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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Adrian Rogers

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News >  Features

Pertussis shows persistence

The whooping cough epidemic plaguing other counties in Washington has been slow to reach the Inland Northwest. While numbers in West Side counties continued to climb at the end of last week, Spokane County had 18 confirmed cases. (Skagit County, the state’s hardest hit, had close to 300.) In North Idaho, Kootenai and Bonner counties each had two cases.
News >  Features

Slowing pertussis with ‘herd immunity’

It takes a herd to whip whooping cough. “Herd immunity” is the idea that people who can’t get immunized for medical reasons – such as autoimmune disorders – or because they’re too young are still protected indirectly from infectious diseases. That’s because they’re surrounded by people who are immunized.
News >  Features

Stay the course

The post-Bloomsday glow is sweet, lending its aura of accomplishment and fitness over all who slip on their hard-won T-shirts. Bad news: The glow dims. Some runners and walkers who’d stuck to a countdown-to-Bloomsday workout routine scale back – and back some more – until all they have to show for their weeks or months of efforts are a snapshot of a giant vulture and the shirt. The good feelings go away, as do the health benefits gained from their Bloomsday training schedule.
News >  Features

Before riding bicycle, check helmet’s size, fit, useful life

It’s Bike Month in Spokane. Do you know where your helmet is? If you’re pretty sure it’s either in the garage or under your ski boots – but not entirely sure because you haven’t seen it since you flew over the handlebars eight years ago – it might be time to get a new one before you get back in the saddle.
News >  Features

Pain reliever

After decades of “hard livin’ ” – football and baseball as a young man, 23 years as a Marine pilot, serving in the Vietnam War – Bill Nichols suffers from chronic back pain. But if it weren’t for yoga, the Liberty Lake resident said, he’d be a lot worse off. Nichols, 65, credits his regular “restorative” yoga classes with keeping him on his feet even after a couple of back surgeries and a daily regimen of pain medication.
News >  Features

Beating obesity

Barb Beck wrote a list of 1,703 things she couldn’t do – things she “lost,” she said – because she was too fat. They were measures of obesity’s toll on every aspect of her life, including her basic dignity: Sit on chairs with arms. Do a somersault. Ride the rides at amusement parks.
News >  Features

While effective, surgery is last option

Two bariatric-surgery studies published last month supported what many doctors and patients already knew: Weight-loss surgery works better than medicine alone to put type 2 diabetes in remission, or at least to lessen the need for medicine. But while the results weren’t shocking, the studies were unique in that they were randomized and controlled – the “holy grail of research,” said Dr. Mathew Rawlins, who performs bariatric surgeries at the Rockwood Surgical Group and Weight Loss Surgery Center in Spokane.
News >  Spokane

Generosity of donors pushes Christmas Fund past goal

The Christmas Fund made its goal – and then, for good measure, Spokane-area residents gave a little more. The fund’s final tally for 2011: $531,237.54. Organizers set a goal of raising $525,000 to serve the community’s needy over the Christmas season.
News >  Spokane

Sacrifices big and small speak to Spokane’s heart

Merry Christmas to Spokane, from Spokane. Here’s your present: Barbie and her car. A miniature easel, just your size. A doll who laughs when you poke her tummy. A helicopter that really flies. A game to play with your mom, because that’s what you two do together.
News >  Spokane

Friends in need and deed

Friends for 20 years, Joy Allen and Kimberley Lesky sat together for lunch at the Christmas Bureau one day, taking a break from helping the charity that helps them. They’ve been through a lot together
News >  Spokane

Garco, Landmark match employees’ gifts over year

The Christmas Fund is growing closer to its goal, thanks in part to a hefty gift from Garco Construction and the people who work there. Garco’s $20,000 check, which includes $3,930 in contributions from its employees, is among dozens of donations to the fund that combine companies’ or owners’ gifts with contributions from employees. They add up to sizable gifts that will help pay expenses at the Christmas Bureau, a 10-day charity that gives toys, children’s books and grocery vouchers to low-income families.
News >  Spokane

Toys to the world – or at least to 17,321

As the Christmas Bureau closed for the season Tuesday, the Christmas Fund – which pays the bills for the charity – picked up steam. Travis Pattern & Foundry, of Spokane, gave $35,000. It was money the company would otherwise have spent on a Christmas party, President Travis Garske wrote.
News >  Spokane

Rookies, old-timers blend well

Childhood penmanship-award winner and 30-year waitress Mabe Hunter, 72, submitted handwriting samples to Christmas Bureau organizers in securing a volunteer job. It didn’t hurt – Monday was Hunter’s third day at the bureau, where she greeted recipients and checked their IDs, comparing adults’ addresses with their children’s and carefully recording their personal information.
News >  Spokane

Christmas Fund behind last year; gifts still rolling in

The good news: The Christmas Fund is more than halfway to meeting its goal to raise $525,000 for the Christmas Bureau, a 10-day, volunteer-fueled event that distributes toys, children’s books and grocery vouchers to thousands of Spokane-area people in need. The other news: The Christmas Fund – made of donations of all sizes from newspaper readers – is running behind, compared to this point last year. And it has further to go. And there’s less than a week and a half left until the fund closes for the year.
News >  Spokane

Nurturing niche

For 10 days each December, Marilee Roloff stands behind the neat stacks of children’s books at the Christmas Bureau, helping to give them away. Like others who stand there, Roloff asks parents about their kids’ ages and interests. Mothers and fathers linger over the tables, studying the selection to choose the best book for their child.
News >  Spokane

A gift that speaks volumes

Magen Wolfe believes her son can read. But she can’t be sure. Her 5-year-old, Andrin Jason, can identify the “Finding Nemo” DVD even without the cover. He can find certain games on her cellphone using only text. He pulls out the phone book and rifles through it. He loves the credits at the end more than he loves movies.
News >  Spokane

Russian-born interpreter helps in Spanish too

By the time the Christmas Bureau closes its doors each day, Anastasiya Timkina has trouble talking. The Russian, Spanish and English she’s been slinging around – helping person after person in the bureau’s line of people in need – are jumbled in her head and on her tongue. “By the end of the day, you confuse all three languages into one,” she said.
News >  Spokane

Fund edges past $200,000 mark

He used to deliver the roast-beef sandwiches. Now he’s a Christmas Bureau volunteer. It takes both kinds of gifts – of time and of commodity – to make the charity run, in addition to donations to the Christmas Fund.
News >  Spokane

CV students collect stuffed toys for Christmas Bureau

On the outer edge of childhood, the group of Central Valley High School students who delivered 1,000 stuffed animals to the Christmas Bureau last week connected a bit with the toys before handing them over. Cora Van Dyke, 17, named a husky Mishka.
News >  Spokane

Christmas Fund donations, Dec. 13

 Thanks to readers’ donations, the Christmas Fund now stands at $184,572.39. The goal is to raise $525,000 by the end of the year, the amount the Christmas Bureau needs to pay for holiday gifts for thousands of families in need.
News >  Spokane

Christmas Bureau clients treated to cavalcade of entertainers

Their light-up vests were battery-powered. Their hats were pointy. Their enthusiasm was contagious. Coeur d’Alene’s elf-costumed Blazen Divaz had people standing in line at the Christmas Bureau over the weekend bouncing along to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Bureau recipients used their phones to take pictures of themselves alongside the performers, and children – including a toddler in footie pajamas – grinned up at them.
News >  Spokane

Record turnout for Bureau’s first day

It was a day of firsts – and one exciting near-first – at the Christmas Bureau on Friday. Volunteers served more people than on any previous first day: 6,958, including 3,815 children. The previous opening-day record was set in 2009, when about 5,900 people were served.