Benjamin Shors

Two days after signing a rental lease on a tiny home in east Spokane, Michael Wade walked past the windows covered with plywood, the sagging roof and the yard choked with weeds. But it was the sign on the door that shocked him: A notice prohibiting occupancy.

ATHOL, Idaho – There may be other venues where one can get both grey sea salt from the south of France and mental health therapy from a zebra in a single stop, but probably not in Idaho, and almost certainly not on a weekend. What Athol Daze lacked in pomp and circumstance, it more than made up for in distinctiveness. The small town, located 21 miles north of Coeur d'Alene, hosted its one-day annual celebration on Saturday, and welcomed exhibits from around North Idaho.

In a little green notebook with crisp blue lines, the boy begins to write: E L I O W. The letters emerge from his pen in careful, clunky strokes.

The number of licensed foster homes in Washington has gradually declined in the past three years, dipping to the lowest numbers since 1998. The decline has created a "critical shortage" of homes for the 9,600 children who are in out-of-home placement on any given day, a state ombudsman said this spring.

A 32-year-old homeless man who played a key role on an inspirational basketball team drowned Friday in the Spokane River. William Wilcox, the 240-pound center of the Union Gospel Mission's Hoopfest team, slipped under water as he attempted to cross the Spokane River during a mission outing at Corbin Park near Post Falls.

The Stevens County prosecutor is seeking a second-degree murder charge against a former foster mother whose 7-year-old son died of severe dehydration last year. Carole Ann DeLeon, 51, was previously charged with criminal mistreatment of one child. Now, Prosecutor Jerry Wetle is asking the court's permission to add the charge of second-degree murder of another boy, Tyler DeLeon.

KELLOGG – High above this former mining town, a mountain biker shot across the lip of a jump, paused for a moment mid-air against a backdrop of ski runs and forested hills, and then dropped out of sight. "That guy really rails," Stephen Lane, Silver Mountain's marketing director, said. "He's tough to keep up with."

A mother belongs with her son. Akout Agang feels this as deeply as she feels her own pulse. For eight years, she and her son, Eliow, now 12, have been separated by a civil war in Sudan, as well as by poverty and government red tape.

On a concrete court surrounded by yellow clover and a row of freight trailers, Rick McDonald spun a weathered leather ball in his lanky fingers. "You ready, Shooter?" he asked.

Fifteen years ago, when a wind-driven wildfire spread to within a block of his home, Chuck Hafner knew he'd gotten lucky. The 74-year-old retired school principal watched the 1991 wildfire – part of what became known locally as "Firestorm '91" – sweep through the Ponderosa neighborhood south of Spokane Valley. Cedar-shingle roofs exploded in flames, fire hopped through stands of pine and fir and a dozen homes were lost there.

SPANGLE – After the rain stopped, tiny Spangle Creek slinked back into its banks like a chastised dog, leaving behind muddy footprints in the trampled grasses and lying low in the marshy creekbed. But the damage was done.

As the music thumped, the boys from East Valley High School – ties carefully knotted, shirts pressed, hair styled just so – casually knocked back another soda and surveyed the dance floor. Josh Werre, 14, and Zackery Kauwe, 19, peered through the crowd of students, searching out the object of Kauwe's intentions, a demure and neatly dressed classmate. Kauwe, a developmentally disabled student, had already hit the dance floor multiple times but was itching for another go-round. "Anything you play, he'll dance to it," Werre said, and Kauwe laughed. The Pavilion at Northern Quest Casino, site of Monday's Spring Fling prom for special-needs students and young adults, pulsed with a thick bass as the Baha Men asked, "Who Let the Dogs Out?" The Kalispel Tribe of Indians' Camas Institute sponsored the dance and lunch, providing some 300 students from Spokane Public Schools, East Valley and other districts with a break from the school day.

One morning in January, a former mechanic named Steve Winward walked into the offices of Spokane Mental Health, laid his left arm on the receptionist's desk, and drew a shaving razor across the blue veins of his wrist. ■ Then he asked the horrified receptionist: "Now do you think I'm serious?" The 54-year-old mechanic had spent months filling out forms, making appointments and undergoing counseling for severe depression. On Jan. 20, with his medical bills piling up and his frustration with public mental health care piqued, Winward retreated from the office to his car, blood running down his forearms, and repeatedly slashed his wrists as police broke his car windows and restrained him.