HEADLINES & HISTORY SINCE 1879 Goldendale, Washington
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2024
Vol. 145 No. 26
$1.00
CITY OF MERCER ISLAND
A BREAK IN THE TONE: This installment of our series of first-hand accounts of fentanyl users has a very positive angle.
Good news on the fentanyl front NAVY OFFICE OF COMMUNITY OUTREACH
FROM GOLDENDALE HIGH SCHOOL TO A COMMANDING OFFICER: Capt. Keith Fahlenkamp now is a commanding officer in the U.S. Navy.
Fahlenkamp a Navy commanding officer ASHLEY CRAIG NAVY OFFICE OF COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Capt. Keith Fahlenkamp, a native of Goldendale, serves the U.S. Navy assigned to Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific at Naval Base Kitsap, homeport of West Coast ballistic-missile and guided-missile submarines. Fahlenkamp graduated from Goldendale High School in 1994. Additionally, Fahlenkamp earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Washington State University in 1999 and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in 2010. The skills and values needed to succeed in the Navy are similar to those found in Goldendale. “I grew up on a ranch,” said Fahlenkamp. “My family has lived in Goldendale longer than Washington has been a state. Ranching taught me the value
of hard work and responsibility. Those characteristics have transferred well into the Navy.” Fahlenkamp joined the Navy 26 years ago. Today, Fahlenkamp serves as a commanding officer. “As an engineer, I joined the Navy because I wanted to do something more adventurous than sit at a desk,” said Fahlenkamp. “I also wanted to serve my country.” Known as America’s “Apex Predators,” the Navy’s submarine force operates a large fleet of technically advanced vessels. These submarines are capable of conducting rapid defensive and offensive operations around the world, in furtherance of U.S. national security. A major component of that maritime security is homeported at Naval Base Kitsap, in Washington. There are three basic types of submarines: fast-attack subma-
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LOU MARZELES EDITOR We’ve run a lot stories in our fentanyl series—this marks the ninth—and all of them have been pretty grim. This one breaks that pattern: it’s a shout-out to victory over bondage to the insidious drug. It’s about Shawna, a remarkable 23-year-old Native American woman. (That’s not her real name; she spoke with us on condition of anonymity due to some of her past experiences.) Shawna’s fentanyl dark night of the soul was about nine months ago when she hit rock bottom. “I wish there were a term for a bottom worse than ‘rock,’” she states. “It was the most physically and emotionally agonizing time of my life.” She doesn’t want the details in this story. “We’ve followed all The Sentinel’s stories on the fentanyl crisis,” she says. “They caught the pain of using that drug in a lot of detail. We can leave it at that.” Instead Shawna wants to focus on how she got out—with all indications that the recovery is
RODGER NICHOLS
LAURIE ARCHBALD-PANNONE THECONVERSATION.COM Americans age 60 and older lost more than $3 billion to scammers in 2023, according to the FBI. To put that whopping figure in context, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour recently made news as the first concert tour ever to earn $1 billion. As a geriatrician—a doctor who cares for people over 65 years of age – I believe elder fraud has reached an epidemic scale. My patients often tell me about being scammed.
The consequences can be worse than just losing money. The experience is traumatic for many, with some victims feeling deep shame and self-doubt in the aftermath. This can interfere with their relationships, erode their trust in others and harm their mental and physical health. Teaching older Americans how to identify and avoid fraud – and how to report such crimes – could go some way to mitigating the impact of this modern epidemic. Elder fraud is on the rise A recent FBI report shows just
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I caused my family and friends.” Her doctors (they’ve asked that their identities be revealed in an upcoming story) encouraged her to express that very fear to her mother, pointing out the very capacity to feel regret was a sign of healthy accountability, so long as it didn’t slide down to shame. “So I told my mom everything,” Shawna recalls. “She told me, ‘There’s no way I could love you less because of your mistakes.’ She’s really stood by me.” Journaling This was a tough one, Shawna recalls. “Journaling felt strange to me, like, ‘Why am I doing this? It feels like a diary, and I don’t like doing that kind of thing.’” She was advised journaling didn’t necessarily mean writing. “It could be drawing, making symbols, anything that was meaningful to me,” she says. “Once I discovered that, I was all over it.” She found ways to capture her inner state, occasionally by writing but mostly by filling pages with symbols and drawings that resonated with her. “The point is to keep your pencil
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New court ruling cited as obstacle to sending prisoners to NORCOR FOR THE SENTINEL
Elder fraud makes more money than Taylor Swift
going to last. “I licked this thing with the help of my mom and my great doctors,” she says. “I want to tell that story.” Accountability The first step, Shawna informs us, is accountability—but without guilt. “Guilt is the killer,” she reveals. “If you start to feel guilty and shameful, you’ve already lost. You’ll go right back to the drug.” And still, she said, there had to be some way to take stock of her condition honestly and without judgment. “One thing that one of my doctors told me was, ‘You’re not your mistakes. You need to see a difference between your past bad choices and where you go from here.’ That was huge for me, to realize my mistakes don’t define who I am. And if I realize that, I can separate the mistakes from who I know I am. They don’t get to run my life.” The biggest challenge in this step was getting past the guilt. “That still hung around,” she says. “I could see a difference between what I did and who am I, but then I’d remember the pain
There were only a few tidbits on the jail situation coming out of the June 18 Klickitat County Commissioner meeting. Just half of the 12 people who gave opinions during the public comment period mentioned the jail, and one of those was Sheriff Bob Songer. In a 90-second statement, he focused on two issues. In the first, he said, “I understand the courts have handed down a decision that all inmates will make personal appearances in court.” He then said that if the County contracted with NORCOR, it would have to follow this rule. “You’re talking a lot of manpower to transport prisoners back and forth on a daily basis,” he said. The change he was citing was Washington State Supreme Court Order NO. 25700-A-1571, issued on June 7, Rule ALJ-15: (a) All participants shall physically appear for court proceedings unless a statute, court rule, or order of the court permits a remote appearance or appearance through counsel. (b) Any participant permitted to remotely appear or appear through counsel may be required to physically appear for good cause shown. (c) Any participant required to physically appear may be permitted to remotely appear or appear through counsel at the discretion of the court. The rule took effect immediately. The impetus for the rule
change came from a report by the BJA Remote Proceedings Work Group, which reasoned that, “If the statewide rule does not adopt a default for in-person, a participant may attempt to appear remotely in a court that does not have remote appearances. For example: petitioner requests vehicle impound hearing and decides to appear remotely at a court that does not have the capacity to conduct an evidentiary hearing remotely.” The report summarized the impact of the rule this way: “The court maintains the discretion to allow remote appearances or to require someone to appear in-person where there is good cause to do so.” This means the rule allows some leeway at the court’s discretion on requisite in-person appearances. Songer’s second input was to repeat a request that the county conduct a popular vote on the jail issue. This time, he suggested just two options: leave the jail in control of the sheriff or turn it over to a new Department of Corrections. Klickitat County cannot put an initiative on a local ballot because it is not a charter county. A decision has been requested from the County prosecuting attorney on whether or not the County can put a matter not related to a revenue source or enumerated in RCWs on a ballot in either an advisory or obligatory manner. The jail issue also surfaced later in the meeting during an update from HR Director Robb Van
Cleave. He identified the expert coming to review the Klickitat County Jail and its systems as Island County Chief Jail Administrator Jose Briones. During the JAILCON24 West training conference in Chandler, Arizona, on June 10 through 12, Briones was awarded the Detention Administrator of the Year Award from the National Institute of Jail Operations. Van Cleave said Briones was planning to start his jail examination the following day and that he would likely be accompanied by one or two risk managers from the insurance pool. Van Cleave told commissioners that he’d been spreading the word about the county’s need for an interim jail manager, starting January 1, asking contacts in both Oregon and Washington to post the job openings to the appropriate channels. He planned to introduce a bare-bones resolution establishing the new Department of Corrections at the June 25 meeting. “It won’t have all the pieces that we normally put together,” he said. “The resolution will just be to create. It won’t have an org chart, it won’t have a budget, but it will actually start the process, and then we’ll populate it as we go.” In other issues of interest, Commissioner Dan Christopher reported the latest on the new state law requiring all counties to have a separate coroner’s office by January 1, 2025. Counties under 40,000 population have been exempt from that requirement in the past, allowing the
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