Kip Hill

When Hugh Smith lifted the bandaged body of Joe Mann from the battlefield near Best, Holland, in September 1944, he didn’t know he was carrying a former high school football rival. “All I knew was that he was the guy that jumped on the hand grenade,” said Smith, known as “Smitty” in the corridors of the Evergreen Fountains retirement home in Spokane Valley where he resides with his wife, Anita.

The six-member Liljenquist clan arrived at Shadle Aquatic Center a half-hour before open swim began Monday afternoon, anticipating the crowds for a day of free swimming. As his older siblings splashed in deeper waters, 3-year-old Marcus bounced in the shallows near his mom, Teresa, who pointed a digital camera in his direction. “He wants to go down the slides and off the diving board, but they won’t let him,” Teresa said as Marcus, goggled and grinning, ran up and embraced her legs.

Though the nation’s top prosecutor said this week that regional offices should determine when federal charges should be filed in drug cases, U.S. District Attorney for Eastern Washington Mike Ormsby demurred Friday when asked how he will respond to the state’s new recreational marijuana laws. “That decision’s really being made at a level that’s higher than my pay grade,” Ormsby told the Greater Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce. “As soon as we have a decision made, it will be rolled out.”

OAKESDALE, Wash. – Dick Schu’s weathered hands grip the controls of his combine, his left on the wheel and his right clutching the gearshift as he slowly descends a hill on his Whitman County farmland. Farther up the hill, his son Ryan drives another harvester. The header is spinning a bit low as dust kicks up from underneath.

The arraignment of former NBA player and Eastern Washington University assistant basketball coach Craig Ehlo was delayed Wednesday to accommodate his treatment at a facility in Massachusetts. Ehlo is facing charges of reckless burning after sheriff’s deputies found him outside his home south of Spokane earlier this month next to a pile of his burning clothes. Ehlo had been involved in an altercation with his wife earlier in the evening and was being held down by family members when police and firefighters arrived, according to court documents.

Craig Ehlo's arraignment on a charge of reckless burning was pushed to Oct. 2 to accommodate medical treatment he is receiving in Massachusetts.

LEWISTON – With car headlights casting their shadows against a wall of the Clearwater River Valley on Nez Perce lands Tuesday night, protesters once again gathered in an attempt to block passage of a truck bearing an oversize load of oil refinery equipment bound for Canada.

LEWISTON – With car headlights casting their shadows against a wall of the Clearwater River Valley on Nez Perce lands Tuesday night, protesters once again gathered in an attempt to block passage of a truck bearing an oversize load of oil refinery equipment bound for Canada. But their protest was swept to the side of the road by police by press time, as the Omega Morgan truck hauling 322 tons of equipment rolled by to a chorus of boos. A similar protest successfully barred the truck’s path for more than four hours Monday night. Tuesday’s gathering attracted about 50 participants just before 10 p.m., some bearing glowsticks to illuminate the pitch-black roadway.

Dennis “Denny” Young fired pottery in a portable kiln at Coeur d’Alene’s Art on the Green festival for 44 years. Known for raku, a Japanese technique employing low firing temperatures, Young cooled his pieces in the traditional way by dumping them from the warm kiln into a trash can full of grasses and sawdust, sending plumes of smoke into the sky. Young died in December, leaving behind partner and student Jeff Harris to carry on the raku process and his children with memories of the early days of the annual celebration on the banks of Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River at North Idaho College.

Don’t expect LaKecia Farmer to pick up the tab on a celebratory toast if she emerges victorious from a three-way race in the Pullman City Council primary Tuesday. “I will celebrate by sleeping,” Farmer, a 20-year-old Washington State University junior and Spokane native, said Friday with a laugh. “I haven’t slept since I started campaigning.”

Former NBA and WSU basketball standout Craig Ehlo appeared in court Friday, where a superior court judge released him on his own recognizance and ordered him not to contact his family.

When Alan Bisson hobbled on crutches into his Spokane Valley Sportscards trading shop following knee surgery in March and discovered his windows broken and collectibles missing, it was immediately apparent the culprit was a regular. “They knew what they wanted, and they got it,” Bisson said.