John Craig

The Lincoln County Courthouse will have a "grand reopening" Friday, one day before the anniversary of the Dec. 21, 1995, fire that gutted the building. County employees will give tours of the renovated courthouse after a public ceremony at 1 p.m.

The "Mother Teresa" of U.S. Highway 395, Loon Lake's Teresa Waunch, is shifting her traffic-safety sights from the federal government to the state Legislature. She's called a public meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Loon Lake Elementary School to generate support as her Project 395 citizens group gets ready to go to Olympia in January.

Cabin owners are protesting a proposed boat ramp that would make Bead Lake in Pend Oreille County accessible to the public. Forest Service photo

Nickelson

Hazen & Jaeger Funeral Home in Spokane has been fined the state maximum of $4,000 for a mix-up that was discovered a year ago when mourners looked into a casket and found the wrong man. Glenn Gossman had told his family he wanted to be cremated, but he wound up in George Thiele's clothing and casket. Thiele was cremated. Thiele was a pilot who "definitely didn't want to be cremated," his brother, Richard, said at the time. "If you're flying an airplane, the worst fear you've got is fire. You don't want any part of that." Mourners had to be turned away at the cemetery when Thiele's graveside service was canceled at the last minute while Hazen & Jaeger searched for his remains. The service never was rescheduled.

1. Jacobsen 2. Local officials are concerned about several large billboards along Highway 2. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

In a claim seeking $781,787, Pend Oreille County Clerk Winnie Sundseth accuses the county of harassing her with malicious prosecution and improper political pressure. Acting without an attorney, Sundseth and her husband, Mitch, are seeking $31,787 for their legal bills in fighting off a charge that she harbored a fugitive in her office. They also want $750,000 for numerous alleged stress-related medical problems, including her arthritis and his enlarged spleen.

(From For the Record, December 6, 1996:) Convicted burglar Robert L. Roose is appealing his sentence after surviving a shootout with police in Colville. A Tuesday headline mistakenly identified Roose's lawyer as the burglar.

Lincoln County commissioners will conduct their business meeting at the county courthouse Monday at 9 a.m. for the first time since the building burned last December. Commissioners and Prosecutor Ron Shepherd moved into the renovated courthouse this week. Other departments are to begin moving in next week, but the schedule is uncertain because construction is still in progress.

With 3 to 5 feet of snow on the slopes, Friday should have been a banner day for the 49 Degrees North ski resort - except for the power outage that shut down the lifts. "It could have easily been a $50,000 day and, to the little guys like us, it kind of hurts," resort owner John Eminger said. "But, if you're in the ski business, you learn to take the good with the bad. I had a great weekend last weekend."

Democrats don't often get to call Republicans spendthrifts, but it's happening in Lincoln County, where commissioners doubled their pay in April and didn't tell the public for months. "In Lincoln County, it's kind of a one-party system, and this is what happens when you shut the other party out of the system," said Brad Lyons, chairman of the county's anemic Democratic Party.

Cusick High School junior Carisa Haas, 16, answers a question by phone in her satellite-beamed Spanish II class, which includes students from around the nation. Classmates in the foreground are (from left) Amanda Norton, Shawnee Picerel and Amanda Bond. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

Oliver J. Riehart said he didn't torture Pete Swimptkin with a hot poker, but he did strangle the 65-year-old victim. That was enough to land Riehart in prison for 20 years without possibility of parole.

A shooting death that Colville police initially considered a suicide now is being investigated as a possible homicide. Diane E. Parrish, 37, was found dead in her Colville apartment on Nov. 6 by her caretaker.

The head girls' basketball coach at Northwest Christian High School in Spokane resigned after federal authorities found about 300 marijuana plants growing in his barn. Jack M. Clayburn had just begun his first season as head coach when police raided his farm near Cusick, Wash., in Pend Oreille County. He had been an assistant coach since 1990.

James Parker Shield, left, speaks at an election meeting at the Spokane Urban Indian Center. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

The burglar who survived a June 27 shootout with police at a Colville sporting goods store got the maximum 14-1/2-year sentence Friday after an emotion-choked sheriff's deputy told how close he came to being killed. "It's the grace of God that I am standing here today," Stevens County Deputy Dan Spring said, fighting back tears while his wife wept openly. Spring said he was crouching to go through a broken window when Elmer L. Ingram, 21, shot him in the chest from a distance of 7 or 8 feet. The bullet struck Spring's badge and lodged in his bulletproof vest about a half-inch from the top edge of the vest.

Citizens fill Cavanaugh's River Inn in Spokane for a Washington state Gambling Commission hearing on a proposed casino in Airway Heights. Photo by Dan McComb/The Spokesman-Review

A plea bargain in federal court is expected to change the War Bonnet Tavern in Nespelem from a drug-dispensing scourge in the heart of the Colville Indian Reservation to a youth center. War Bonnet owner Glenn W. Grubbs Jr., 42, of Coulee Dam, agreed last week to give the tavern to the federal government as part of his bargain with Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Ohms. Grubbs was one of 19 people arrested on cocaine-distribution charges when the tavern was raided in August. The tavern's closure since the raid has been a "welcome relief," tribal Public Works Director Frank Friedlander said, speaking as a grandparent and civic leader. "I hear people talking on the street and I think they're pretty encouraged by the whole thing," Friedlander said. He said the War Bonnet has been a "social melting pot for Nespelem," where almost everyone socialized and teenagers hung around outside the door. But tribal members increasingly shun alcohol and want to keep it away from their children, Friedlander said. Transfer of the tavern to the Colville Confederated Tribes is part of the sentence attorneys will ask U.S. District Judge Robert Whaley to impose Nov. 17. The plea bargain calls for a six-month sentence. Grubbs may seek work-release, and the government may ask for jail time. In exchange for Grubbs' guilty plea to misdemeanor possession of cocaine, Ohms agreed to drop charges that Grubbs operated a drug-manufacturing establishment, that he conspired to distribute cocaine and that he used his business to promote the crimes. Grubbs, 42, and 18 others were indicted in August on numerous drug-trafficking charges, almost all involving cocaine distribution between September 1994 and May 1996. The

CORRECTION FROM FOR THE RECORD (Saturday, November 9, 1996): Correction Spokane County has not withdrawn from the nine-county Martin Hall regional juvenile detention center project. A headline in Friday's edition implied otherwise.

Mainstream Republicans scored a resounding victory Tuesday in their battle against religious conservatives for control of the party in Stevens County. Among 42 precinct committee officer candidates on the mainstream slate, 36 were leading their races in final unofficial returns Wednesday, nine were trailing and one was tied.

Unpublished correction: The name of Mukogawa is misspelled in this story. Former congressman Tom Foley chats with a group of Japanese students at Mukogowa Fort Wright Institute on Tuesday about the American political process. Photo by Sandra Bancroft-Billings/The Spokesman-Review

John O. Hamberg will spend nine years in prison for what Pend Oreille County authorities said was one of the worst cases of child abuse they've seen. Officials said Hamberg routinely beat his 11-year-old adopted son and tied him up at night so often the boy lost use of his left hand.

Democratic candidates for two 7th District state representative positions want better education in the future while two Republicans want less government. All of the candidates - Democrats Brad Lyons and Kurt Matter and Republicans Cathy McMorris and Bob Sump - consider themselves penny pinchers.