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Jacobsen CEO worth his salt

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Ben Jacobsen started making salt in 2011, and it didn’t take long for the former Vancouver resident to land on some important radars.

The New York Times wrote a story about him in 2012. Noted chefs started to use his salt from Oregon waters. And a Williams-Sonoma Inc. partnership sent his business on a fast, ascending trajectory that hasn’t slowed.

Jacobsen, 43, no longer participates in making the white, flaky crystals. And long gone are the days when he’d drive a seawater-loaded truck from the Oregon Coast to Portland for processing into salt. These days, the Hudson’s Bay High School graduate’s focus is marketing, sales, and product development.

For the future, he plans for more of the same, convinced he’s got the world’s best job.

Jacobsen didn’t show signs of becoming a salt maker when he arrived in Vancouver at age 13 from Burlington, Vt., with his family. His father, neurologist Dr. Paul Jacobsen, had accepted work in town. His mother, Jane Jacobsen, would one day be executive director of the Vancouver-based Confluence Project.

Jacobsen spent a year at McLoughlin Middle School before enrolling at Hudson’s Bay High School. There, he’d dabble with bicycles and bike racing.

Perhaps an entrepreneurship seed was planted at the high school when he and two other students set up a bicycle repair business at Hudson’s Bay, said former Hudson’s Bay teacher Jim Jeffers.

“Ben and his friends pursued getting donated tools, and then we’d work on bikes for staff or other students,” Jeffers, now a Vancouver Public Schools instructional technology facilitator, said in an email. “We set it up as a micro business and worked through the budgeting, setup, staffing, etc.”

While entrepreneurship would not bud for more than a decade, the bicycling passion exploded in college. Jacobsen was captain of the University of Washington Cycling Team when it won the national championship. He earned a degree in 1999 in economic geography at UW and then, after a brief sojourn into marketing, he traveled to Denmark to pursue an MBA at Copenhagen Business School.

A lesson outside of class made all the difference. One day his then-girlfriend brought home some pricey sea salt. Jacobsen, aware of their meager student earnings, questioned the purchase.

“She said just try it,” Jacobsen said. “I did and I was blown away.”

After earning his MBA in 2004, Jacobsen worked in software marketing jobs that allowed him to travel the world — and sample salt.

“I was just blown away by how much better it made simple food,” he said. “Whenever I was traveling, I would try and find some salt from that area because it was a nice way to remember that area. It was inexpensive, easily packable. It was something I could have on my eggs in the morning and think back to that time I was in South Africa or Taiwan or wherever.”

Jacobsen, spending more time stateside, soon realized “no one makes great finishing salt.”

“The rest of the world doesn’t use bad salt,” he said. “The reality is, good salt is most definitely more expensive than commodity salt. But commodity salt only came around during the Industrial Revolution in America.”

Not inspired by software, marketing and sales, Jacobsen followed his hunch. Using $1,500 of his own money, he set out in his 2008 Subaru Forester and traveled the Washington and Oregon coasts, searching for perfect saltwater.

He traveled as far north as Neah Bay at the northwest tip of the Lower 48 and he traveled south, sampling the waters of Willapa Bay in Southwest Washington. In all, he tested 20 spots in Washington and Oregon, ruling out most for obvious reasons: too much turbulence or too many sources of freshwater into the seawater or too much runoff from dairy and logging operations.

But at a spot off Whiskey Creek Road, a few miles north of Cape Lookout State Park and a dozen miles inland of Tillamook, Ore., Jacobsen found the spot.

It’s at Netarts Bay, chosen because it’s protected from the crashing ocean surf and, best of all, features high-salinity water that’s filtered through millions of oysters. Jacobsen Salt Co. was started in August 2011.

“An individual oyster filters up to 20 gallons of water a day,” Jacobsen. “So we get this really nice pre-filtered, high-salinity water that reaches us, and we pump it into our facility and start the salt-making process from there.”

The search for the perfect seawater actually took place after Jacobsen figured out how to make great salt consistently, he says. And he did that at a commercial kitchen in Portland. Hauling water to the city was not a sustainable business model, he decided.

With cash flow, money raised through Kickstarter and a round of funding from friends and family, he established the salt-processing facility near Tillamook, Ore. Then, as now, it takes about two weeks to make 7,500 pounds of flake salt. The process could go faster, Jacobsen says, but the product wouldn’t taste as good.

While he didn’t much care for his marketing and sales experience, that background undoubtedly helped the tenacity of pounding on Williams-Sonoma’s door. The efforts earned a place in their product lineup as well as a slick video on the San Francisco-based company’s website.

Jacobsen sought out high-end chefs, urging them to try his product. That effort paid off. Award-winning chef Gabriel Rucker is among the Jacobsen Salt evangelizers.

“Very few plates leave my kitchens without Jacobsen Salt,” said Rucker, chef and owner of Portland restaurants Le Pigeon, Little Bird Bistro and Canard.

“This is salt made in my own backyard,” said Rucker, who has become friends with Jacobsen. “Why wouldn’t I use it?”

New Seasons stakes a claim as Jacobsen’s first official customer. Ryan White, a merchandiser for the Portland-based grocer, encouraged Jacobsen to ship products to every store after Jacobsen participated in its Local Finds fair. The company’s distinctive logo emanated from that process, New Seasons says.

Jacobsen recalled working with a graphic designer for two days with two things in mind: A logo that looked like the company had been around awhile and a logo that had a clean, European aesthetic. Perhaps because of its simplicity, the logo is an eye grabber whether it’s seen from a car on Whiskey Creek Road or on a grocer’s shelf.

At the company’s warehouse and retail store in Southeast Portland, a 5-ounce jar of chili lime salt is $11. A one-pound box of pure kosher sea salt: $9. A boxed, 12-bottle sampler featuring several infused sea salts: $48.

That may be more than some consumers are accustomed to paying for salt, Jacobsen said. But the track record shows enough consumers buy the stuff, find it makes enough of a difference in the taste of food, and come back for more months later.

Jacobsen’s has more than 40 salt flavors, packaged in more than 70 ways. In 2015, it purchased Oregon honey brand Bee Local. Jacobsen’s has also branched into candy.

Jacobsen has a board of directors that includes a major investor, though Jacobsen himself retains a controlling financial interest in the company that he would not divulge. The board also includes Monica Nassif, who founded Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning products, a brand she sold to S.C. Johnson. And Mary Ellen Signer, the longtime CFO and COO at Stumptown Coffee Roasters, has joined Jacobsen as its CFO.

So Jacobsen sees more growth ahead, though he didn’t specify how or where, beyond “hopefully earning more spots on chef counters and on dinner tables across America.”

The Southeast Portland storage and retail building is at least 100 years old. A giant, wood-slat-covered flatbed trailer that once was used to haul oysters from Netarts Bay and is sometimes used as a dining table for big events, is at least as old. Jacobsen, sitting at that table, took note of some more history.

He knows he’s making salt about 50 miles south of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition Salt Works, believed to have been in present-day Cannon Beach.

But he’s more amazed that salt production in Oregon appears to have stopped after the Corps of Discovery packed up and headed east.

“It blows my mind that nobody in Oregon or even the Pacific Northwest made salt commercially before us,” he said.

It’s an oversight Jacobsen believes will benefit his company for years to come.


Cold and flu season adds to measles mayhem

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Is it a cold? Or is it measles?

Clark County’s measles outbreak is presenting challenges to local schools, Clark County Public Health and the county’s medical care system. There’s an added challenge of this outbreak coming during cold and flu season, which is starting to crank up — the last county influenza report clocked flu positivity at a season-high 12.2 percent.

“Some of the early measles symptoms can mimic other infections, so you have to sort out who could potentially have measles and who doesn’t,” said Dr. Eric Chang, Legacy Health medical director for infectious diseases.

Both Legacy Health Salmon Creek and PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center have protocol in place to deal with the outbreak and treat potential measles cases while not infecting other patients.

As part of that protocol right now, PeaceHealth is not allowing visitors who are unvaccinated, children younger than 12, or people with immunodeficiency disorders. Those rules stand until the outbreak is over. Legacy has the same rules, except for immediate family members of the patients, and PeaceHealth can make exceptions to their rules under extreme circumstances.

Legacy is also excluding visitors who present symptoms such as a cough, sore throat, fever and runny and stuffy nose, and if PeaceHealth staff notices any visitors exhibiting those symptoms, they will address that person and investigate that potential sickness.

Christie McDaniel, a registered nurse and the PeaceHealth Medical Group director of ambulatory services, said clinics are very focused on “identifying patients that have been suspected for exposure or they have symptoms.”

The clinics can coordinate a handoff with the hospital, where a patient can be met outside by proper medical staff and assessed for measles. That assessment is fairly quick, and if a person is identified to potentially have measles, they are given a mask to wear and escorted through a private entrance into a negative pressure airflow room, where further treatment and testing can be done.

Hospitals generally recirculate air through their building, said Dr. Jason Hanley, PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center Emergency Department Medical Director. But the negative pressure airflow room pulls air up through the ceiling, and spits it outside, where the virus can’t contaminate anyone else. These rooms are used year-round to deal with patients who might have airborne or droplet transmission infectious diseases, but they’ve seen an uptick in use at PeaceHealth and Legacy during the outbreak.

“We have had parents bring children in who did not have measles to be checked,” said Kelly Love, a Legacy spokesperson. “Awareness is heightened.”

Hospital staffers are posted near entrances, ready to ask incoming patients if their visit is measles-related. Love said that process has been quick and easy because for measles it’s generally going to “be young patients coming in with a parent or an adult coming in with them,” she said. “It takes about three seconds to ascertain that the patient is concerned about measles.”

Public Health has urged people to call ahead to clinics and hospitals for measles-related visits. McDaniel said that’s been happening at clinics, and Hanley said it’s mostly been happening for the emergency department, too, and some of the patients they receive are hand-offs from the clinics. Love said Legacy’s emergency department has generally not received calls directly from patients in this scenario.

“The operators have gotten different phone calls from people concerned with what the symptoms are of measles and they have information,” Love said. “But the operators have not received calls from people saying, ‘I’m about to bring a child in,’ and that’s likely more the nature of what an (emergency department) represents in the community, which is emergency care and that they just bring the patient in.”

Both hospitals frequently coordinate with Public Health on suspected cases. They also both have measles signage posted. Hanley said staff is being extra thorough about asking patients to visit for assessments, instead of just relying on phone calls to investigate potential measles cases.

“The majority of patients don’t have measles, but it’s so difficult for parents to make that determination,” Hanley said. “Usually pediatric nurses and family practitioner nurses, over the phone, are excellent about getting a feeling of sick versus not sick, but when the consequences of spreading measles to the community is so great we don’t want to miss any cases at all. Everyone is airing on the side of caution.”

Board-games-for-grownups outings get the new year started

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Today’s sophisticated gamers tend to roll their eyes at Monopoly, the classic exercise in random, dice-driven ups and downs in the world of real estate. Monopoly must have been designed to accustom players to boredom and complacency, they figure.

“It teaches you that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” said Ryan Garringer, the general manager at Bat Cave Games in east Vancouver. “It does that very well.”

Want to try a more realistic, less random economic challenge while still having fun with friends? Garringer suggests a board game called Viticulture. It’s set in historical Tuscany, Italy, where you try to develop the greatest winery of them all by managing your land, facilities, crops, workers and customers. What you can’t manage are the changing seasons, which affect your bottom line.

Garringer has lots of recommendations about contemporary board games. The lifelong gamer said he now spends less time playing old favorites than researching new arrivals in order to figure out what to stock and recommend to his increasingly choosy customers.

There’s certainly no shortage of options. Recent media buzz has hailed a new Golden Age of board gaming. “Thousands of ‘designer’ board games are coming out every year. There is a real explosion in the board game industry,” said Gabe Elliott, a gaming community booster and industry watcher who lives in Washougal.

Garringer said he remembers feeling welcome to hang out and play games with friends at Bat Cave, Vancouver’s oldest and gaming shop, when he was boy. Now he works there and strives to ensure that Bat Cave makes a point of staying “very community-oriented. We want to make sure there’s the same availability as when we were kids.”

So Bat Cave hosts free, open board gaming at 5 p.m. Saturday nights; you can buy a game there or bring your own to share. (If you’re already a dedicated gamer, you probably already knew that Bat Cave also hosts an all-ages Pokemon league, frequent Dungeons & Dragons sessions, and many Magic: The Gathering gatherings, sometimes for a fee.)

Check the accompanying busy schedule for a rundown of many game shops and volunteer venues that host free board game nights. Newbies are always welcome; experienced and friendly gamers are happy to gauge your interest and teach you something you never imagined before.

In a game called Shakespeare, you race to put on a play that’ll please the queen. In Dice Hospital, you roll those bones and build a reputation for excellence by caring for as many patients as possible. In Cosmic Encounter, you compete to spread your civilization across the whole galaxy.

“We sit around a table and it’s friendly, and then you get to go places and do things you never knew existed,” Elliott said.

Any stigma about following your childhood gaming devotion into adulthood is long gone, Garringer added. The people who show up for game nights are all ages, all types, all interests. Some are addicted to gaming itself; others are more interested in making friends and eating pizza.

“Every month, it’s two-thirds regulars and one-third people who are brand new who are looking to do something different and meet people,” Elliot said about the second-Friday game night he hosts at Manahouse Church (formerly City Bible and the Mountain View Ice Arena), which The Columbian attended in January.

Powered by people

The biggest surprise for this newbie: nothing electronic was beeping, flashing or demanding a password to proceed. Maybe there’s overlap between board and video or online gaming, but this board game night was strictly people-powered and socially minded.

“I used to host them myself” at college, said Kristina Moses, who graduated from San Francisco State University and moved to Vancouver just before Christmas. Her top social priority as a newcomer was attending local game nights, she said, because “It’s the best way to find friends.”

“I’m here because my husband will not play games,” Nancy Jennings said. “When my 11-year-old grandson visits, we can play games for three days straight.” Jennings has been attending second-Friday board game night for about six months now; on Jan. 11 she greeted new friends and settled into Glass Road, another historical resource-management game, which lands you in 15th century Germany and tasks you with developing your glass-making business.

Elliott, the host, said he was that rare kid who grew up craving more together time than his family could afford. “I loved playing with my family, and so many new games were coming out, I just wanted to play all the time. My family didn’t want to play all the time,” he said. So he went hunting for fellow gamers, and found them easily. First he discovered the long-running first-Friday board game night at Vancouver’s First Evangelical Church, which is still going strong after 30 years.

“There were 30 people playing games I’d never heard of,” he said, and it felt like coming home. Eventually Elliot launched his own second-Friday night about three years ago; meanwhile his friend Jacob Smith launched an every-Tuesday game night “in my spare bedroom,” Smith said, that quickly graduated to East Park Church. Smith said he’s now looking for dollars and real estate to launch a permanent gaming cafe in Vancouver that’s already named The Tabletop Tortoise.

“I’m the father of five kids,” Elliot said. “As a father you have more self-awareness, you see your kids’ behavior with their phones all the time and you think, that’s me sometimes. Something has to happen to get the kids off this track. There has to be something we can do together.”

That even extends to date night with his wife, he added. “Our date nights are board game nights at home,” he said. “When it’s gaming for three hours, instead of a movie — I’ll take that every time.”

Ironically, Garringer of Bat Cave suggested the opposite angle: “You can get away from your family on a Friday night, but you don’t have to hang out at a bar. It’s so much healthier.”

Strategy and savvy

One table over from Glass Road, a group of newbies was poring over a simpler game called Ticket To Ride. That’s not a Beatles game — it involves building railways across the United States. Another table over, a bunch of experienced gamers were plotting their escape from a prison via the elusive Room 25. Room 25 is a different sort of game — it’s really about people savvy — trust, cooperation and betrayal — as you negotiate a maze with two secret turncoats in your midst.

“It’s more of a social game than a strategy game,” Elliot said. Games that foreground the social experience do exist, and that’s good news for people who love games but aren’t natural-born captains of industry or wartime commanders.

But nine-year-old Jamison Maguire is natural-born captain of industry and wartime commander. He prevailed over a group of adult competitors, including his gamer dad, Christopher, at something called Seven Wonders, which involves either building one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — or seizing your neighbor’s Wonder through military might.

Exercising his big brain is definitely what Maguire likes about gaming, he said. “I like not knowing who’s going to win and what’s going to happen.”

Games for grown-ups

Many game nights are aimed at youthful superfans of cult classics such as Pokemon, Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. Check your favorite game shop or library branch for those schedules. You won’t be disappointed.

The following social board-game nights are intended more for adults and families. Games and snacks are usually provided, but it’s nice to bring your own, too.

•  Bat Cave Games: 5 p.m. every Saturday, 13215 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., No. C9, Vancouver.

•  Camas Public Library: 6:30 p.m., usually the second Friday of the month but sometimes the third, 625 N.E. Fourth Ave., Camas.

 Dice Age Games: 6 p.m. every Friday (with beer on tap) and noon every Sunday, 5107 E. Fourth Plain Blvd., No. 105, Vancouver.

• East Park Church: 6 p.m. every Tuesday, at 15815 N.E. 18th St., Vancouver.

 First Evangelical Church Vancouver: 7 p.m. first Friday of the month, 4120 N.E. St. Johns Road, Vancouver.

 Mannahouse Church (formerly City Bible/Mountain View Ice Rink): 7 p.m. second Friday of the month, 14311 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver.

•  Ridgefield Public Library: Mahjong, 1 to 3 p.m. every Thursday, 210 N. Main Ave., Ridgefield.

•  Vancouver Church: 7 p.m., third Friday of the month, 3300 N.E. 78th St., Hazel Dell.

•  Vancouver Community Library: Vancouver Chess Club, 4 p.m. every Monday, 901 C. St., Vancouver.

•  Washougal Community Library: 2 to 4 p.m. every Saturday, 1661 C St.

Finding Austin Timpe: Inadequate treatment, incarceration leave ill young man reeling

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Friends made lunches and dinners for Vancouver’s Heidi and Rodger O’Connor. It was the winter of 2017, and the couple’s son, 18-year-old Austin Timpe, was missing.

They started around 7 a.m. every day, making coffee and sorting through messages and tips they received. Rodger O’Connor, Timpe’s stepfather, made spreadsheets to organize everything. Timpe’s mother contacted news outlets and the FBI during the nearly weeklong search for her son.

Rodger O’Connor, 53, even attempted to drive to the Mount Vernon area, where Timpe had gone missing. He stopped short in Olympia, realizing, as Heidi O’Connor said, that “this is like looking for a needle in a haystack.” During that time, the couple pulled 14-hour days assisting in the search for their son.

“As the days keep going, and you have no information, you start to lose hope,” said Heidi O’Connor, 50.

Timpe wasn’t a runaway, and he wasn’t kidnapped. Just before he went missing, he had been placed under the care of the state. He was in a car crash in spring 2016, and the brain trauma he suffered led to him being diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Timpe is now 19, and since his diagnosis, he and his mother have traversed a legal and medical system they feel has failed in its care for Timpe and the seriously mentally ill in Washington. Timpe has been hospitalized seven times and sent to jail three times.

Timpe went missing after he was abruptly released, against Heidi O’Connor’s wishes, from Skagit Valley Hospital Mental Health Center to the streets without any way back to Clark County, she said. He had been involuntarily committed Dec. 22, 2017, because his mental health was deteriorating.

The day after being admitted to the facility, a doctor was already pushing for Timpe’s release, said O’Connor, who has power of attorney over her son. She said the facility didn’t take Timpe’s mental illness seriously, even though he said his parents were running a satanic cult, and had put a chip in his brain so the CIA could track him.

He was released Jan. 2, 2018, with a dying cellphone, no charger, no money and no competence to make the nearly six-hour trip back home alone, O’Connor said.

Timpe wandered for six days, eating out of trash cans and sleeping on the street and in shelters. He eventually returned to Clark County after someone with Seattle Gospel Mission bought him a train ticket home, his mother said. Rodger O’Connor picked up Timpe at Share House in Vancouver, and Timpe asked, “Hey Dad, what are you doing here?”

He was bewildered, Heidi O’Connor said of her son. He thought his parents had abandoned him. But it’s the state’s troubling mental health care system that’s left her and her son feeling abandoned, she said.

As O’Connor has tried to get Timpe care, he’s experienced a system of incarceration and hospitalization that seems to routinely spit him out before he can get better.

While Skagit represents a low for Timpe, O’Connor said her son has also been prescribed medication he’s allergic to, shipped to other counties because Clark County didn’t have a bed for him and released from care without receiving any medication. He spent the better part of a year of his life either hospitalized or incarcerated.

“The hospitals really don’t help that much, except to maybe try to stabilize the person. After the first 10 or 11 days, all they are doing is just watching the person, and then they send them home. It’s not like taking a pain pill, where it just works immediately. It takes weeks, months to build up, get better and adjust,” O’Connor said.

“It’s given me low self-esteem,” Timpe added. “I have no new friends. Being sent to jail is really depressing.”

O’Connor has filed a complaint against the doctor who was caring for her son at the Skagit facility, and it was referred to the Department of Health for investigation. The family is also working with an attorney.

Timpe now participates in the local Program of Assertive Community Treatment, which helps him recover and plan for the future. But O’Connor said her son needs a more comprehensive program, such as a live-in situation where Timpe can be housed, which isn’t currently available in Clark County.

“He wants friends. He wants a job. It needs to be full scale,” O’Connor said. “Because right now, I’m it for his support 24/7. That takes a lot out of the parent or the caregiver, but also that doesn’t build them back up to where they can be successful.”

An in-depth look at MOMI: Mothers of the Mentally Ill

Mothers Fight for Mentally Ill: Vancouver woman’s experiences with her bipolar son lead her to form group, work with Inslee for change

Finding Austin Timpe: Inadequate treatment, incarceration leave ill young man reeling

Vicious Cycle: Mom’s efforts to help hampered at every turn

Coming Monday: Dealing with having a child in Western State Mental Hospital

Mental Health Statistics

• In 2016, there were an estimated 10.4 million adults age 18 or older in the United States with serious mental illness, according to statistics from the National Institute on Mental Health. This number represented 4.2 percent of all U.S. adults.

• Only about half of those with serious mental illness ages 18 to 25 received treatment in 2016, according to statistics from the National Institute on Mental Health.

• People with serious mental illnesses have a  10 to 25-year life expectancy reduction, according to stats from the World Health Organization. A vast majority of those deaths are from cardiovascular, respiratory and infectious diseases, diabetes and hypertension, as well as suicide. People with serious mental illnesses are less likely to receive good health and social care, according to WHO.

• Mortality rates among people with schizophrenia is 2 to 2.5 times higher than the general population, according to WHO. People with bipolar mood disorders have high mortality rates ranging from 35 percent higher to twice as high as the general population.

• According to a 2014 report from the Treatment Advocacy Center, about 20% of inmates in jails and 15% of inmates in state prisons have a serious mental illness.

• That would have meant there were about 356,000 inmates with serious mental illness in jails and state prisons. The number is expected to have risen since, according to the Advocacy Center.

• The average bed rate at Western State Hospital is $790 a day, while enhanced service facilities cost $425 per day and adult family homes just $95, according to the Seattle Times.

• 190,078 people in Washington have serious bipolar disorder and/or schizophrenia. That number places Washington 13th highest in the U.S., according to 2017 stats from the Treatment Advocacy Center.

• 90,223 Washingtonians have serious untreated bipolar disorder and/or schizophrenia, according to 2017 stats from the Treatment Advocacy Center.

• 70 percent  of youth in state and local juvenile justice systems have a mental illness, according to statistics from the National Institute on Mental Health.

How to get Help

• Behavioral health crisis services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week by calling the Southwest Washington Crisis Line at 800-626-8137 or text at 866-835-2755

• NAMI SW WA can be reached at 360-695-2823

• The National Suicide Prevention line can be reached at 1-800-273-8255

Vicious Cycle: Mom’s efforts to help hampered at every turn

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Jeanie Kitterman was sitting in church when her cellphone rang unexpectedly. She quickly silenced it, but someone was determined to reach her, and followed up with a text.

It was a friend who wanted her to know that her 21-year-old son, Cameron Kitterman, was posting online threats about suicide.

Her son, since fall 2017, has displayed abnormal and erratic behavior, she said, at times becoming violent toward her, landing him in jail on multiple occasions. The behavior started after he experienced a grand mal seizure — the cause of which remains unknown — which forced him to drop out of college in Florida and move home, she said.

Cameron Kitterman has been hospitalized for suspected mental illness but has yet to receive a specific diagnosis — both times he was released with active psychosis, his mother said. Meanwhile, she said her son lacks insight on what’s going on.

“I respect his rights not to want to be on medication, but he’s not in his right mind to make that choice,” she said.

Jeanie Kitterman, 41, of Vancouver has obtained a less restrictive alternative, or LRA — a court-ordered outpatient treatment plan — but her son wouldn’t follow it, she said, and it later expired. She’s sought out guardianship rights but was told by an attorney it would be best if a guardian was appointed for her son. She said the attorney told her no one would take her son on, however. She once called the county crisis line four days straight, she said, but by the time someone could come out, her son had already been arrested for assaulting her.

“It’s the most helpless situation I have ever encountered in my life,” Jeanie Kitterman said. “Every which way I go, it’s frustrating. There’s an obstacle in every single situation.”

Jeanie Kitterman met with the attorneys in her son’s criminal case to discuss his options. She wanted to work out a deal to include a mental health evaluation and Mental Health Court, but he denied having a mental illness, and a competency evaluation was never requested. He later pleaded guilty, and as part of his sentence, was ordered to undergo a mental health treatment program, court records show. There was no follow through, however, because the Department of Corrections later determined he wasn’t eligible for supervision.

In his most recent case, the prosecution dismissed a charge of second-degree assault — Cameron Kitterman allegedly attacked his mother and tried to strangle her — citing the reason for the dismissal “in the interests of justice.” Jeanie Kitterman said her son refused to sign a speedy trial waiver, and no one was prepared to go to trial, so the case was dismissed.

“I feel like I’m constantly living in this, and nobody is listening. I’m terrified that he’s going to hurt somebody or himself, and then that responsibility is going to be on him. I’m terrified he’s going to end up in prison. It’s impossible to get help,” she said.

Since he was released from jail, Cameron Kitterman has been homeless. Earlier this month, his mother moved him into the men’s shelter Share House in downtown Vancouver. She said his mental health has gotten progressively worse, and she made an appointment for him at Rainier Springs — Vancouver’s new behavioral health hospital. But he became angry, she said, and told her he wouldn’t stay there.

Then on Jan. 20, Jeanie Kitterman invited her son to church. He would only stay in the lobby, however, and acted terrified if anyone approached him, she said.

After her friend contacted her, she stepped outside to call the crisis line, saw police officers in the parking lot and flagged them down. She showed them her son’s threats, prompting them to hospitalize him. But Cameron Kitterman was released hours later and jumped out of an Uber his mother ordered for him. Jeanie Kitterman said she later learned through the National Alliance of Mental Illness or NAMI Southwest Washington that the hospital didn’t order an assessment, for whatever reason.

“I feel for my son, it makes me feel like a horrible parent sharing (his story), but I want to help him in any way I can. I want people to not be afraid of him … but people need to understand that this is an illness, and he can get better,” Jeanie Kitterman said.

She’s planning to file a Joel’s Law petition in Clark County Superior Court this week. It allows Washington families to petition a court to involuntarily commit a mentally ill loved one.

“I’m just hoping my son can have a normal life. I want him to be stabilized somewhere, and when he gets stabilized, he can understand what is going on,” she said.

An in-depth look at MOMI: Mothers of the Mentally Ill

Mothers Fight for Mentally Ill: Vancouver woman’s experiences with her bipolar son lead her to form group, work with Inslee for change

Finding Austin Timpe: Inadequate treatment, incarceration leave ill young man reeling

Vicious Cycle: Mom’s efforts to help hampered at every turn

Coming Monday: Dealing with having a child in Western State Mental Hospital

Mental Health Statistics

• In 2016, there were an estimated 10.4 million adults age 18 or older in the United States with serious mental illness, according to statistics from the National Institute on Mental Health. This number represented 4.2 percent of all U.S. adults.

• Only about half of those with serious mental illness ages 18 to 25 received treatment in 2016, according to statistics from the National Institute on Mental Health.

• People with serious mental illnesses have a  10 to 25-year life expectancy reduction, according to stats from the World Health Organization. A vast majority of those deaths are from cardiovascular, respiratory and infectious diseases, diabetes and hypertension, as well as suicide. People with serious mental illnesses are less likely to receive good health and social care, according to WHO.

• Mortality rates among people with schizophrenia is 2 to 2.5 times higher than the general population, according to WHO. People with bipolar mood disorders have high mortality rates ranging from 35 percent higher to twice as high as the general population.

• According to a 2014 report from the Treatment Advocacy Center, about 20% of inmates in jails and 15% of inmates in state prisons have a serious mental illness.

• That would have meant there were about 356,000 inmates with serious mental illness in jails and state prisons. The number is expected to have risen since, according to the Advocacy Center.

• The average bed rate at Western State Hospital is $790 a day, while enhanced service facilities cost $425 per day and adult family homes just $95, according to the Seattle Times.

• 190,078 people in Washington have serious bipolar disorder and/or schizophrenia. That number places Washington 13th highest in the U.S., according to 2017 stats from the Treatment Advocacy Center.

• 90,223 Washingtonians have serious untreated bipolar disorder and/or schizophrenia, according to 2017 stats from the Treatment Advocacy Center.

• 70 percent  of youth in state and local juvenile justice systems have a mental illness, according to statistics from the National Institute on Mental Health.

How to get Help

• Behavioral health crisis services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week by calling the Southwest Washington Crisis Line at 800-626-8137 or text at 866-835-2755

• NAMI SW WA can be reached at 360-695-2823

• The National Suicide Prevention line can be reached at 1-800-273-8255

Weather Eye: Will we make it through January without any more rain?

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In Thursday’s column, I said there was no bad news weather-wise for us this weekend. Well, I guess the bad news was the fog and low clouds were so persistent that, in most areas, it didn’t clear off. So, yucky, gray, gloomy and cold weather Friday and Saturday.

I was at the coast this weekend and it was gorgeous. Sunny skies, calm winds and great beach-walking weather. Another sunny spot was in the Cascades above the inversion, which made for great spring-like skiing. Sunny and warm with temperatures in the 50s.

Today will be another mostly sunny one in the mountains and at the beach. We should start to get a drift of offshore winds that should help clear things up locally by this afternoon, I hope.

Last week, computer models were basically saying no rain for the rest of January. Saturday afternoon they were all over the place, with a chance of showers Tuesday night through Thursday. We’ll see if that pans out. If we do get raindrops, I don’t expect much.

I think you can put a fork in winter like it is over for chances of cold and snow. I know we still have February to get through, and we still have tons of arctic air to our north. But all extended computer forecast models say ‘nay.’

Looking at the Old Farmer’s Almanac yesterday, they predict February will be cool and wet. The National Climate Center says otherwise, with warmer and drier-than-average predictions. I guess the cold air stays in the eastern half of the nation. I doubt the groundhog sees his shadow back there this Saturday.

Clark County mothers fight for mentally ill children

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Two years ago, Jerri Clark and her son, Calvin, found themselves in the midst of one of the worst times of their lives.

Calvin, then 21, jumped off the Interstate 5 Bridge into the Columbia River while experiencing a mental health crisis — miraculously, he survived.

He was previously diagnosed with bipolar I disorder. Before he jumped, he had been incarcerated for months at the Clark County Jail for a bench warrant and received treatment at Western State Hospital, an inpatient psychiatric facility in Lakewood.

He was once an honor student and member of the debate team at Mountain View High School. He graduated with a college scholarship and toyed with the idea of studying law. But his bright future took a sharp turn during his freshman year in college.

Calvin left college after suffering symptoms of a suspected mental illness. His life since then has been characterized as a roller-coaster ride of hospital stays, mental health clinic visits and run-ins with the criminal justice system.

“I had to really grieve the loss of the vision that I had for my son,” Jerri Clark, of Vancouver, said in a January 2017 interview after months of correspondence with The Columbian.

The Clarks’ story is just one of many for Washington families struggling to find proper and timely care for their mentally ill loved ones. When those challenges are coupled with big bureaucracy and a family member who’s unable or unwilling to help themselves, the situation can feel hopeless.

Although it’s been a long and arduous journey for Clark and her son, their fight is really just beginning.

Since discovering, firsthand, the state’s troubled mental health system, Clark, 53, has become an advocate for improving care for people with serious mental illness. She leads the advocacy group Mothers of the Mentally Ill, more simply known as MOMI, which is working closing with Gov. Jay Inslee and his staff on mental health issues. Inslee unveiled a budget and policy plans this legislative session to fix the state’s mental health system in the coming years.

“It’s almost like my son had to fall through most of the cracks to get the whole picture of the problem,” Clark said.

To get here, Clark said she realized she had to be the change. She’s spent 20 years studying yogic dharma — the life’s purpose or calling — and said she can’t deny that this is hers.

“I believe when things happen, you either answer a calling or you don’t, and if you don’t, you’ll always feel a little out of sync with your life,” she said tearfully during an October 2018 interview at her Vancouver home. “I do feel my life has prepared me for this.”

Calvin’s crisis

Calvin was arrested in October 2016 in Clark County on suspicion of DUI. He ran out of gas on Interstate 5 and was having a psychotic episode, his mother said. The officer who found Calvin recognized he was experiencing a mental health crisis and enacted the involuntary commitment law, because he was a danger being behind the wheel.

Calvin was transferred to a facility in Eastern Washington because there were no beds available locally. While there, he missed court, Clark said, and an arrest warrant was issued.

The hospital released Calvin prematurely, Clark said, and he was still psychotic and dangerous. He needed emergency services when he returned home, but Clark was told that her only option was to take him to an emergency room or call 911. She called for help; but, because of his warrant, police took him to jail rather than diverting him to a hospital.

“That’s the part that just blows my mind. The criminal charge is always going to trump a civil service,” Clark told The Columbian in a January 2017 interview. “There’s a great divide between the criminal and civil systems.”

The next few months would prove to be nothing short of a nightmare for Clark and her son.

“It’s really hard to advocate from the outside when your ill family member is a legal adult. There’s not a lot of provision in the law. It’s a whole string of laws and local policies that get in the way of everyone’s good sense and judgment,” she said.

The Clark County Jail is not set up to require medications without a court order, Clark said, and inmates who have a psychiatric illness rarely volunteer to take their medication. It’s a Catch-22, she said, because people displaying dangerous behavior due to mental illness go to jail and don’t get better.

“It felt very shaming, and I knew that’s not where my son belonged and that the system was malfunctioning badly,” Clark said of visiting her son in jail.

A District Court judge ordered that Calvin be sent to Western State Hospital, but there were no beds available, Clark said. He had already been in jail for five weeks and waited another week-plus before he could get treatment.

Clark bailed him out in December 2016, and then his case was dismissed a month later, after results from the toxicology lab found Calvin had not been driving under the influence, she said. But by then, Calvin’s mental health had deteriorated, and he couldn’t understand that he needed medication, due to the symptom of anosognosia, a condition when someone has a lack of awareness that they’re mentally ill.

“I thought getting him in would mean he would be treated for his illness in a more comprehensive way,” Clark said. “Instead, he came out of a (nearly) two-month incarceration and two weeks in the hospital no more stable or well than he was before.”

Then, the day after Calvin’s case was dropped, Clark was hosting a Bunco party for a dozen friends when Calvin locked her and her husband out of the house. They called 911, believing he was an imminent threat. Her husband, not wanting to wait for police, intervened, and an altercation ensued. By the time police arrived, they misread what was happening, Clark said, and they arrested her husband on suspicion of domestic violence assault. Police refused to recommend a psychiatric hold for her son, she said.

The next morning, Clark got a call that Calvin was picked up by police, threatening to kill himself. He was involuntarily committed for five days before being dropped off at the men’s homeless shelter Share House in downtown Vancouver. He spent one night there, got up the next morning and jumped off the Interstate 5 Bridge.

Since then, Calvin has told his mother he didn’t want to die. “He just wanted help, and he can’t believe that’s what it took,” Clark said.

Her husband’s case was dismissed months later, after her interview with attorneys. She said the responding officers’ lack of training nearly destroyed her family.

“This is why (Involuntary Treatment Act) laws need to change,” Clark said. “Families are supposed to wait until they’re attacked?”

Mothers of the Mentally Ill

Clark’s frustration with the system and a need for a supportive community led her to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI Southwest Washington, where she routinely talks with other families in similar circumstances.

“All of our stories are pretty bizarre; but in a way, it normalizes the bizarre,” she said in a January 2017 interview. “I feel a lot of solidarity there. It does help to know I’m not alone, but it’s extra frustrating. We’re all in this crisis, and it clearly is a citywide, countywide, statewide, nationwide problem that doesn’t have enough resources.”

It was at a NAMI fundraiser where Heidi O’Connor, 50, heard Clark share her son’s story and thought, “You and I are living parallel lives,” she said.

O’Connor’s son, Austin Timpe, 19, was in a car crash when he was 17 years old and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Her son, too, has been jailed for various crimes, one of which gained media attention after police say he called a 14-year-old boy a racial slur, punched him several times and threatened to stab him. He later pleaded guilty to harassment and fourth-degree assault, court records show.

O’Connor said her son was unstable and hearing voices at the time of the incident. “Can you imagine? You’re hearing voices in your head, and now you’re in jail,” she said. “Jail is the worst place for them.”

“One of the things about mental illness is we need to start treating it like a medical condition, because it is the brain that’s inflamed,” O’Connor said.

She said our society doesn’t know enough about serious mental illness and said the subject is taboo.

“Parents can’t be responsible for intensive case management and housing and medication decisions. It’s too much, and we don’t have the training. We can’t possibly have that training to fulfill that role,” Clark said.

When Clark’s son was arrested again in May 2018 in King County, she knew he was ill and at great risk. She was concerned he would try to die by suicide in the jail.

Clark was trying to figure out who should be held responsible if her son died in jail and decided it would be Inslee. She called his office and requested a meeting. She was told to fill out a form online. The form asked if she was part of a group, because if she was, she’d likely get a meeting sooner. That’s when the idea of MOMI manifested. Clark started calling friends, including O’Connor, and asked them if they’d join her group. It took off from there.

She created a Facebook page for the group and has been flooded with requests from people to participate, receiving calls from all over the country.

In June, MOMI arranged to meet with Inslee’s policy adviser on mental health to discuss concerns and ideas for improvements in the system. The day before its meeting, Inslee held a press conference to talk about the decertification of Western State Hospital and express his interest in improving mental health care options statewide. When he found out MOMI was coming, he asked to meet with the group. The families shared personal stories and policy recommendations with him.

MOMI proposes: reforming or replacing the Involuntary Treatment Act, which allows for an individual to be committed to a mental health facility against their will for a limited time period; funding Program of Assertive Community Treatment, an integrated community-based treatment, rehabilitation and support services model; funding supportive housing and inpatient beds; and administering the Mental Health Advance Directive, a legal document that outlines a person’s wishes about what types of treatment and services they want during a mental health crisis.

“Mental health is such a broad topic, and we just have silos being worked on. We can’t have one function without the others,” Clark said.

Since that meeting, MOMI has hosted several community forums about mental illness — discussing how the group believes failures by the state government have put people who are severely mentally ill in a position where their most likely outcomes are homelessness, incarceration or death — and a roundtable, where legislators attended.

Peggy McCarthy, executive director for NAMI Southwest Washington, said it’s exciting to watch Clark’s determination and MOMI’s progress. She thinks MOMI has been effective in promoting change.

“The best thing NAMI can do is get community members interested in helping to fix things to make it better for people who have severe mental illnesses. They can tell the stories much better than an organization can. They’re the ones who are going to make the changes,” McCarthy said of MOMI.

‘I see now what’s possible’

Clark said she feels like Inslee and state lawmakers are listening.

In December, she spoke during Inslee’s unveiling of his proposal to reshape the state’s mental health care system at the Navos treatment facility in Burien. Inslee has proposed a $675 million plan. She also spoke on a panel to the Senate Behavioral Health Subcommittee, looking at changes to the Involuntary Treatment Act, earlier this month.

Clark told the subcommittee that current ITA law traps people in an “illness state” so the only way out is through violence. Her son didn’t meet the criteria for treatment until he attempted suicide, and when he was incarcerated on a felony.

“He has told me that the ITA did not protect his liberty, but instead, guaranteed he would lose all his civil rights, locked in jail and isolated from his family,” Clark testified. “My son has cycled through a dozen involuntary commitments, each required him to lose almost everything before he qualified for help and then provided the most minimal care — three of them dumped him into homelessness. After each short stay, he’s been arrested or rehospitalized immediately at higher cost and with a worst prognosis.”

She implored the subcommittee to amend the law so that violence isn’t required for treatment and hospital stays are long enough for recovery.

While Clark pushes for change through MOMI, her son, for the last six months, has found some stability.

Calvin is at Pioneer Human Services, which helps people released from prison or jail, and those in recovery, by providing treatment, housing, job skills training and employment.

“I see now what’s possible,” Clark said, adding that she believes her son is being treated with dignity and respect. “I think as he recovers from these really, really rough experiences he’s had, they will direct him toward his own dharma.”

An in-depth look at MOMI: Mothers of the Mentally Ill

Mothers Fight for Mentally Ill: Vancouver woman’s experiences with her bipolar son lead her to form group, work with Inslee for change

Finding Austin Timpe: Inadequate treatment, incarceration leave ill young man reeling

Vicious Cycle: Mom’s efforts to help hampered at every turn

Coming Monday: Dealing with having a child in Western State Mental Hospital

Mental Health Statistics

• In 2016, there were an estimated 10.4 million adults age 18 or older in the United States with serious mental illness, according to statistics from the National Institute on Mental Health. This number represented 4.2 percent of all U.S. adults.

• Only about half of those with serious mental illness ages 18 to 25 received treatment in 2016, according to statistics from the National Institute on Mental Health.

• People with serious mental illnesses have a  10 to 25-year life expectancy reduction, according to stats from the World Health Organization. A vast majority of those deaths are from cardiovascular, respiratory and infectious diseases, diabetes and hypertension, as well as suicide. People with serious mental illnesses are less likely to receive good health and social care, according to WHO.

• Mortality rates among people with schizophrenia is 2 to 2.5 times higher than the general population, according to WHO. People with bipolar mood disorders have high mortality rates ranging from 35 percent higher to twice as high as the general population.

• According to a 2014 report from the Treatment Advocacy Center, about 20% of inmates in jails and 15% of inmates in state prisons have a serious mental illness.

• That would have meant there were about 356,000 inmates with serious mental illness in jails and state prisons. The number is expected to have risen since, according to the Advocacy Center.

• The average bed rate at Western State Hospital is $790 a day, while enhanced service facilities cost $425 per day and adult family homes just $95, according to the Seattle Times.

• 190,078 people in Washington have serious bipolar disorder and/or schizophrenia. That number places Washington 13th highest in the U.S., according to 2017 stats from the Treatment Advocacy Center.

• 90,223 Washingtonians have serious untreated bipolar disorder and/or schizophrenia, according to 2017 stats from the Treatment Advocacy Center.

• 70 percent  of youth in state and local juvenile justice systems have a mental illness, according to statistics from the National Institute on Mental Health.

How to get Help

• Behavioral health crisis services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week by calling the Southwest Washington Crisis Line at 800-626-8137 or text at 866-835-2755

• NAMI SW WA can be reached at 360-695-2823

• The National Suicide Prevention line can be reached at 1-800-273-8255

Two injured in single-vehicle crash in Hockinson area

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Two people were injured early Sunday morning in a single-vehicle crash, which investigators say was likely caused by alcohol.

Clark County sheriff’s deputies and fire and rescue units responded about 1:45 a.m. to Northeast 212th Avenue just north of Northeast 139th Street for a rollover crash, according to a news release from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.

A male and female were located at the scene. The male suffered minor injuries and was treated by paramedics. The female suffered serious injuries, however, and was transported to a local hospital for treatment.

The Clark County Sheriff’s Office Traffic Unit also responded to the scene to investigate.

The names of the people involved in the crash were not released due to the active investigation.

Alcohol appears to have been a contributing factor, investigators said.


Yacolt man killed in single-vehicle crash Sunday morning

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A Yacolt man was killed Sunday morning in a single-vehicle crash on Northeast Lucia Falls Road.

Clark County sheriff’s deputies and EMS responders were dispatched about 8:15 a.m. to the 21800 block of Northeast Lucia Falls Road for a report of a rollover crash, according to a news release from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.

The first deputy to arrive at the scene found a Dodge pickup off the road on its side. The pickup had struck a tree on the driver’s side roof, causing significant damage to the vehicle, the news release states.

The driver, and lone occupant, identified as 33-year-old Roger Armstrong, was found unconscious. EMS tried to revive him, but he was declared dead at the scene.

Traffic detectives concluded that Armstrong was on his way to work when he drove off the north side of the road. His pickup rolled and struck a tree, according to the news release.

Detectives will continue to investigate any proximate causes for the crash, the news release states, and will use reconstructive methods to try to determine the vehicle’s speed at the time.

Confirmed measles cases in county rise to 34

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The number of Clark County residents infected with measles has risen to 34 confirmed cases and nine suspected cases, according to a Sunday press release from Clark County Public Health, which also identified six new locations where people may have been exposed.

  • Kaiser Orchards Medical Office, 7101 N.E. 137th Ave., Vancouver, from 1:55 to 6:10 p.m. Jan. 14.
  • The Vancouver Clinic Salmon Creek, 2525 N.E. 139th St., Vancouver, from 8:15 a.m. to noon Jan. 18 and 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. Jan. 23.
  • Vancouver Division of Children, Youth and Families, 907 Harney St., Vancouver, from 12:15 to 5:15 p.m. Jan. 18.
  • Golden Corral, 11801 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 4 to 9 p.m. Jan. 19.
  • Vancouver Women, Infant and Children (WIC) office, 5411 E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 2:50 to 6:15 p.m. Jan. 23.
  • Tower Mall public areas (entrances and hallways), 5411 E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 2:50 to 6:15 p.m. Jan. 23.

Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency Friday statewide due to the measles outbreak. The Clark County Council declared a public health emergency for the county Jan. 18.

Of the 34 confirmed cases, 30 are people who were not immunized. The immunization status could not be verified for the four other people.

While the majority of those infected are 10 or younger, nine are ages 11 to 18 and one is between 19 and 29. One child has been hospitalized, and Dr. Alan Melnick, the county’s public health director, has said the patient is doing better.

Public Health – Seattle & King County confirmed Wednesday that a man in his 50s was hospitalized with measles but has been released. Officials say the man recently traveled to Vancouver, but it’s not clear if that’s where he might have been infected.

The Oregon Health Authority on Friday confirmed a measles case in a Multnomah County, Ore., resident. The agency is working with Multnomah County and state agencies in Oregon and Washington to notify people of their potential exposure, and help them prevent exposing others should they become ill.

The implementation of an automated call system was activated Saturday afternoon, and people who’ve been identified as possibly being exposed to measles may receive an automated call from the county call center (360-397-8021). The calls are available in English, Russian and Spanish.

If you miss the automated call, do not call Public Health. You will receive a second automated call later. People who receive the calls will be asked whether they were at a specific location on a certain date and time, as well as their immunization status and the immunization statuses of household members who were at the location with them.

What to do if you might be infected

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 90 percent of unvaccinated people exposed to the measles virus come down with the disease. The virus lives in the nose and throat mucus of an infected person, and can survive for up to two hours in an airspace where the infected person coughed or sneezed.

Health officials are urging anyone who has been exposed at an identified location and believes they have symptoms of measles to call their health care provider prior to visiting the medical office to make a plan that avoids exposing others in the waiting room.

If you are unsure of your family’s immunization status, you can view, download and print your family’s immunization information online at MyIR.net or request a copy of your immunization record from the Washington State Department of Health.

Anyone with questions about measles infection or the measles vaccine should call their primary care provider or a county health department:

  • Clark County Public Health, 360-397-8021.
  • Multnomah County, Ore., Public Health, 503-988-3406.
  • Washington County, Ore., Public Health, 503-846-3594.
  • Clackamas County, Ore., Public Health, 503-655-8411.

Clark County Public Health has been regularly updating its list of locations where people may have been exposed to measles. There are dozens of locations in total, including hospitals, Portland International Airport and multiple schools.

For a complete list of exposure sites, visit the Public Health measles investigation web page at www.doh.wa.gov/YouandYourFamily/IllnessandDisease/Measles/MeaslesOutbreak.

Measles symptoms begin with a high fever, cough, runny nose and red eyes, followed by a rash that usually begins at the head and spreads to the rest of the body. A person can spread the virus before they show symptoms.

People are contagious with measles for up to four days before and up to four days after the rash appears. After someone is exposed to measles, illness develops in about one to three weeks.

Measles exposure sites

Clark County Public Health released the following list of locations where people may have been exposed to measles in the Portland-Vancouver area:

Health care facilities:

The Vancouver Clinic Salmon Creek, 2525 N.E. 139th St., Vancouver.

  • 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. Jan. 23.
  • 8:15 a.m. to noon Jan. 18

Gresham Troutdale Family Medical Center, 1700 S.W. 257th Drive in Troutdale, Ore., from 12:30 to 2 p.m. Jan. 23.

Legacy-GoHealth Urgent Care Cascade Park, 305 S.E. Chkalov Drive, Vancouver, from 6:25 to 10:15 p.m. Jan. 22.

Legacy-GoHealth, 22262 N.E. Glisan St., in Gresham, Ore., from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Jan. 20.

Memorial Urgent Care, 3400 Main St., Vancouver, from 4:30 to 7:50 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 19.

Kaiser Cascade Park, 12607 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver.

  • 12:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 19.
  • 7 p.m. Jan. 15 to 2 a.m. Jan. 16.
  • 1 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 12.

Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center Emergency Department, 2211 N.E. 139th St., Vancouver.

  • 11:40 p.m. Jan. 14 to 5:10 a.m. Jan 15.
  • 5:45 p.m. Jan. 13 and 12:30 a.m. Jan. 14.
  • 8:30 p.m. Jan. 12 to 1 a.m. Jan. 13.

Kaiser Orchards Medical Office, 7101 N.E. 137th Ave., Vancouver, from 1:55 to 6:10 p.m. Jan. 14.

Rose Urgent Care and Family Practice, 18 N.W. 20th Ave., Battle Ground, 3:45 to 8 p.m. Jan. 14.

PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center Emergency Department, 400 N.E. Mother Joseph Place, Vancouver.

  • 12:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 13.
  • 10 p.m. Jan. 12 to 4 a.m. Jan. 13.

The Vancouver Clinic, 700 N.E. 87th Ave., Vancouver.

  • 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Jan. 14.
  • 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 13.
  • 10:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Jan. 12.
  • 3:30 to 7 p.m. Jan. 11.

Vancouver Clinic Columbia Tech Center, 501 SE 172nd Ave., Vancouver, from 11:30 am to 4 pm Friday, Jan. 11.

Magnolia Family Clinic, 2207 N.E. Broadway, Suite 200, Portland, from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jan. 8.

Schools:

Orchards Elementary School, 11405 N.E. 69th St., Vancouver, on Monday, Jan. 14.

Evergreen High School, 14300 NE 18th St., Vancouver, on Wednesday, Jan. 9.

Slavic Christian Academy, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Vancouver, on Monday, Jan. 7.

Cornerstone Christian Academy, 10818 N.E. 117th Ave., Vancouver, on Jan. 4.

Vancouver Home Connection, 301 S. Lieser Road, Vancouver, on Jan. 7; Jan. 8; and Jan. 11.

Hearthwood Elementary School, 801 N.E. Hearthwood Blvd., Vancouver, on Jan. 7, 9 and 11.

Image Elementary School, 4400 N.E. 122nd Ave., Vancouver, on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9.

Eisenhower Elementary School, 9201 N.W. Ninth Ave., Vancouver, on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9.

Tukes Valley Primary and Middle School, 20601 N.E. 167th Ave., Battle Ground, on Jan. 8.

Maple Grove School, 601B S.W. Eaton Blvd., Battle Ground, on Tuesday, Jan. 8 and Wednesday, Jan. 9.

River HomeLink, 601 S.W. Eaton Blvd., Battle Ground, on Tuesday, Jan. 8 and Wednesday, Jan. 9.

Other locations:

Dollar Tree, 11501 N.E. 76th St., Vancouver, from 8:10 to 10:50 pm Tuesday, Jan. 15.

Dollar Tree, 7809-B Vancouver Plaza Drive, Vancouver, from 6:30 to 9:10 p.m. Jan. 15.

GracePoint Christian Church, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Vancouver, from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 7.

Church of Christ Savior, 3612 F St., Vancouver

  • 9:30 a.m. to noon Jan. 6
  • 6 to 11:30 p.m. Jan. 6
  • 9:10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jan. 13.

Church of Truth, 7250 N.E. 41st St., Vancouver from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Jan. 6.

Portland International Airport, 7000 N.E. Airport Way, Portland

  • 10:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. on Jan. 7. More specifically, anyone who spent time in Concourse D and the Delta Sky Lounge during that time period.
  • 7:30 to 11 p.m. Jan. 15, baggage claim and south end of the ticket counter (near Alaska Airlines and Starbucks)

Costco, 4849 N.E. 138th Ave., Portland

  • 1 to 5:30 p.m. Jan. 8.
  • 5:30 to 8:40 p.m.  Jan. 16

Amazon Lockers, 1131 S.W. Jefferson St., Portland, from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 10.

Rejuvenation, 1100 S.E. Grand Ave. Portland, from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 10.

Pho Green Papaya, 13215 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Jan. 10.

Chuck’s Produce, 13215 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 8 to 11:45 p.m. Jan. 10 and 2:30 to 5:30 p.m.  Jan. 11.

Ikea, 10280 N.E. Cascades Parkway, Portland, from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 11.

Fisher Investments, 5525 N.W. Fisher Creek Drive, Camas

  • 6:20 a.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 10
  • 6:20 a.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 11
  • 6:20 a.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 14
  • 6:20 a.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 15

Moda Center (Trail Blazers game), 1 N. Center Court St., Portland, from 5:30 to 11:30 p.m. Jan. 11.

Verizon Wireless at Cascade Station, 10103 N.E. Cascades Parkway, Portland, from 5 to 11 p.m. Jan. 14.

A Children’s Dentist, 101 NW 12th Ave., Battle Ground, from 1:30 to 6 pm Tuesday, Jan. 8.

God Will Provide Church, 7321 N.E. 110th St., Vancouver, from 7 to 11 p.m. Jan. 18.

Fred Meyer, 22855 N.E. Park Lane in Wood Village, Ore., from 11 a.m. to noon Jan. 20.

Walgreens Pharmacy, 25699 S.E. Stark St., in Troutdale, Ore., from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Jan. 23.

Vancouver Division of Children, Youth and Families, 907 Harney St., Vancouver, from 12:15 to 5:15 p.m. Jan. 18.

Golden Corral, 11801 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 4 to 9 p.m. Jan. 19.

Vancouver Woman, Infant and Children (WIC) office, 5411 E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 2:50 to 6:15 p.m. Jan. 23.

Tower Mall public areas (entrances and hallways), 5411 E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 2:50 to 6:15 p.m. Jan. 23.

Gardeners swap seeds, ideas at food bank in Battle Ground

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After examining a plastic bag full of seeds, Jason Bringman found what he was looking for.

Bringman works at Chapman’s Greenhouse in Battle Ground, where he plants anything he can find. But on Sunday, Bringman was particularly interested in the bag of lovage seeds, herbs brought to the U.S. by early English colonists after the Romans introduced them in Britain hundreds of years earlier.

While Bringman enjoys planting a variety of seeds, “I’m always interested in the back stories as well,” he said.

Gardeners gathered at the North County Community Food Bank in Battle Ground on Sunday to donate and collect seeds at no cost. A multitude of free flower and vegetable seed packets, plus some bare-root ornamental plants, were available. Nearly all seeds were organic, non-genetically modified or heirloom varieties.

As the “green thumbs” meandered through the food bank and studied over tables full of what they hoped would be prized additions to their gardens, the conversations that arose were often as valuable as the seeds.

“It gives people a chance to experiment without a huge cost impact,” said Kristine White, who has organized the event for several years. “Gardeners are generally a very giving sort of people.”

Dennis Wedam of Vancouver collected horse chestnuts to feed common visitors on his property.

“I have dozens of elk on my property and they like to eat it,” Wedam said.

Another gardener, Stephan Ray of Ridgefield, was hoping to plant a nut tree in a nearby community garden or his backyard. His daughter recently chose a vegan diet, so the family is searching for new forms of protein.

“We like to try different things,” Ray said. “In the summertime, our salads are robust.”

Since the swap started in 2012, participants have been encouraged to donate to the food bank. This year, the organization also benefitted from exposure, White said.

“A little bit more direct benefit,” White said. “There’s an outpouring (of giving) at Christmas time. Now, there’s a new need.”

Liz Cerveny, the food bank’s executive director, said she saw a few of the food bank’s clients perusing the seed selection. Cerveny, also a gardener, views the annual event as an idea-sharing opportunity.

“Gardening is so feeble. You realize you’re not alone,” Cerveny said. “I think each year, you learn a lot more.”

For many of the gardeners, the activity is a family tradition passed down from older relatives.

Bringman, for instance, picked it up 30 years ago from his grandfather, with whom he planted potatoes, carrots and strawberries. Since then, he has expanded his repertoire — including unusual fruits like white strawberries and yellow raspberries.

Sunday was his first trip to the seed swap.

“It’s fun to harvest your own seeds,” Bringman said. “It’s fun having the seed packets, but I like sharing and collecting harvested ones.”

Volkswagen settlement to help pay for 41 school buses

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Money from carmaker Volkswagen’s settlement with the state will help pay for 41 school buses for Clark County schools and two C-Tran buses, while grant applications for the state’s $112.7 million share of federal settlement money will open in coming weeks.

The state received $28.4 million from its 2017 settlement with the German automaker, after investigators found the company illegally installed software in its diesel cars designed to trick emissions control tests, thereby duping regulators, tricking buyers and dumping tons of additional pollutants into the atmosphere.

The Washington Department of Ecology, which is managing the settlement money, awarded local governments $9.4 million toward the purchase of 19 new electric buses around the state.

C-Tran won $1 million in grants, which will pay for two of four electric buses the agency plans to bring into the fleet in the next few years, spokeswoman Christine Selk said.

Local schools are getting $1.4 million toward new buses. The state says more than 3,000 school buses around the state are more than 17 years old, and emit significantly more pollution than newer available models.

The Evergreen School District received grants to help pay for 30 buses, and the Camas School District for 10.

The first 15 of Evergreen’s buses will be on delivered in March, with the other 15 coming in 2020, district spokeswoman Gail Spolar said. The buses will use upgraded diesel engines with lower emissions

Camas school’s spokeswoman Doreen McKercher said the district’s work toward bringing the buses into its fleet were ongoing. The Green Mountain School District received money toward one new bus, according to the Department of Ecology.

Ecology spokesman Andrew Wineke said the grants work out to about $35,000 per bus. That roughly covers the cost for additional emissions controls needed for cleaner-burning diesel buses, or the cost to install a propane-burning engine instead.

Ecology says the remaining money from the state settlement will be used to buy electric and relatively cleaner diesel-burning vehicles for state agency and public port fleets.

Of the Volkswagens with the self-sabotaged emissions controls in the state, 7 percent were registered in Clark County, according to the Department of Ecology.

Diesel exhaust contains fine particles, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants that can compound to create significant health hazards where traffic volume is high. The EPA estimated a single year of elevated emissions from one of the Volkswagens with the fraudulent software could contribute to as many as 50 premature deaths, 3,000 lost workdays, and $423 million in economic costs nationwide.

At the federal level, the EPA and Volkswagen agreed to settlement deals for all 50 states, which includes $112.7 million for Washington.

Wineke said the Department of Ecology plans to make those funds available for grant projects in the next month or two.

Morning Press: Moms fight for mentally ill children; Jacobsen CEO; Sister surrogate

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What does the weather forecast have in store for the workweek Check our local weather coverage.

In case you missed it, here are some of the top stories of the weekend:

Clark County mothers fight for mentally ill children

Two years ago, Jerri Clark and her son, Calvin, found themselves in the midst of one of the worst times of their lives.

Calvin, then 21, jumped off the Interstate 5 Bridge into the Columbia River while experiencing a mental health crisis — miraculously, he survived.

He was previously diagnosed with bipolar I disorder. Before he jumped, he had been incarcerated for months at the Clark County Jail for a bench warrant and received treatment at Western State Hospital, an inpatient psychiatric facility in Lakewood.

He was once an honor student and member of the debate team at Mountain View High School. He graduated with a college scholarship and toyed with the idea of studying law. But his bright future took a sharp turn during his freshman year in college.

Calvin left college after suffering symptoms of a suspected mental illness. His life since then has been characterized as a roller-coaster ride of hospital stays, mental health clinic visits and run-ins with the criminal justice system.

The Clarks’ story is just one of many for Washington families struggling to find proper and timely care for their mentally ill loved ones. When those challenges are coupled with big bureaucracy and a family member who’s unable or unwilling to help themselves, the situation can feel hopeless.

Read the full story: Clark County mothers fight for mentally ill children

Jacobsen CEO worth his salt

Ben Jacobsen started making salt in 2011, and it didn’t take long for the former Vancouver resident to land on some important radars.

The New York Times wrote a story about him in 2012. Noted chefs started to use his salt from Oregon waters. And a Williams-Sonoma Inc. partnership sent his business on a fast, ascending trajectory that hasn’t slowed.

Jacobsen, 43, no longer participates in making the white, flaky crystals. And long gone are the days when he’d drive a seawater-loaded truck from the Oregon Coast to Portland for processing into salt. These days, the Hudson’s Bay High School graduate’s focus is marketing, sales, and product development.

For the future, he plans for more of the same, convinced he’s got the world’s best job.

Read the full story: Jacobsen CEO worth his salt

Sister surrogate: Columbia River coach helps provide gift of parenthood

A framed cross-stitch pattern faces the living room inside the Ridgefield home of Haris and Cristina Hadziselimovic. Created by their sister-in-law Cait Ceccacci, it reads a phrase that characterizes the couple’s journey toward parenthood: The greater the storm, the brighter the rainbow.

For eight years, their storm of unexplained infertility meant struggles and frustrations, disappointments and emotional tolls for the Vancouver natives who first met in college.

Their rainbow couldn’t be more clear or the pot of gold at the end more rewarding. That’s their daughter, Avyn James, born via gestational surrogacy one month ago.

Technically, Alicia Green is a wife, aunt, sister, mother of four and a gestational carrier. But Green, Columbia River High School’s head gymnastics coach and a local CT and MRI technologist, is more than that.

A better-fitting description of a role she played is a lead character of an inspiring story conceived in sisterly love. She became an aunt for the third time when she gave birth to her niece Dec. 27 by scheduled Cesarean section.

Read the full story: Sister surrogate: Columbia River coach helps provide gift of parenthood

Mentally ill son’s request for help heartens mom

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A sob escaped Angela Daniels’ throat as she walked away from the Clark County Courthouse. It was days after Thanksgiving, and she had just learned her son, who’s been in jail since June, would undergo a third, and likely final, court-ordered competency restoration process.

The news was an early Christmas present for Daniels, whose 23-year-old son, Damian Daniel Rodriguez, was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 20.

His attorney had requested that his case — two counts of third-degree assault — be dismissed. Daniels, 40, feared her son would be released, just as sick as he was when he was arrested, and would have nowhere to go. But he surprised her when he turned to his attorney and asked for more treatment.

“To actually acknowledge him needing or wanting more treatment …” Daniels started to say, before dissolving into tears. “Maybe he’s scared, because it’s cold, and he has no place to stay. I don’t care; the fact is he asked for (help).”

Rodriguez was arrested June 1 after prompting a lockdown at Clark College; he called 911 to report he was armed and killed two police officers on campus. Rodriguez was not armed, however, and no officers or civilians were injured, according to court records.

Daniels said she believes her son wished to die by suicide by cop.

Vancouver police had contacted Rodriguez the night before. Daniels called 911, she said, and asked for officers trained in crisis intervention to do a mental health check on him. He was at Esther Short Park screaming that he was going to die. Police located Rodriguez, but they couldn’t intervene, because he refused to speak with them, Daniels said.

Daniels had also called the county’s crisis line three or four times in the days leading up to the Clark College incident but was told there was no staff available to help.

“Fighting with my son is difficult, but fighting the system was by far 10 times harder,” Daniels said.

On Feb. 1, 2018, Daniels was taking her son to a grocery store when they got into an argument over money. He threatened to kill her, and punched her in the face. Rodriguez was charged with domestic violence harassment and fourth-degree domestic violence assault. He pleaded guilty to the latter charge and was given credit for time served.

Despite being granted another go at competency restoration — during which defendants are taught about the criminal justice system in an attempt for them to be found mentally fit to stand trial — Rodriguez waited more than a month in the jail for a spot to open up at Western State Hospital. He was transferred there Jan. 4, his mother said.

Rodriguez is just one of thousands of people with mental illness in Washington who wait weeks or months to get into a treatment facility. Meanwhile, their case is put on hold and their condition deteriorates.

For years, the state has failed to follow a federal court order in a class-action lawsuit, known as Trueblood, that enforces a person’s constitutional right to timely competency evaluation and restoration services. The court in 2015 ordered the Department of Social and Health Services to provide in-jail competency evaluations within 14 days and inpatient competency evaluation and restoration services within seven days. Since then, the court has found DSHS in contempt and imposed millions in monetary sanctions.

In December, a federal judge gave final approval to a settlement agreement between DSHS and Disability Rights Washington to overhaul the state’s mental health system: hiring more evaluators, increasing the number of beds available in state mental hospitals and providing more community-based services to keep mentally ill people out of the criminal justice system.

Daniels described her son’s struggles as “the new normal.”

“It’s hard to look to the future when you’re living day to day. I want him to be happy. I want him to be stable. I want to hang out with him — go to the movies or dog park. I want him to have a somewhat normal life,” she said. “The fact he asked (for help) gives me hope.”

An in-depth look at MOMI: Mothers of the Mentally Ill

Mothers Fight for Mentally Ill: Vancouver woman’s experiences with her bipolar son lead her to form group, work with Inslee for change

Finding Austin Timpe: Inadequate treatment, incarceration leave ill young man reeling

Vicious Cycle: Mom’s efforts to help hampered at every turn

Western State Hospital: Vancouver mom concerned about state of mental health care

Fighting the system: Mentally ill son’s request for help heartens mom

Vancouver mom concerned about state of mental health care

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Since November, Cindi Fisher has regularly made the trip from Vancouver to Lakewood, just outside of Tacoma, to visit her son, Siddharta. On a recent visit, Fisher said, she shared a meal with him at Old Country Buffet, took him to a local park and left him with some money.

But after their six hours together, it was time for Siddharta to return to the brick walls and secured windows of Western State Hospital, which as Washington’s largest inpatient psychiatric facility has come under scrutiny for health and safety violations.

Fisher, a 68-year-old retired teacher who has been recognized by YWCA Clark County and local NAACP for her activism, said that her son has met his treatment goals and is eligible for release — but won’t be coming home to Clark County.

Fisher said that while her son is no longer required to be in an inpatient psychiatric facility, he still needs extra help with day-to-day living, such as taking insulin for his diabetes. He will be going to a group home in Pierce County.

“He has this record that makes it difficult for people to be willing to accept him, and there is a big shortage of housing,” Fisher said. She still worries about her 40-year-old son, who she said has long dreadlocks and a tendency to talk loudly to himself.

At a press event in Burien last month, Gov. Jay Inslee called situations such as Fisher’s a “hidden issue” that he hopes to address as part of a sweeping overhaul of the state’s mental health system currently being considered by the Legislature. Inslee, who has called for $675 million for his plan, said there is a “huge blockage in the system” of patients at both Western and Eastern state hospitals whose conditions have improved but are unable to return to their communities due to the state’s lack of supportive housing.

“And as a result of that, we have people who are languishing in our county and city jails who can’t get into our state hospitals,” Inslee said.

Goal: Closer to home

There is broad support for the idea of making it easier for people to access mental health treatment in their communities near their families, jobs and churches. There’s also evidence it aids their recovery.

Sen. Ann Rivers, a La Center Republican who sits on the Select Committee on Quality Improvement in State Hospitals, said she expects more locally based care institutions to be included in reforms to the state’s mental health system.

“I’ve been to Western State, and I would not want my loved one there,” Rivers said.

Clark County has requested $1.75 million from the state’s capital budget to fund the Vancouver Housing Authority’s Tenny Creek community-based mental health facility, which will provide assisted-living support for people coming out of Western State Hospital. Lawmakers are also considering putting more mental health resources in schools and changing the state’s Involuntary Treatment Act.

During her decades of negotiating the state’s mental health system, Fisher has objected to her son’s treatment and held protests outside of the county courthouse and Western State Hospital. She also helped found Movement Of Mothers and others Standing-up-together, a group of people with loved ones in the mental health system.

Fisher questioned if the new attention from the governor and Legislature will address what she said is the system’s tendency to isolate and alienate individuals while over-relying on pharmaceuticals.

“If psychosis were not stigmatized in our society, I think a lot of folks could get through it in their communities,” she said.

Early diagnosis

Fisher said that she and her family settled in Vancouver in the early 1980s when she worked as an elementary school teacher and her husband worked as a pharmacist. She said that Siddharta was the oldest of four children. She described him as a bright, sensitive and curious child. She said he wrote poetry, loved playing guitar, won a state chess championship and scored high on the SAT after taking it at age 12.

She said that after experiencing a “very racist incident,” his whole world changed. She said that one day in the seventh grade, her son came home from school with a girl’s coat. Fisher said her son told her that the coat had been stolen from a girl by other classmates, and he had gotten it back with the intention of returning it to its owner.

But she said that when her son returned the coat, the principal accused him of stealing it. She said her son, who had never been in trouble before, was put in handcuffs and sent to juvenile detention.

Fisher said that afterward, her son became distrustful of authority and started getting in trouble. She said that at age 16, his mental state began to deteriorate. He would become moody, depressed or angry. He began talking to people who weren’t there and would pace in his room for hours.

After another brush with the law, Siddharta was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She said the medications he was prescribed put him in pain and caused him to engage in self-harming behaviors.

“He begged me to stay up with him all night because he was worried he would jump out of his second story window,” Fisher said. “He gave himself a third-degree burn because he wanted to feel something.”

She said that one morning in June 1995, he woke up in extreme pain. She recalled him saying he had been poisoned and his insides were burning with acid. Fisher said her son, desperate for help, ran outside their home and began knocking on doors. After no one answered, she said, he broke a window hoping to get help before collapsing in the street. He was arrested. Months later, he began his first stint at Western State Hospital.

‘I need to go home’

According to court records, Siddharta was released from Western State Hospital in 1996 with a diagnosis of psychosis. He was again admitted in 1999 for a 72-hour hold and was released after being given medications.

Fisher said that the medications changed her son. She said he would sleep for 16 to 20 hours a day and become depressed over how much time he spent in bed. She said she watched her once-popular son lose all of his friends and sense of belonging. One day, she said he asked her to take him to the airport so he could fly home. Fisher said she took him to the airport where he approached a customer service desk.

“I need to go home,” he said.

“I can help you,” responded the attendant. “Where is home?”

“That’s what I need you to help me with,” he said. “I don’t know.”

Siddharta had bouts with homelessness, and court records indicate he used drugs. He would go on to be committed to Western State Hospital over a dozen times.

Fisher said that the medications given to her son made him confused and caused him to walk into other people’s houses, which led to more run-ins with the police.

Fisher criticized how the state’s mental health system relies too much on medication. She pointed to the potential of Open Dialogue, a method of treating acute mental illness that was developed in western Lapland in Finland that uses techniques of collaboration and listening that closely involves the patient’s family and social network.

Records show that Fisher objected to her son’s medications. In 2013, the guardian ad litem appointed for Siddharta filed a restraining order against his mother alleging that she would “threaten and harass any person she feels is causing her son to not have the treatment she demands for him.”

Fisher said that dispute was over his medications and also a phone she said should’ve been installed on the floor her son was housed in at Western State Hospital. For nearly a year, Fisher had no contact with her son until the restraining order was dropped. During that time, Fisher wrote letters, protested outside of the hospital and still found people who would share information.

“Although I couldn’t talk to him or touch him or see him, I wasn’t out of contact with him,” she said.

Back to Western State In November 2017, Siddharta was again sent to Western State Hospital. Fisher said that it all began with a mix-up over a bill at a diner.

Fisher said that at the time her son was in a program to help previously homeless people with serious mental illness and was living in his own apartment. She said he was receiving Social Security benefits deposited on a debit card. Fisher said that there was a delay in depositing benefits on her son’s card, and when he tried to use it to pay for a meal at a local diner, it was declined.

According to court records, Siddharta said an expletive to the waitress and left without paying. He was later arrested and charged with theft.

“They put a vulnerable adult back in jail,” Fisher said. “That was wrong.”

She said that the three days her son spent in custody were destabilizing. When he was released, she said he was intensely sensitive to noise. He became irritated by a jackhammer at a construction site near his apartment, she said, and yelled at them to shut it off. When they didn’t, he hit a worker over the head with a bottle.

Court records show that Siddharta was charged with assault after the incident and was required to undergo a forensic evaluation. The evaluation described Siddharta as tall and thin, wearing orange jail scrubs and dreadlocks well below the shoulder. It stated that he spoke in a “loud volume” and appeared as “agitated and disorganized.”

The evaluation reviewed previous records describing his previous diagnoses. It drew a familiar conclusion.

“Mr. Fisher did not have the capacity to understand the nature of the proceedings, and he did not have the capacity to assist in his legal defense,” the evaluation read.

‘You can’t live in here too much’

In a phone interview from Western State Hospital, Siddharta said he was looking forward to a visit with his mother, and getting a meal of fried shrimp and mashed potatoes at Old Country Buffet.

When asked what he was looking forward to when getting out of Western State Hospital, he said he was looking forward to “human contact” with friends and family. He said he was looking forward to being able to “live.”

“You can’t live in here too much,” he said.

An in-depth look at MOMI: Mothers of the Mentally Ill

Mothers Fight for Mentally Ill: Vancouver woman’s experiences with her bipolar son lead her to form group, work with Inslee for change

Finding Austin Timpe: Inadequate treatment, incarceration leave ill young man reeling

Vicious Cycle: Mom’s efforts to help hampered at every turn

Western State Hospital: Vancouver mom concerned about state of mental health care

Fighting the system: Mentally ill son’s request for help heartens mom


Hockinson schools have replacement levy, new levy on ballot

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When Hockinson School District residents check their ballots for the Feb. 12 special election, they’ll have two levies to vote on, one a replacement and one a new levy.

The replacement school programs and operations levy is technically a “partial replacement,” Superintendent Sandra Yager said. As part of the state’s McCleary legislation — which injected $7.3 billion in new state funding for schools to be spread over four years, followed by another $1 billion in 2018 for teacher salaries — local levies were capped at $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value.

In 2018, Hockinson’s levy rate was $3.43 per $1,000 of assessed value. The district is asking for the maximum it can for the replacement three-year levy, $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed value for each year. The money is expected to go toward keeping class sizes down, helping to fund special education programs, extracurricular activities and athletics.

“We would’ve gotten almost $5 million this year (with the old levy rate),” Yager said. “Instead, we’re getting a little less than $3 million.”

The second levy is a three-year capital levy for technology and school improvements that would start in 2020. For the first year, the district is asking for $0.45 per $1,000 of assessed value, followed by $0.40 per $1,000 in 2021 and $0.36 per $1,000 in 2022. The money is expected to be used for technology refreshes, safety and security upgrades, heating and cooling improvements and building capital improvements.

“With replacement levy that the legislators approved for us to have moving forward, we would be able to maintain our current programs,” Yager said. “The only thing we wouldn’t be able to do is to continue to do the technology.”

The district has had technology levies in the past, most recently in 2016. The rate that year was $0.46 per $1,000 of assessed value, she said.

Part of the reason the district hasn’t sought funds for technology in recent years is because Hockinson passed a $39.9 million bond in February 2015 to replace Hockinson Middle School.

Yager said the district could use some money from the general fund to cover costs this year, as the district works around the lower levy amount. Vancouver Public Schools is looking to deal with an estimated $11.4 million shortfall for the 2019-2020 school year.

Hockinson is not in such a position, Yager said, adding that as long as the levies both pass, the district should be okay financially for the immediate future.

“If the levy doesn’t pass, we will have to look at what do we need to cut,” she said. “If the levy does pass, we will maintain all of our programs and be able to make payments for what we agreed to pay.”

Working in Clark County: Marc Gross, Interstate 5 Bridge supervisor

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One could think about the Interstate 5 Bridge as being sort of alive.

An Oregon Department of Transportation crew of 10 works inside of the structure’s bridge house, an area not immediately noticeable to any of the estimated 131,000 average daily passers-by going northbound and southbound in the month of December.

They man the fort, so to speak, for 12-hour shifts at a time, required to answer the call of a passing vessel within 30 seconds. If the ship needs extra clearance to get beneath the 102-year-old green giant, the crew member needs to raise the bridge’s lift span.

And Marc Gross, 49, who lives in Battle Ground, has been the bridge supervisor for the last 18 years, trying to keep things running smoothly.

“That’s the Coast Guard rule; we have to have somebody on board here to answer a radio call within 30 seconds,” Gross said. “This is a navigable waterway for the Coast Guard; and as a safety corridor, they want to have somebody here to basically answer the radio and make decisions about what needs to happen with this movable structure.”

Though he’s worked with the bridge for the last 18 years, he has been with ODOT for nearly 25 years, moving his way up the ranks, following some time operating equipment and helping build roads while in the Army at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., and later the Oregon National Guard.

A maintenance worker at heart, his orange sweater was smudged with the evidence of manual labor, although he said he spends about half his time in Oregon, participating in meetings and sorting through issues and the typical bureaucratic hurdles associated with operating such a structure.

And with the Interstate 5 Bridge, there’s certainly a lot to talk about. It’s been a sticking point with the Portland and Vancouver communities and local politics for a number of years as traffic congestion gets worse.

“When I moved here, it was 1994, and I-205 was a very, very smooth, easy commute. And I watched that change drastically,” he said solemnly. “There’s traffic congestion. It’s going to weigh heavy on people’s minds, on how they get places.”

The I-5 Bridge doesn’t have big shoulders, either; a single crash heavily impacts vehicles being able to pass.

But he knows with a bridge replacement, the old crew would be lost and placed into other roles; some of them have been working there for decades.

“These guys only have this job because it’s a movable bridge … they’re not maintenance cost-effective, and generally movable bridges are an impassable structure. So their look is to design a structure that is passable on a regular basis, very much like the Glenn Jackson Bridge,” he said. The bridge lifts 200 times in a year, he said. That includes commercial ships, grain ships and pleasure craft. Springtime is the busiest for lifts when the Columbia River runs high, lessening the space between the bridge and the water.

Gross says technology advancements have already reduced the crew, who are especially passionate about operating the bridge. The last major upgrade in technology happened in 2005, he said.

“There used to be 24 (crew members) when it was a three-man (at a time) operation before cameras and technology took over,” he said. “Then, once camera technology, sensors and warning devices (were installed) in the 1980s, there was a transformation, and they reduced the crew down slowly since I’ve been running the crew here.”

One crew member retired last year, he said.

“It’s probably bare minimum. That’s pretty much what it takes to keep maintenance up and bridge operations,” he said.

The bridge crew costs a bit more than $1 million a year, split equally with the state of Washington, according to agency spokesman Don Hamilton. Routine subcontracted repairs and maintenance are budgeted for another $1.2 million annually.

Gross has a base salary of $59,119 and earned $22,470 in overtime pay in 2017, according to a database of Oregon government employee salaries maintained by the Oregonian.

“Down to the nuts and bolts is what we have to get accomplished,” Gross said. “(Interstate 5 Bridge) is always in the news. It’s on lots of people’s pictures in offices and banks. I see it in the newspapers … it’s iconic. I know it’s very iconic,” Gross said. “With the guys, the crew, we just try to operate and do things, or try to, quietly, and keep it going the best I can without too much commotion and interruption to people.”

He has only five more years to go until his 30 years with ODOT, when he’ll be eligible for retirement. After that, eventually the Columbia River will see a new bridge that doesn’t move and doesn’t require a crew for him to oversee.

“This bridge will get handed off to another supervisor at some point in time who will probably take it to its final stages,” he said. “I would imagine in 20 or 30 years, there should be something here to replace this to be more accommodating to vehicle traffic and then marine traffic.”

Closure hours

The crew must lift the I-5 Bridge when a vessel comes through and needs the clearance with the exception of closure periods from 6:30 to 9 a.m. and 2:30 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, except holidays. Both the northbound and southbound spans will see midmorning lifts lasting 15 minutes around 10 a.m. Jan. 28 and Jan. 31. The lifts are happening ahead of the September 2020 trunnion repair, which will cause a closure of the northbound span for two weeks. See information including a bridge traffic cam here.

Costs

The Interstate 5 Bridge operations do not generate revenue. The crew of 10, including four full-timers, costs $1 million split between Oregon and Washington. Routine subcontracted repairs and maintenance are budgeted for $1.2 million a year.

Working in Clark County, a brief profile of interesting Clark County business owners or a worker in the public, private, or nonprofit sector. Send ideas to Lyndsey Hewitt: lyndsey.hewitt@columbian.com; fax 360-735-4598; phone 360-735-4550.

Body found off forest road near Cougar died of homicidal violence

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A man whose body was discovered Thursday afternoon in northern Skamania County died of homicidal violence, an autopsy conducted Saturday found.

Skamania County sheriff’s deputies responded around 2:15 p.m. Thursday to a call about “suspicious circumstances” on National Forest Road 83, near the junction with National Forest Road 90, about 7 miles east of Cougar. There, they found a dead person.

Investigators have identified the deceased man but are withholding his name until next of kin can be located and notified, according to a Monday news release from the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office says it doesn’t believe there’s any danger or threat to recreationists visiting the Ape Cave or other sites in the area, the news release states.

Anyone who was in the area of Ape Cave and Marble Mountain, which provides access to a Mount St. Helens climbing route, on Wednesday and saw any suspicious activity should contact detectives with the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office at 509-427-9490.

Vancouver’s Mick Hoffman named WIAA executive director

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Helping others spanning 30 years within Vancouver Public Schools as a teacher, coach and administrator is why Mick Hoffman is eager to take on his next challenge statewide.

“It really gives me a chance to expand what we’ve done in Vancouver on a larger scale,” he said, “and to have an even bigger impact. At the end of the day, when we’re all done with what we do, all you can hope for is that people appreciate what you did for them even if they don’t know you did it.

“I’d love to have that opportunity to help create programs and environments to allow others to do the same thing.”

Hoffman, currently VPS’ assistant superintendent and chief operations officer, is taking a piece of Southwest Washington with him when he departs this summer to become the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s new executive director. The association made the announcement Monday at its Winter Coalition meeting in Renton.

Hoffman’s entire educational tenure has been with Vancouver Public Schools, starting in 1989 as an assistant basketball coach at Hudson’s Bay. He also taught and coached basketball and golf at Fort Vancouver before moving to administration in 2001 . He moved onto the district level in 2008. He’s held his current role of assistant superintendent and chief operations officer since 2016.

Hoffman, 49, replaces Mike Colbrese, who retires as the WIAA’s outgoing executive director at the end of this school year. Hoffman said his WIAA start date isn’t finalized, but it is expected to begin this summer.

But Hoffman already is looking into the future of what impact he can make as the association’s fifth executive director. While speaking Monday with The Columbian, not only does Hoffman want to continue the association’s strong work under Colbrese’s leadership that’s received national recognition for sudden cardiac awareness and concussion management, but also finding new ways to enhance revenues to sustain programs. He also wants to boost student involvement in all extracurricular activities.

“We want to take care of the traditional athletes,” Hoffman said, “and we want to take care of the elite athletes. “I’m a huge fan of the underdog. I want kids out there that maybe never thought about doing an art or thought about doing a sport and taking a look at offerings and either expanding them and/or changing them.”

Hoffman also spoke of a better networking tools among member schools, developing resources centers for schools and expanding on the WIAA’s student leadership committee coinciding with the state coaches’ associations.

Hoffman’s prior experience within the WIAA includes an Executive Board member, a classification and transfer committee member in addition to a District 4 board member for 10 years.

Over the course of his career, Hoffman highlighted individuals who helped him along the way.

Now, he wants to give back on a state level just like he has for 30 years in Vancouver.

“I’d love to have an opportunity to help create programs and environments to allow others to do the same thing,” he said.

OMSI added to measles exposure sites; 35 Clark County cases confirmed

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Clark County Public Health has confirmed 35 measles cases, and 11 suspected cases since Jan. 1 as part of its ongoing measles outbreak investigation.

The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland was identified as an exposure site from 2:30 to 7 p.m. Jan. 19.

Two Vancouver child care centers, a Walmart Supercenter in Vancouver and a Vancouver Trader Joes were also identified.

In addition to Clark County there have been confirmed measles cases in the Seattle area, and also in Oregon.

Twenty-five of the Clark County cases are between the ages of 1 and 10; nine are between 11 and 18; and one case is between 19 and 29. Thirty-one Clark County cases are unimmunized, and four are unverified.

Here are the new locations where people may have been exposed to measles:

Child care centers:

  • St. Paul Christian Daycare, 1309 Franklin St., Vancouver:
    • Jan. 16, 17, 18 and 23
  • Yelena’s Daycare, 17007 N.E. 23rd St., Vancouver:
    • Jan. 22 and 23

Health care facilities:

  • Kaiser Orchards Medical Office, 7101 N.E. 137th Ave., Vancouver from 1:50 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24.

Other locations:

  • New Life Mission Church, 3300 N.E. 172nd Place, Portland from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 20.
  • Trader Joe’s, 305 S.E. Chkalov Drive, Vancouver from 12:30 to 3:40 p.m. Jan. 21.
  • Dollar Tree, 305 S.E. Chkalov Drive, Vancouver from 1:10 to 4 p.m. Jan. 21.
  • Walmart Supercenter, 14505 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd., Vancouver 1:30 to 5 p.m. Jan. 21.

What to do if you might be infected

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 90 percent of unvaccinated people exposed to the measles virus come down with the disease. The virus lives in the nose and throat mucus of an infected person, and can survive for up to two hours in an airspace where the infected person coughed or sneezed.

Health officials are urging anyone who has been exposed at an identified location and believes they have symptoms of measles to call their health care provider prior to visiting the medical office to make a plan that avoids exposing others in the waiting room.

If you are unsure of your family’s immunization status, you can view, download and print your family’s immunization information online at MyIR.net or request a copy of your immunization record from the Washington State Department of Health.

Anyone with questions about measles infection or the measles vaccine should call their primary care provider or a county health department:

  • Clark County Public Health, 360-397-8021.
  • Multnomah County, Ore., Public Health, 503-988-3406.
  • Washington County, Ore., Public Health, 503-846-3594.
  • Clackamas County, Ore., Public Health, 503-655-8411.

Clark County Public Health has been regularly updating its list of locations where people may have been exposed to measles. There are dozens of locations in total, including hospitals, Portland International Airport and multiple schools.

Public Health has established a call center for questions related to the investigation. Anyone who has questions about public exposures should call 360-397-8021. The call center is open daily.

For a complete list of exposure sites, visit the Public Health measles investigation webpage at www.doh.wa.gov/YouandYourFamily/
IllnessandDisease/Measles/MeaslesOutbreak
.

Measles symptoms begin with a high fever, cough, runny nose and red eyes, followed by a rash that usually begins at the head and spreads to the rest of the body. A person can spread the virus before they show symptoms.

People are contagious with measles for up to four days before and up to four days after the rash appears. After someone is exposed to measles, illness develops in about one to three weeks.

Measles exposure sites

Clark County Public Health released the following list of locations where people may have been exposed to measles in the Portland-Vancouver area:

Health care facilities:

• The Vancouver Clinic Salmon Creek, 2525 N.E. 139th St., Vancouver.

4:30 to 9:30 p.m. Jan. 23.

8:15 a.m. to noon Jan. 18

• Gresham Troutdale Family Medical Center, 1700 S.W. 257th Drive in Troutdale, Ore., from 12:30 to 2 p.m. Jan. 23.

• Legacy-GoHealth Urgent Care Cascade Park, 305 S.E. Chkalov Drive, Vancouver, from 6:25 to 10:15 p.m. Jan. 22.

• Legacy-GoHealth, 22262 N.E. Glisan St., in Gresham, Ore., from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Jan. 20.

• Memorial Urgent Care, 3400 Main St., Vancouver, from 4:30 to 7:50 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 19.

• Kaiser Cascade Park, 12607 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver.

12:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 19.

7 p.m. Jan. 15 to 2 a.m. Jan. 16.

1 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 12.

• Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center Emergency Department, 2211 N.E. 139th St., Vancouver.

11:40 p.m. Jan. 14 to 5:10 a.m. Jan 15.

5:45 p.m. Jan. 13 and 12:30 a.m. Jan. 14.

8:30 p.m. Jan. 12 to 1 a.m. Jan. 13.

• Kaiser Orchards Medical Office, 7101 N.E. 137th Ave., Vancouver,

1:55 to 6:10 p.m. Jan. 14.

1:50 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24

• Rose Urgent Care and Family Practice, 18 N.W. 20th Ave., Battle Ground, 3:45 to 8 p.m. Jan. 14.

• PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center Emergency Department, 400 N.E. Mother Joseph Place, Vancouver.

12:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 13.

10 p.m. Jan. 12 to 4 a.m. Jan. 13.

• The Vancouver Clinic, 700 N.E. 87th Ave., Vancouver.

9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Jan. 14.

4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 13.

10:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Jan. 12.

3:30 to 7 p.m. Jan. 11.

• Vancouver Clinic Columbia Tech Center, 501 SE 172nd Ave., Vancouver, from 11:30 am to 4 pm Friday, Jan. 11.

• Magnolia Family Clinic, 2207 N.E. Broadway, Suite 200, Portland, from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jan. 8.

Schools and child care facilities:

• Orchards Elementary School, 11405 N.E. 69th St., Vancouver, on Monday, Jan. 14.

• Evergreen High School, 14300 NE 18th St., Vancouver, on Wednesday, Jan. 9.

• Slavic Christian Academy, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Vancouver, on Monday, Jan. 7.

• Cornerstone Christian Academy, 10818 N.E. 117th Ave., Vancouver, on Jan. 4.

• Vancouver Home Connection, 301 S. Lieser Road, Vancouver, on Jan. 7; Jan. 8; and Jan. 11.

• Hearthwood Elementary School, 801 N.E. Hearthwood Blvd., Vancouver, on Jan. 7, 9 and 11.

• Image Elementary School, 4400 N.E. 122nd Ave., Vancouver, on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9.

• Eisenhower Elementary School, 9201 N.W. Ninth Ave., Vancouver, on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9.

• Tukes Valley Primary and Middle School, 20601 N.E. 167th Ave., Battle Ground, on Jan. 8.

• Maple Grove School, 601B S.W. Eaton Blvd., Battle Ground, on Tuesday, Jan. 8 and Wednesday, Jan. 9.

• River HomeLink, 601 S.W. Eaton Blvd., Battle Ground, on Tuesday, Jan. 8 and Wednesday, Jan. 9.

• St. Paul Christian Daycare, 1309 Franklin St., Vancouver, Jan. 16, 17, 18 and 23

• Yelena’s Daycare, 17007 N.E. 23rd St., Vancouver, Jan. 22 and 23

Other locations:

• Dollar Tree, 11501 N.E. 76th St., Vancouver, from 8:10 to 10:50 pm Tuesday, Jan. 15.

• Dollar Tree, 7809-B Vancouver Plaza Drive, Vancouver, from 6:30 to 9:10 p.m. Jan. 15.

• Dollar Tree, 305 S.E. Chkalov Drive, Vancouver from 1:10 to 4 p.m. Jan. 21.

• GracePoint Christian Church, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Vancouver, from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 7.

• Church of Christ Savior, 3612 F St., Vancouver

9:30 a.m. to noon Jan. 6

6 to 11:30 p.m. Jan. 6

9:10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jan. 13.

• Church of Truth, 7250 N.E. 41st St., Vancouver from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Jan. 6.

• Portland International Airport, 7000 N.E. Airport Way, Portland

10:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. on Jan. 7. More specifically, anyone who spent time in Concourse D and the Delta Sky Lounge during that time period.

7:30 to 11 p.m. Jan. 15, baggage claim and south end of the ticket counter (near Alaska Airlines and Starbucks)

• Costco, 4849 N.E. 138th Ave., Portland

1 to 5:30 p.m. Jan. 8.

5:30 to 8:40 p.m.  Jan. 16

• Amazon Lockers, 1131 S.W. Jefferson St., Portland, from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 10.

Rejuvenation, 1100 S.E. Grand Ave. Portland, from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 10.

Pho Green Papaya, 13215 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Jan. 10.

• Chuck’s Produce, 13215 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 8 to 11:45 p.m. Jan. 10 and 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. Jan. 11.

• Ikea, 10280 N.E. Cascades Parkway, Portland, from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 11.

* Fisher Investments, 5525 N.W. Fisher Creek Drive, Camas

6:20 a.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 10

6:20 a.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 11

6:20 a.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 14

6:20 a.m. to 7 p.m. Jan. 15

• Moda Center (Trail Blazers game), 1 N. Center Court St., Portland, from 5:30 to 11:30 p.m. Jan. 11.

• Verizon Wireless at Cascade Station, 10103 N.E. Cascades Parkway, Portland, from 5 to 11 p.m. Jan. 14.

• A Children’s Dentist, 101 NW 12th Ave., Battle Ground, from 1:30 to 6 pm Tuesday, Jan. 8.

• God Will Provide Church, 7321 N.E. 110th St., Vancouver, from 7 to 11 p.m. Jan. 18.

• Fred Meyer, 22855 N.E. Park Lane in Wood Village, Ore., from 11 a.m. to noon Jan. 20.

• Walgreens Pharmacy, 25699 S.E. Stark St., in Troutdale, Ore., from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Jan. 23.

• Vancouver Division of Children, Youth and Families, 907 Harney St., Vancouver, from 12:15 to 5:15 p.m. Jan. 18.

• Golden Corral, 11801 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 4 to 9 p.m. Jan. 19.

• Vancouver Woman, Infant and Children (WIC) office, 5411 E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 2:50 to 6:15 p.m. Jan. 23.

• Tower Mall public areas (entrances and hallways), 5411 E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, from 2:50 to 6:15 p.m. Jan. 23.

• New Life Mission Church, 3300 N.E. 172nd Place, Portland from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 20.

• Trader Joe's, 305 S.E. Chkalov Drive, Vancouver from 12:30 to 3:40 p.m. Jan. 21.

• Walmart Supercenter, 14505 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd., Vancouver 1:30 to 5 p.m. Jan. 21.

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