10 years ago
AP&T’s lost $6K in cash found behind drawer (12/4/2014)
It’s an early Christmas miracle.
An Alaska Power and Telephone employee found $6,000 in missing cash behind a desk drawer on the afternoon of Nov. 26, according to Darren Belisle, AP&T’s power manager for Haines and Skagway.
“The mystery is solved,” Belisle said.
AP&T reported the missing cash the morning of Nov. 13. The money had been missing for nearly two weeks.
Ironically, employees were searching for an instruction booklet on how to change the combination on the business’s door locks when they pulled out the drawer and found the cash bag.
“It fell down kind of behind the drawer and sat on the shelf,” Belisle said. “It was all there. Every penny.”
Staff had searched high and low for the money but hadn’t previously pulled the desk drawer out far enough to find the cash bag. “It made us feel kind of stupid,” Belisle said.
The money is now deposited in the bank, he said.
25 years ago
Tomato thrower gets suspended jail time, service work (12/ 9/1999)
In a sentencing proceeding Tuesday that reverberated years of resentment and community battles, store owner Fred Folletti was sentenced to suspended jail time and a week of community service for throwing tomatoes at a parade float protesting cruise ship pollution.
The incident came during the annual state fair parade in August, in the wake of revelations that a cruise line had routinely dumped pollution in Lynn Canal. A jury trial for Gene Rajala of Haines, who was also charged in the incident, is scheduled for Jan. 4.
Following a plea agreement between his lawyer, Tom Nave, and district attorney Susan McLean, the 40-year-old storekeeper pleaded guilty to a single count of reckless endangerment, a significant reduction of charges he originally faced.
Folletti first had been charged with six counts of reckless endangerment, but those had been amended to more serious ones, three counts of assault and four counts of endangerment, before consolidation last week into a single, lesser charge.
“This case did start out as an assault… We can’t allow people to do this kind of thing,” said magistrate Lana Anthony, in setting the sentence. “The community as a whole needs to know this is not appropriate behavior.”
Folletti’s penalty included 30 days suspended jail time, one year probation, 40 hours community service work and to get an anger management evaluation.
The sentence was harsher than the suspended imposition of sentence sought by his attorney but much softer than McLean’s recommendation, which included 10 days in jail and a fine of $500 or more.
“This is simply violence, and that should be addressed with time to serve in jail,” McLean said.
Folletti was buoyed by a character letter to the court signed by 43 residents – including assemblyman Terry Pardee – that portrayed the shop owner as kind and generous.
“Fred is a jovial, fun-loving, happy and warm person and during (his) sentencing we ask you to take into consideration all the things he does for the community,” the letter said.
In testimony before the court, Folletti and Nave characterized the pelting as an unfortunate venting of frustration against a group of people who helped close the local sawmill, stopped the Windy Craggy mine, worked to stop electrification and road paving near Folletti’s Mud Bay home, and, by their protest, were threatening Folletti’s livelihood in the tourism business.
“This same group… created unbelievable hardships on us,” Folletti said. “I have trouble separating free expression from another attempt by a certain group to impose a negative point of view on the rest of the community.”
Said Nave: “Mr. Folletti identifies (float participant) (Gershon) Cohen and a certain number of people who live out Mud Bay Road as people who have interposed themselves as an obstacle to both his family’s economic health and that of the community.”
But Cohen told the court that other development issues had “absolutely no bearing” on the court case. “We were exercising our freedom of speech, and to combat that, we were attacked… I don’t even want to think about what Mr. Folletti and his friend, how they would have reacted if I would have reacted that way to them and their children.”
Folletri said his actions were “hard to justify” but he said he didn’t feel the float was appropriate at a family parade and only wanted to “mess up” the float so it couldn’t be used again.
He said he wasn’t aiming at anyone in the van. (A teenage girl on the float was hit on the cheek by a tomato.) “I never intended to hit or hurt anyone… It was very inappropriate behavior that won’t happen again.”
McLean said the tomatoes were thrown as hard as a grown man would throw a softball. “This is not what adults or children should expect when they exercise their constitutional rights in a public place. In a lot of ways, this is interference with people’s civil liberties to have to tolerate this kind of behavior.
McLean couldn’t be reached this week to explain the reduction of the charges.
50 years ago
Food stamps for fishermen under new rules (12/12/1974)
Self-employed fishermen may not be eligible for food stamps, Commissioner Fredereick McGinnis, Department of Health and Social Services, said recently, based on a new federal regulation. Seasonal income for fishermen may be counted as income at the time it is earned. Income remaining after that period of time, if any, will be treated as a cash resource. Eligibility for food stamps now will be determined on what the applicant is actually earning after the fishing season.
McGinnis emphasized that it will not be necessary for fishermen now applying for food stamps during the off season to bring or send to the district office all their “cost of doing business” papers.
Fishermen and their families who may be eligible for food stamps should contact their nearest district office of the Division of Family and Children Services.