Homemaker, Seattleite proud of Italian roots

The Seattle Times

May 21, 2006 Sunday
Fourth Edition

“Food to her was the foundation of everything”

Kayla Webley, Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Sandra Dolce Hansen had a lifelong love of all things Italian. For her daughter’s birthday every year, she cooked Italian potato dumplings known as gnocchi. For Christmas, she stuffed hundreds of raviolis to feed the entire family. For Easter, her specialty was ricotta pie.

“Food to her was the foundation of everything,” said her daughter, Loretta Osborne. “It was her delight.”

Mrs. Hansen died in her sleep Tuesday of natural causes, just two days after her 90th birthday.

She spent her birthday with several generations of loved ones, eating cake and ice cream and taking pictures with her grandkids.

Mrs. Hansen was born May 14, 1916, in Seattle. She graduated from Cleveland High School in 1935.
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Immigrants receive help finding their way via bus

The Seattle Times

May 12, 2006 Friday
Fourth Edition

Kayla Webley
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

George Chang was used to going out of his way to help non-English speakers learn about riding the bus. For years he has been helping his parents, friends and other relatives map out the often difficult task of getting from here to there.

But over the past five months, Chang became a bus-rider expert, attending training sessions to learn the ins and outs of every Metro program so that he could help other Chinese-speaking members of his community.

It’s all part of a Metro program designed to boost bus use among non-English speakers. The program targets neighborhoods with high concentrations of foreign-born residents, training bilingual residents to help their neighbors use Metro services.

Chang spoke to community groups, set up booths at community events and answered questions from residents on a toll-free call-in line. He was one of five resident transportation coordinators in the Crossroads neighborhood who together spoke Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese and Cambodian.

“We have had significant growth in residents who are foreign-born,” said Franz Loewenherz, senior transportation planner for the city of Bellevue, which was a partner in the program. “We are trying to help these people understand how to get around.”
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Instilling a lifelong concern for the Earth

The Seattle Times

May 4, 2006 Thursday
Fourth Edition

Kayla Webley
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Her elementary students dubbed her “the recycling fairy.”

With her fairy costume black garbage-bag skirt and shirt, mini-silverware earrings and a spatula wand Marie Hartford makes recycling fun for students at Henry David Thoreau Elementary School in Kirkland.

Hartford established a recycling program for bottles, cans and milk cartons and inspired students to start using and washing reusable lunch trays instead of plastic foam trays.

She and 17 others will be honored by King County Executive Ron Sims today in the fifth annual Earth Heroes at Schools ceremony at the Mercer View Community Center on Mercer Island.

The Earth Heroes program was established in 2001 to honor environmental work by teachers, students, staff members and volunteers at local schools. The goal is to recognize model efforts that can be adopted by other schools and organizations.
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Rubber bands, rockets propel science champs

The Seattle Times

April 29, 2006 Saturday
Fourth Edition

Bothell kids earn national contest berth

Kayla Webley
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Evan Twedt and Sam Berkman, both ninth-graders, twist a rubber band 17-1/2 times before releasing their elastic-powered car down the hallway outside their Canyon Park Junior High School classroom.

In a nearby playfield, seventh-grader Julia Gabriels test-launches her bottle rocket. Powered with pressurized water, it takes off, shooting straight up into the sky. The parachute didn’t open, so it’s back to the drawing board.

And ninth-grader Allen Zhang and eighth-grader Abby Sloan are finding just the right amount of weight to affix to their balloon for the balloon-race competition. In that contest, the last balloon to reach the ceiling wins.

These are just a few of the 18 Canyon Park Junior High students headed to the National Science Olympiad May 19-20 at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind.

The Canyon Park students beat out about 20 other Washington teams at the state competition April 8. Canyon Park of Bothell, along with the Excel home-school program from Vancouver, will represent the state.
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BCC gets approval to offer 4-year degree

The Seattle Times

April 6, 2006 Thursday
Fourth Edition

Kayla Webley
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Bellevue Community College has received the initial go-ahead to begin offering bachelor’s-degree programs in radiation and imaging sciences.

BCC and three other community colleges gained preliminary approval yesterday from the state Board for Community and Technical Colleges to offer four-year degree programs.

The programs were created in response to 2005 state legislation approving development of four pilot-degree programs to focus on high-demand fields at community and technical colleges.

The state board also gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a bachelor of science in nursing program at Olympic College in Bremerton, a bachelor of applied-science-management program at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, and a bachelor of applied science in hospitality-management-program at South Seattle Community College.

The intent is to give more students access to four-year degrees, specifically in programs like BCC’s that are not offered elsewhere in the state.
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Teens get their turn to talk

The Seattle Times

April 1, 2006 Saturday
Fourth Edition

Forum provides chance to express concerns to state leaders - Bellevue

Kayla Webley
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

It’s not often teenagers talk and expect adults to not only listen, but carry out their ideas.

But Bellevue Youth Link’s Youth Involvement Conference held Friday at Meydenbauer Center sought to do just that by giving more than 400 Eastside students a forum to make their voices heard by state and local leaders.

“We are probably some of the most fortunate kids in the U.S. … to have a direct link where we are actually heard by our government,” said Grace Shim, co-president of the Bellevue Youth Council and a senior at Newport High School.

Shim should know Friday was her third conference and she has seen many ideas proposed by teens turn into action, she said.

Take the challenge course and climbing wall at the South Bellevue Community Center or the Crossroads skate park. Or the Teen Café, a coffee shop run for and by students that is in the planning stages.
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Hounded by an obsession

The Seattle Times

March 31, 2006 Friday
Fourth Edition

Beauty and the basset

Kayla Webley
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Before you even reach the front door of Gary and Patti Greene’s home, there’s plenty of evidence that the couple love basset hounds.

There are the signs affixed to the garage, one that reads “Basset Hound Lane” and another that warns visitors the hounds can reach the fence in 2.8 seconds (Can you? it asks). There’s the wreath hanging on the door with miniature basset figurines sitting among flowers.

As soon as you knock on the door, the dogs perch in the window howling and watching for who might arrive.

Once inside, the signs of basset “obsession,” as Gary called it, are everywhere. Pictures, light-switch covers, drawings, posters, figurines and, of course, the three long-eared hounds.

Downstairs in Gary’s office, the pictures and sketches of their pets, both current and former, color the walls.
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Mercer Island to separate its police, fire departments

The Seattle Times

April 15, 2006 Saturday
Fourth Edition

Kayla Webley
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

After 31 years as a combined unit, Mercer Island’s public-safety department will split into separate fire and law-enforcement departments on June 1.

The split coincides with the retirement of longtime Public Safety Director Ron Elsoe.

Police Commander Ed Holmes will serve as the city’s new police chief, and Fire Commander Walt Mauldin will become fire chief. The change is largely administrative, designed to increase efficiency and improve communication, Elsoe said. A new position of deputy fire chief will head up the city’s emergency-management program.

Residents will see no decline in service or additional cost, Elsoe said.

The two departments were combined in 1975 with the goals of increasing efficiency between the two departments and reducing the number of management positions, Mauldin said.
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Transfixed by trilliums

The Seattle Times

April 8, 2006 Saturday
Fourth Edition

Retiree amasses hundreds of flowers in backyard

Kayla Webley
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Ervin Nalos calls his backyard a forest.

With its tall trees, ferns and wildflowers, it is distinct from many suburban backyards and their groomed lawns and flower boxes. His has huckleberries, ferns, towering cedars, spruce and Douglas fir trees with woodpecker holes.

But what really sets Nalos’ backyard apart is the trilliums.

Nalos and his wife, Margaret, have been collecting trilliums since 1964.

Through a friend who worked on housing developments, Nalos would hear about places with trilliums that were about to be bulldozed. He would “rescue” them, he said, with his wheelbarrow and yard tools.
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