Rachel Alexander: Favorite stories of 2015

2015 marked my first full year at The Spokesman-Review after moving here from Walla Walla.

I remain amazed and humbled by the number of people who have entrusted me with some portion of their story - World War II veterans, prisoners seeking redemption on fire lines, third-generation cops, nurses who fly in helicopters.

My favorite stories from this year are listed chronologically below.

1. New book tells story of 1937 double homicide, and the boy who survived

Larry Kuntz still has the latch he used to escape from a grain elevator in Wheat Basin, Montana, on the worst night of his life.

He was just 5 years old on a cold night in 1937 when a local wheat farmer shot both his parents in the family’s 1930 Chevrolet, then pistol-whipped him and left him for dead. The next morning he awoke in the back seat dazed and covered in blood.

Early in the year, local authors Tim and Beck Hattenberg contacted the newsroom about a book they had written, recounting the story of Larry Kuntz, a longtime Spokane resident who survived the murder of both of his parents.

Thanks to their diligent research, I felt like I already knew Larry before I knocked on his door. He and wife, Janet, were incredibly generous, and the two hours I spent talking to them remain one of my most memorable interviews of the year. He invited me to bring my boyfriend over for lemonade sometime - an offer I still need to take him up on.

2. Eastern State Hospital sanctioned over delayed mental health evaluations

Since last December, Spokane County Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza has found the hospital in contempt of court in 11 cases for failing to evaluate inmates promptly. As of March 6, 39 people jailed on felony charges were waiting for an evaluation at Eastern State. Thirty-one of them had been waiting for more than a week.

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Delays like that keep defendants who may have severe mental health issues in jail. Spokane County Jail has four full-time mental health professionals on staff, but their focus is on stabilizing inmates in crisis, not on longer-term treatment.

“When people with mental illness hit our door, they’re in pretty bad shape. Our goal is to get them stable,” Spokane County Jail Sgt. Tom Hill said.

Mental health was in the news a lot this year, thanks in part to a federal lawsuit filed against Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services for evaluation delays at both state psychiatric hospitals. Since I wrote this, wait times have improved somewhat, but DSHS continues to struggle with hiring enough staff at Eastern State to clear a long backlog.

3. EPA seeks Superfund listing for Freeman grain elevator

Concerns over contamination in Freeman started in 2008, when routine monitoring of the Freeman School District’s well turned up levels of carbon tetrachloride higher than the EPA-allowed threshold for human drinking water. The EPA limit is 5 micrograms (one-millionth of 1 gram) per liter of water; the well water had 7.78 micrograms per liter.

The chemical was first detected in the district well in 2001 but was present at concentrations the EPA considers safe.

Ongoing measurement showed average contamination levels stayed within EPA guidelines for several more years. But by 2012, three measurements showed the carbon tetrachloride levels were too high. That’s when the district took action.

I rarely get the opportunity to make use of my environmental studies degree on the job, and I enjoyed the fast-paced refresher on contamination levels and EPA documents explaining the uses and hazards of various chemicals.

Driving out to the Freeman site was also a dose of nostalgia harkening back to my first reporting job, where I covered Columbia and Garfield counties while based in Walla Walla, and 60-mile drives were a near-daily occurrence.

The EPA announced a decision to list the Freeman site on the Superfund list in September.

4. Officers get enhanced training in mental health, substance abuse issues

The push to train police on mental illness around the country reflects a reality that in many places, law enforcement has become a de facto social services provider.

Officers who volunteer to undergo enhanced CIT have chosen to embrace, or at least accept, that role.

“We deal with a lot more social issues than we do crime sometimes,” Officer Shane Phillips said. “I’m skilled at dealing with guns, dope and warrants. Now we’re getting a lot of calls for mental health.”

Mental health is a very personal topic for me, thanks to my own struggles with depression and anxiety, and a family history of several disorders. As a result, I’m always interested in writing about places where mental illnesses and substance abuse intersect with the criminal justice system.

For this story, I spent about 12 hours sitting in on police department classes, as well as a session at the health district’s methadone clinic. I have a much better picture of the landscape of mental health services available in Spokane as a result.

5. Airway Heights Corrections Center crew finds firefighting rewarding on several levels

The 10-man crew wears red shirts – the only piece of their uniform that sets them apart from other wildland firefighters. They’re one of four inmate fire crews from Airway Heights Corrections Center, trained through a partnership with the Department of Natural Resources.

With fires burning all over Eastern Washington, Heights 43 is in high demand. David Danilson supervises the crew and said they’ve been called to 40 fires this summer: everything from 2-acre brush fires to the massive Carpenter Road Fire in Stevens County.

In late June, they were sent to save homes around the Sunnyvale fire, which broke out in Suncrest Park near Nine Mile Falls.

Paul Felch remembered standing on a balcony of a nearby home, just feet away from fire.

“You could reach out and touch it. The flames were right there,” he said.

I was skeptical when I first heard the Department of Corrections was contracting prison inmates to fight wildfires for less than a dollar an hour. Writing this story showed me the sincere appreciation and drive the men on these crews have for their work, and renewed my admiration for everyone who helped stop our state from burning to the ground this summer.

6. Air ambulance companies grow as rural areas lose specialized services

Helicopters, once the purview of well-equipped urban hospitals, have become an integral part of the medical system, used to expand rural medical access, provide rapid transport for trauma patients and move patients between hospitals to access higher-level care.

In the Inland Northwest, MedStar has grown to five bases across Eastern Washington and one in Montana, all dispatched from their headquarters in Spokane. In 2013, the company flew more than 2,500 patients by helicopter or small airplane and brought in nearly $28 million in revenue, according to tax records.

I somewhat accidentally started a competition between the Inland Northwest’s two air ambulance companies while reporting this, which ultimately meant I got to ride in helicopters for both MedStar and Life Flight while reporting. My fear of flying stayed under control enough that I had a great experience and managed not to throw up on any of the flight nurses or paramedics who were kind enough to give up half their day to talk about their jobs.

7. Police whistleblower complaint raises questions about department’s seizures

An investigation into an apparently illegal seizure of more than $13,000 cash from two suspected drug dealers by a Spokane police detective last year shows tension among police brass over a civil forfeiture unit created under former police Chief Frank Straub.

A whistleblower complaint filed by Lt. Joe Walker last November against his supervisor, Investigations Capt. Eric Olsen, alleges Olsen minimized or covered up the seizure instead of promptly returning the cash, a claim Olsen said is absolutely untrue. A city investigation into the complaint, conducted by independent attorney Thomas McLane, found Olsen did nothing wrong, though it did not rule on whether the search was legal.

This deep dive into a single Spokane police seizure made for a busy pre-Halloween week, and I wrote the finishing touches as my colleagues’ children trick-or-treated around the newsroom. I love stories where a single case like this can help illuminate a broader issue like asset forfeiture, and enjoyed the chance to annotate the nearly 100 page investigative report.

8. Wayne Hendren, Spokane police chief who modernized force, dies at 89

Former Spokane police officer and retired Pend Oreille County Sheriff Tony Bamonte said Hendren worked hard to stamp out corruption, even in small doses. He put an end to officers getting free cigarettes and other handouts.

“He’s the best police chief Spokane’s ever had,” he said. “If he said something, his word was good. He was just as honest as they come.”

With the seemingly non-stop discussion of scandal in Spokane’s police department this fall, I enjoyed a chance to look back at a respected leader of the force and talk to present-day officers who worked with him. Over Christmas, I found out that my grandfather, a former police captain and 30-year veteran of the University of Washington police force, also remembered Hendren by reputation.

9. Two years in, homeless feel targeted by sit-lie law

Teresa Rodriguez was sitting on the sidewalk near Browne Street and Third Avenue in August when she was cited. She had a sign with her but wasn’t displaying it or asking for money, she said.

Rodriguez said she’s sympathetic to business concerns about people being rowdy and making downtown uninviting, and she has no issue with the officers who cited her. But laws like sit-lie make it difficult for homeless people like her to find places to spend time during the day.

“They take all the wood off the benches and leave the metal bars on them” she said. The downtown public library is one of the few public places homeless people can reliably spend time during the day without being told to move, she said.

I love any story where I can talk to the people actually affected by an issue, not just the advocacy groups that work with them. This is one of a handful of stories where I’ve gotten to interview homeless people living in Spokane, and I remain grateful that people who stand to gain nothing from my writing are still willing to talk about their lives.