In brief: NIC finalist offered job in Arizona
One of two finalists for the North Idaho College presidency has been offered a job as president of a northern Arizona community college.
Leah L. Bornstein, the chief executive officer of Colorado Mountain College’s Summit campus, said she hasn’t decided if she’ll accept Coconino Community College’s offer but hopes to within the next two days.
Should Bornstein accept, interim NIC president Priscilla Bell will be the only finalist for the NIC job.
The college board decided after another finalist dropped out that either Bell or Bornstein will get the job or the search will start over, trustee Christie Wood said.
Bell has been the college’s interim president since Michael Burke left in late February for a job as president of San Jose City College.
Longmire, Wash.
Copter retrieves body of lost hiker
A missing hiker from Minnesota was found dead Tuesday in a rugged area in the southwest corner of Mount Rainier National Park, a park spokesman said.
The body of Jeff Graves, 47, of Minneapolis, was first spotted by a helicopter Tuesday afternoon and park spokesman Kevin Bacher said ground crews confirmed the hiker was dead.
Graves had been the object of a three-day search since he was reported overdue from a planned day hike on Saturday.
The body was retrieved by helicopter Tuesday evening and was in the custody of the Pierce County medical examiner, Bacher said.
Graves’ body was found just north of the Eagle Peak trail in a very steep area at the base of some cliffs, Bacher said.
Graves was hiking the trail when he was last seen Saturday morning and his body was found roughly halfway up the route.
Pullman
Police searching for missing teen
Pullman police are looking for a 17-year-old boy who has been missing since early Saturday.
Dustin J. McGinnis was last seen at about 1 a.m. that morning after storming out of his house, police Chief Ted Weatherly said. McGinnis’ parents told authorities he has never been missing this long.
“Very seldom do you have a family that says to you, ‘This is very out of character, and we think there’s something wrong,’ ” Weatherly said.
Police have classified the case as a missing/runaway person, he said.
McGinnis is white, 5-foot-8, weighs about 150 pounds, has brown eyes, short sandy-blond hair and a faint mustache, according to a news release. He was last seen wearing a black baseball cap, blue jeans and a white T-shirt with a picture of Benjamin Franklin dressed as a bank robber.
Spokane County
Thieves steal wire, power tools
Metal thieves have struck again, stealing about $3,000 in copper wire and $5,000 in power tools from an Inland Power and Light storage yard last week.
Spokane County sheriff’s deputies believe the burglars cut razor wire off the perimeter fence at 10110 W. Hallett Road, just south of Spokane International Airport, according to a sheriff’s news release. Once inside, the crooks stole 810 feet of copper wire and tools from several Mountain Power Construction Co. trucks.
“It seems to be happening more and more regularly as the metal prices keep rising,” Inland Power spokesman Dan Villalobos said.
Employees guessed the theft happened between June 8 and 12, though they didn’t notice some of their tools were missing until showing up at job sites, the release stated.
Deputies recovered some stolen items and will process them for fingerprints, according to the release.
Restored bombers to be on display
Three examples of flying history will be in the sky over the Inland Northwest and on the ground at Spokane International Airport next week.
A restored B-17, B-24 and B-25 will fly into Spokane on Monday around noon, landing at XN Air, at the airport’s general aviation side, 8125 W. Pilot Dr. The planes will be on display through 5 p.m. Monday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, with some 30-minute flights in the morning and afternoon.
The planes belong to the Collings Foundation, which restores historic planes and supports its work in part with tickets to tour the planes on the ground or take the flights.
Ground tour tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children under 12.
Reservations for the flights range between $325 and $425, depending on the plane, and are tax deductible.
Information on flight reservations is available at (800) 568-8924.
Pocatello, Idaho
Crews contain 1,600-acre fire
About 80 firefighters contained the Howard fire near this southeastern Idaho city at noon on Tuesday, but not before winds spread the flames to about 1,600 acres.
Caribou National Forest officials said a fire of that size in mid-June likely means that fire season in eastern Idaho is ahead of schedule, as weak winter snows and little spring rain put the state into another year of drought.
“That’s a pretty good sized one, this time a year,” said Joanna Thompson, a spokeswoman.
“The forest areas are about eight weeks ahead of schedule, and rangeland is four weeks ahead of schedule, in terms of fuel moisture in the plants.”
No cause of the blaze has been determined, but officials say it wasn’t the result of a lightning strike.
No structures burned in the Howard fire, which started Sunday.
From staff and wire reports