is almost like you guys are making up your own rules and don’t want to hear what anybody has to say and I don’t agree with that.”

The ordinance would require people to sign up in person on the first night of the hearing in order to testify. Tom Stenson from the ACLU of Alaska said, what’s important is that the Assembly come up with firm, objective standards to make sure that testimony is conducted fairly and legally.

“I’m not claiming to read anybody’s minds, but I think one of the problems that has arisen is that the public fears that when testimony is cut off on an ad hoc basis that it may be influenced by the chair’s view of whether the speech that’s being made is good or not,” Stenson said. ”And that kind of viewpoint discrimination is clearly not permitted. And so what we need are clear standards.”

Hall worked with the ACLU to craft the ordinance. He expressed surprise at Stenson’s criticisms. Public Testimony is expected to be continued at the next regular Assembly meeting on May 21.

With two big studies out on the proposed Pebble Mine, there’s been a fight over whether work by the Pebble Partnership or the Environmental Protection Agency is more credible. Now, members of a science panel sponsored by the Pebble Partnership are criticizing the Partnership’s own research.

The Keystone Center’s science panel met in Anchorage this week to review the Pebble Partnership’s baseline environmental studies for the mine it hopes to build in Southwest Alaska. The studies are meant to serve as a reference for what the region looks like now, without any major development.

On Tuesday, panelist Falk Huettman, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, expressed concern that the baseline reports hadn’t fully considered the issue of biodiversity in the region. He also suggested that the work done on habitat use in the area was “insufficient.”

Ecologist Robert McFarlane had the harshest words, and he focused his criticisms primarily on the study of birds.

“I can say the documents is adequate as a list of species that are present,” said McFarlane. “It is not adequate for any type of study that you might want to come back to from some years in the future to ask, ‘Have there been any changes?”

McFarlane acknowledged that when it comes to building a mine, it will be more important to look at the impact on fish than on birds. But he still slammed the methodology used to study the birds, calling the research presented “backwards,” “frustrating,” and “disturbing.”

Terry Schick is the environmental consultant who handled the bird studies for the Pebble Partnership. He said they were limited in the field in how much data they were able to collect. And, he added, their team wasn’t given enough money to use a more current methods.

“We were not given the budget to produce those for this report,” said Schick.

Pebble Partnership’s study isn’t the only big piece of research on the mine out there. In April, the Environmental Protection Agency released its revised assessment of the project, which concluded that a mine in the Bristol Bay region could affect major salmon streams. The Pebble Partnership has called that work “deeply flawed,” because the EPA based its studies on a hypothetical mine plan instead of waiting for the partnership to file the plan they intend to use.

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Polaris Building. Dan Bross KUAC.

The city of Fairbanks is giving the owner of the Polaris Building more time to advance a plan to renovate the vacant and deteriorating downtown high rise. KUAC’s Dan Bross reports.

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Paimuit Tribal administrator Harrold Napolean.
Photo by Lori Townsend-APRN

Tribal leaders and representatives met in Anchorage last week to denounce the exclusion of Alaska Native tribes from the Violence Against Women Act reauthoritization and other problems facing Alaska’s tribal people.

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Harold Napolean is the tribal administrator for the Native village of Paimuit near Hooper Bay. Looking around the room at the sparse attendance, Napolean said many of the tribes could not send representatives because they’re broke. He said they are dealing with third world conditions because tribal governments have no land.

“They have no land on which to exercise their jurisdiction,” Napolean said. “So, the tribes are sovereign, but they’re sovereign over air.”

Napolean said the Venetie court decision that stated tribes had no land rights and therefore could not tax was a great defeat for tribal governments.

During a presentation, Napolean ticked off statistics about Native people in the state. He pointed out that Anchorage is the area with the largest percentage of Native people and the majority of them are young women with children. He likened them to refugees.

“They’re escaping conditions in the villages,” Napolean said. “The poverty, the violence, so this is very significant number.”

Virginia Commack. Photo by Lori Townsend, APRN – Anchorage

“They go from one place of having a hard time to another place of having a hard time.”

He said 25 percent of Alaska Native children live in poverty. The VAWA reauthorization angered Ambler resident Virginia Commack. She says women are the core of the family and violence against them must stop.

The upper Kobuk River community resident says she often reads policy and helps interpret it for the tribal council. She says VAWA is an act of discrimination against Alaska Natives.

“We’ve been able to do things in the village to try and minimize that kind of violence in our village,” Commack said. “Violence against children, violence against women, violence against each other, we don’t get the dollars that other people, other organizations get on our behalf, but we do it voluntarily anyway, because that’s our culture.”

One-hundred-sixty tribes in the state currently support three  changes to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to put forward to Congress. Restoring tribal ownership to lands selected under ANCSA, restoring hunting, fishing and gathering rights extinguished under ANCSA and mandating enrollment of all Alaska Native children born after December 18, 1971.

Four armed, armored figures display Tlingit war gear created by Sitka’s Tommy Joseph as part of the Alaska State Museum’s “Rainforest Warriors” exhibit. It’s one of three Alaska shows tourists will see this season. Click here to watch a slideshow from the exhibit and Kay Field Parker’s “Playing with Lightning.”

Alaska State Museum Exhibit Curator Jackie Manning is confronted by some imposing figures every time she enters its main gallery.

They’re well-armed, well-armored mannequins, displaying years of carving by Sitka Tlingit artist Tommy Joseph.

“And when you first walk in, you’re met by all six of them and they‘re up and they have this presence that I think really gives you the sense of what it would be like to encounter these warriors in life,” she says.

She points to one of the figures, with an abalone-eyed helmet, shelled, protective neck gear and the historic equivalent of a kevlar vest.

“Every time I see it, it leaves quite the impression because it’s fully dressed with the slat armor and the collar and the tunic and the bow and the arrow as well as the dagger. It’s just such a beautiful example of all of the armor on one figure,” she says.

The Marten Helmet, part of the “Rainforest Warriors” exhibit. Click here watch a slideshow from the exhibit, as well as Kay Field Parker’s “Playing with Lightning.”

The museum is a popular Juneau tourist destination, catering to cruise-ship passengers and independent travelers, as well as locals.

It, and other parts of the tourist industry, will likely see more people visit the state this year. Larger cruise ships are on their way, bringing visitors through Southeast and across the Gulf of Alaska. Many tourists continue north, riding and flying to the Railbelt and on to places north and west.

This season’s visitors to the state museum will also view Juneau’s Kay Field Parker’s Ravenstail weaving and Sitka’s Nicholas Galanin’s contemporary Tlingit-Aleut art.

“I think the three shows really work together very well and are going to give our all of our visitors a great impression of the kind of artwork that’s done in Alaska,” she says.

The museum is but one of hundreds of attractions and excursions ready for Alaska’s 2013 tourist season.

“It looks excellent,” says John Binkley, president of the Alaska Cruise Association, which represents Princess, Holland America and other large-ship lines sailing Alaska waters.

“It looks like this will be the first time since 2009 that we’ll get back above the 1 million mark for cruise visitors coming to Alaska.”

He says the ships will bring nearly 70,000 more visitors north this season.

They’ll come aboard 28 large ships, one more than last year. And three lines will send larger vessels than last year, making close to 500 separate voyages.

“The indications that we’ve gotten are that the prices are holding steady, which means that there’s less discounting and usually people who are a little more affluent are coming to Alaska. That should be good news for retail merchants as well as those who have shore excursions that hopefully people purchase when they get off the ship,” Binkley says.

“The industry is cautiously optimistic that it will be a great summer and total visitor season,” adds Sarah Leonard, president of the Alaska Travel Industry Association, a statewide tour-business group.

“Last summer we know that visitors reached 1.8 million in Alaska. And that was the first increase we saw in over four years. And then with some new … airline service and new cruise-ship berths, we see positive growth,” Leonard says.

Leggings from the “Playing with Lightning” exhibit.

Back at the Alaska State Museum, dozens of Kay Field Parker’s ravenstail weavings are on exhibit, in a summer show called “Playing with Lightning.”

Leggings from the “Playing with Lightning” exhibit.

“Lightning is one of the patterns, a triangle pattern that repeats, but it reverses,” says Manning, the museum curator.

She describes ravenstail as highly geometric. The technique was rediscovered in the 1980s after being out of use for about two centuries. Manning says Parker’s work follows the old ways, with some variations.

“The traditional colors were white and black and yellow. And the majority of Kay’s work reflects those traditional colors. And based on materials, because they’re so hard to come by for weavers that do this kind of work, she also has some other colors she’s introduced,” she says.

This is the final summer exhibits will be on display in this aging museum. It will be torn down next year and eventually replaced with a modern structure including the state library and archives.

Meanwhile, the cruise-and-tourist season continues through late September. In addition to large-ship lines, the number of smaller tour vessels is increasing this year.

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Bethel students had a special visitor recently: 2014 Winter Olympic hopeful Liam Ortega.  The Fairbanks athlete took time out of his training schedule to talk to young people about setting goals and overcoming adversity, something he knows all-too-much about after fighting back from a traumatic brain injury. KYUK’s Mark Arehart has more.

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A local legislative race in Alaska has caught the attention of national media, and is being held up as model for political change elsewhere in the country.

Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a Democrat from Sitka, won his seat last fall by 32 votes. Kreiss-Tomkins was 23 years old at the time. His opponent, Republican Bill Thomas of Haines, was a four-term incumbent and co-chair of the House Finance Committee.

Close elections are common in Alaska, but the April 22nd issue of The Nation calls Alaska’s House 34 race a “lesson” for the left.

The Nation magazine contributor Russell Mokhiber says he grew up in a political family, and has been a political activist all his life. The last election cycle generated a huge amount discussion about the relationship between money and politics. Much of it he considers whining.

“Anytime you hear people talking about, The system is out of control, there’s too much money in politics, there’s too much corporate power — my question is, What are you going to do about it?”

He sees the election of Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins as an antidote to inaction. He thinks the 24-year-old Sitkan has — by his headlong plunge into politics — demonstrated that actions speak louder than words.

“You hear a lot of rhetoric about Citizens United and corporate takeover of the country and We need a constitutional amendment, and all these big plans. Could it be that we just haven’t figured out the fundamentals of democracy? How to run for and win office, even at the local level.”

Mokhiber is solidly rooted in the left. He edits a high-end Washington DC-based newsletter called the “Corporate Crime Reporter.” Mokhiber has covered Alaskan politics before, most notably the 2006 Cruise Ship Initiative. One of the co-authors of the initiative, Gershon Cohen of Haines, was instrumental in urging Kreiss-Tomkins to make a bid for the new legislative seat recently created by redistricting. Cohen tipped Mokhiber to the potential story in Kreiss-Tomkins’ unexpected win. Mokhiber then pitched it to The Nation, the country’s most prestigious left-of-center magazine.

His subsequent piece examines several facets of the election: Kreiss-Tomkins’ home-town advantage, the name recognition of his mother, Dr. Connie Kreiss (who is well-known in the district’s smaller villages), some ways that his opponent Bill Thomas was unpopular, and Kreiss-Tomkins’ use of social media.

None of this, says Mokhiber, necessarily added up to a win.

“To me, what struck me as a bigger factor was that he went to almost all of the little towns around. He met a lot of people, and he was receptive, he was a listener — he connected with a lot of people face to face. Clearly without that, he would not have won this thing.”

Gershon Cohen agrees that voters chose Kreiss-Tomkins for reasons other than party affiliation. “This shouldn’t be about parties anymore. It should be about policies, and about the people that are going to be in government,” he says. “So it doesn’t surprise me at all that it would be getting looked at by a lot of people around the country, and frankly I think that’s great.”

Cohen was the Debate coach in Haines when Kreiss-Tomkins was in high school in Sitka. That’s when they first met.

Cohen agrees with Mokiber’s assertion that Kreiss-Tomkins won his election by making personal connections — a strategy that undermines conventional thinking about party politics in Alaska.

“I think that he would have won as an independent, and I think that there’s an opportunity for that to be replicated around the state, frankly. We had a lot of races in the last election where people were running unopposed. And people go, Well, how come someone from the other party isn’t running? It shouldn’t be about party, it should be about the people and what they support, and what they would do in office.”

In fact, there were seven unopposed legislative races last year in Alaska — one in the Senate and six in the House. In Mokhiber’s home turf of West Virginia, in the eastern panhandle, there were at least ten state house delegate seats that went unchallenged, any one of which could have been won with three-thousand votes.

He’s hoping the lesson of Kreiss-Tomkins’ election sinks in.

“We’re starting to do a recruitment drive, where we’re passing around the article, looking for people who it resonates with.”

Mokhiber is not expecting miracles. At the moment, he sees Kreiss-Tomkins as the exception to the rule in a political environment where constituents don’t always come first.

He wants people to look at this election and take heart.

“Now I think he’s a special young man in a special district. And not everybody who’s going to take this on is going to win, or even come close. But the reason it’s such a good model is because he put aside the rhetoric and he went and he listened to people. He said, Here’s my card, give me a call. If I don’t answer, I’ll call you back within 24 hours. I want to be your person in the state capitol.”

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The metal band around this dead eagle’s leg helped identify him as “Windex,” so named in 1995 when he flew through a Sitka family’s plate glass window. Windex was found dead near a Sitka trail in mid-April. (KCAW photo by Ed Ronco)

In mid-April, a hiker in Sitka found an eagle dead in the woods. It was picked up by the Alaska Raptor Center. Ordinarily, this would not be a news story, except that this eagle was wearing some jewelry.

A small fracture is visible in one of Windex’s wing bones. The bald eagle, found dead in April, was a patient at the Alaska Raptor Center in 1995. (KCAW photo by Ed Ronco)

OK, so the jewelry the eagle was wearing was a metal band, which identifies the bird officially as 62934715. But back in 1995 he was known simply by the name “Windex.”

“Because he flew through a double-paned glass window,” said Jen Cedarleaf, who works at the Raptor Center. She’s flipping through Windex’s chart, which is dated July 1995. “We didn’t X-ray, we checked for fractures and lacerations. Didn’t have any fractures. We gave him fluids because he was in shock.”

Cedarleaf had just arrived in Sitka when the Windex incident happened.

“I pretty distinctly remember the call, because he flew through their window and knocked himself out, and they have this eagle in their living room, and they’re like, ‘What do I do?’” she said.

Tina and Lee Krause stand near the window where Windex made his surprise entrance in 1995. Lee was sitting with his back to the window, less than five feet away, when the eagle came crashing through. (KCAW photo by Ed Ronco)

As it turns out, Lee Krause and his wife, Tina, still live in the house where it happened. During our interview, Lee sits in the same place he was 18 years ago when Windex dropped in for a visit — at the dining room table with his back to the window, not more than five feet away.

“A total explosion, that’s what it was,” Tina Krause says.

“It was like a gun going off or something,” her husband adds. “And then I was just peppered up my back. I really thought somebody got me with a shotgun or something.”

Tina Krause says the glass flew clear to the other side of the house. When the eagle started coming to, they quickly put a throw rug on him, standing on the edges to keep the bird from causing more damage.

“And our grandson was sitting there watching TV, and he says ‘Holy cow! Grandma does this happen often?’ Because he’s from down below,” she said. “He was about 8.”

Raptor Center staff showed up, and with a makeshift stretcher, took the bird off for treatment. The Krause family cleaned up the glass and threw out the chunk of halibut Windex dropped when he made his entrance.

But that wasn’t the end of things for the Krause family. For starters, they made the front page of the Sitka Sentinel.

Krause reads the headline and the beginning of the story: “Eagle crashes party, sends guests flying. The Krauses aren’t used to uninvited guests showing up at their home for dinner, but at least this one brought his own entree…”

The newspaper article led to mentions in the press outside of Alaska, and they even became a tourist attraction.

“We ended up putting a great big piece of plywood over the window here, and the tour buses would all park down here, and tell the story about the eagle,” she said. “All the people would walk up our little driveway and stand there and take pictures of our house.”

Tina Krause and her husband have wondered what happened to Windex, and how he died. For the answer to that, we turn again to Jen Cedarleaf at the Alaska Raptor Center.

Flies are buzzing around Windex as she brings in the trash bag holding his carcass. It is the afternoon after Windex was found in the woods.

“He’s really stinky,” she said as she removed him from the bag. “He’s probably been dead a few days.”

Jen Cedarleaf, of the Alaska Raptor Center, positions the carcass of “Windex,” a bald eagle found dead in April. Windex got his name in 1995 after flying through the plate glass window of a home on Halibut Point Road. (KCAW photo by Ed Ronco)

Cedarleaf positions Windex on a table and we hide behind a lead screen as the bird is zapped by X-rays. When the film is developed, we see a small little fracture on one of the bones in his wing.

“I think his radius is broken,” she said, looking at the film. “I still don’t think that’s the cause of death, because he should have been skinnier. He should’ve lost a lot of weight from having the broken wing. But I don’t see anything else.”

Windex was an adult eagle when he flew through the Krauses’ window. That was 18 years ago, which means Windex was probably between 20 and 25 years old when he died — about normal for an eagle in the wild.

Cedarleaf says the fact that this eagle was found, identified, and returned to the same clinic where he was treated nearly two decades ago is extremely unusual. As is his claim to fame. Lee and Tina Krause say they still tell the story of the day Windex came to visit.

“Yeah, it’s kind of sad,” Tina Krause said. “I thought he would live forever.”

And, in a way, he just might.

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Terra MODIS satellite image of May 4 eruption plume from Cleveland/Credit: NASA

Cleveland Volcano continues to be active, with two additional blasts shaking the volcano on Sunday evening, and Monday morning. Neither explosion produced ash clouds large enough to interfere with air traffic transiting the region.

According to Alaska Volcano Observatory scientist-in-charge John Power, the volcano’s continuous, low-level eruption appears to be waning.

“So far it has not presented anything that would give us an indication of a larger eruption or a greater hazard to come.”

Nevertheless, because of the possibility that sudden explosions could produce ash clouds rising above 20,000 feet, the aviation alert level remains at orange.

Original story: Saturday, May 4, 8:04 pm

Cleveland Volcano is erupting once again. Three small explosions shook the volcano Saturday morning, and a low-level eruption is ongoing.

John Power is a seismologist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory. He writes in an email that the explosions were “similar in size to what we have seen over the past several years,” although he notes that it is unusual to have three in a row.

Power says satellite imagery and a webcam in the nearby village of Nikolski show that the volcano is continuing to emit small amounts of gas, ash and steam, with plumes rising to 15,000 feet. There’s no real-time monitoring network on the volcano.

Cleveland lies on a major international flight path, and in light of the explosions the Observatory has raised the aviation alert level from yellow to orange. They warn that there is the possibility of sudden explosions reaching above 20,000 feet, but so far there have been no reported disturbances to air travel.

Cleveland is one of the most active volcanoes in the Aleutians, erupting roughly two dozen times in 2012. It’s last major eruptive period was in 2001, when the volcano sent ash clouds up to 39,000 feet.

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