Rob McDonald

The Meals on Wheels program serving Spokane is facing its worst volunteer crisis in 10 years. The nonprofit agency is seeing a sharp falloff in volunteers, and that's leaving unfilled routes that must then be covered by paid staff, said Cheri Mataya-Muncton, executive director of the Mid-City Meals on Wheels program.

Like a hungry T-rex nudging its fallen prey, the jaws of an excavator brushed a pile of debris that had been a mason-block wall at Lincoln Heights Elementary School. This week, crews began the demolition phase of replacing three elementary schools for Spokane Public Schools.Excavators – machines with long, strong mechanical arms perched on tank-line treads – began poking and prying holes Monday in Lincoln Heights and Ridgeview elementary schools. Demolition is to begin today at Lidgerwood.

One moment 17-year-old Logan Olson was laughing and screaming with her dad, brothers and cousins in a Post Falls haunted house on Halloween 2001. The next moment, she collapsed, her heart silent. An emergency worker began CPR until an ambulance arrived. Olson was born with a congenital heart condition. She had her first open heart surgery when she was 6 days old and had six heart surgeries by the time she was 16.

On Wednesday, three men in sunglasses and ball caps with cell-phone-size doohickeys hanging off their necks retraced a route in Manito Park laid out days earlier by an Eastern Washington University professor. By 11 a.m., they had already circled the duck pond and used global-satellite technology and hand-held Global Positioning System units to capture the pond's coordinates by tapping a button every several steps.

Spokane's urban Indian population can soon choose to be buried in an all-nations Indian cemetery that will be ready in January. The All Nations New Beginning cemetery is the first official burial site of its kind in Spokane – in modern times of course. There was a time when all the land in Spokane was occupied and used solely by American Indians in pre-settler history.

Thirteen-year-old Dawn Nielsen walked into Rogers High School with her younger brother and five other fidgeting youths, ages 5 to 10, from her neighborhood. Like old pros, they politely marched in at 11:54 a.m. Thursday and sat on yellow chairs around a circular lunchroom table. Then they waited for the cafeteria worker to get the afternoon meal ready.

Moving men in large trucks began carting away packed boxes, plastic chairs and countless desks Tuesday morning as Spokane Public Schools' largest move in history officially began. Crews cleared three elementary schools while another set of workers began the job of removing multiple portable buildings from each of the three sites.

The newest Spokane school board member, Garret Daggett, considered professional basketball after a standout college career in Pennsylvania. But duty called.

One student left his teacher's room, flopped on the grass and yelled, "It's summer!" Another boy leaped into the air with his report card in hand.

A bad year for Ferris High School ended even worse when vandals attacked the library during the last week of school. Someone smashed at least two library computers, smeared ink on the floor and printed an insult directed at Ferris on the wall in the school library.

A Spokane woman who is calling for the resignation of Spokane Public Schools superintendent Brian Benzel has triggered the the third federal investigation this year into discrimination in the district. Virla Spencer received notice this week that the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has agreed to look further into her complaints alleging racial discrimination.

Ice cream sales went up like the temperature this spring at Ferris High School's DECA store, which came as good news for after-school activities that rely on money from those sales. But no one expects those sales to last.

You've heard of Ham on Regal. Now there's "Spam on Fifth" this Friday.

Deborah Nutt describes herself as a born perfectionist. She'll stay up as late as needed to get something just right, a trait enhanced by her interior design degree from Spokane Falls Community College.