Community Your health: IN OUR OPINION Sports digest Ask Dr. Gott Too late to make it nice .............Page 6 ..............Page 3 ......................................Page 4 INSIDE Mendocino County’s World briefly The Ukiah local newspaper ..........Page 2 Tomorrow: Mostly sunny and breezy 7 58551 69301 0 TUESDAY June 19, 2007 50 cents tax included DAILY JOURNAL ukiahdailyjournal.com 16 pages, Volume 149 Number 71 email: [email protected] Another ab Summer camp fun! diver drowns Parents, kids on Coast have choices 7th ocean death this year By BEN BROWN By BEN BROWN The Daily Journal The Daily Journal A San Francisco man died in an “apparent chool’s out and the books are closed drowning” off the Mendocino County coast on for another summer. For those look- Sunday while diving for abalone, bringing the Sing for activities for their children, death toll to seven this year. there are several summer day camps Sun Leung Wong, 51, of San Francisco, was available. found floating motionless in the water at 9:30 Among them is the Summer Safari a.m. Sunday 30 yards offshore near Jack Peters Day Camp organized by the City of Creek, according to reports from the Mendocino Ukiah which opened on Monday. The County Sheriff’s Office. camp is for children between the ages of Two other divers who were in the area saw 6 and 12. Wong’s wife in distress on the shoreline and Camp Director Matt Grebil said there approached her. When they got close they saw were 110 campers registered on the first Wong’s body in the water and went in to rescue day and that 75 were present. him. “It’s a pretty good number compared They pulled Wong from the water and war- to past years,” he said. “Popularity has dens from the Department of Fish and Game arrived and preformed CPR until they were grown.” relieved by ambulance personnel. Camp members can participate in a Wong was pronounced dead at the scene by number of activities including arts and EMS personnel. crafts, sports, games, swimming, cooking, Sheriff’s Capt. Kevin Broin said an autopsy field trips and more. was performed Monday to determine cause of Camp starts at 7:30 a.m. and runs until death. The incident remains under investigation. 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Camp Wong is the seventh victim in what is quickly will remain open until Aug. 24. becoming the deadliest year along the Unsurprisingly, the majority of Mendocino Coast in recent memory. campers chose to spend their afternoon in In April, Arthur Boyd, 70, of Atascadero and the city’s pool to avoid Monday’s heat. Selina Sau Yee Cheung, 60, of Gilroy, Man Jay Others played baseball nearby until the Yang, 36, of Suisin City, 55-year-old Hak Song game was broken up for a short period of Kim and another 55-year-old man from Tracy were all found dead along the Mendocino Coast. time by the arrival of the ice-cream man. Boyd, Cheung, Yang and the unidentified man Grebil said this was his fifth year from Tracy were all harvesting abalone. Kim working at the day-camp. was fishing. “A lot of our staff are returners,” he said. MacLeod Pappidas/The Daily Journal Mendocino Fire Chief Danny Hervilla said Kids can register for the camp on site at Camper Celeste Short takes the plunge on a hot summer day in one of the pools at Todd Grove Park. this number of deaths is unusually high on the Mendocino coast. He said the area usually aver- the Todd Gove Park clubhouse or at the city building at 411 ages six deaths a season. West Clay Street. For more information, call 467-2854 or Ben Brown can be reached at [email protected] 463-6231. The Redwood Health Club is offering two summer camps. One, for children from the ages of 4 to 7 includes, games, Alliance has music, art and swimming lessons. The camp runs from 8:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. The second camp, for children 7 to 12 years old, includes sports such as soccer, flag football, relays, indoor hockey and hopes for basketball. The camp runs from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. ‘Green’ goal Both camps run in four sessions held between June 18 and By BEN BROWN Aug. 17. For more information, call Kristen at 468-0441. The Daily Journal The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage is hosting The phrase “Green Mendocino” can mean a a Chinese language and culture summer camp from July 2 to lot of different things, but the Mendocino July 13. County Promotional Alliance is hoping to show The 10-day camp focuses on introducing students to that Mendocino Chinese language, culture, and art, but also integrates the is California’s experience of being in a Buddhist monastery and activities to “greenest” promote awareness. county. The camp is open to children ages 5 to 14. For more infor- “We were mation, visit www.igdvs.org, or call Heng Yin at 468-9112. green before it Willits Shakespeare Company is offering a Free Summer was fashion- Youth Theater, youth ages 8 to 18. able,” said Julia Conway of the The program will run three days a week through July 21, MCPA. ending with a special performance at the annual barbecue The MCPA is and tomato toss. working on For more information contact the Willits Shakespeare compiling a list Company at 456-0152. of green busi- Ben Brown can be reached at [email protected] nesses to help environment sell the idea of Camp counselor Andrew Brown throws a wiffle a green pitch to camper Korvin Swinney, who is trying to Mendocino County. knock it out of the park. “It’s an underlying spirit that runs through the county,” Conway said. There are already several smaller lists of businesses that use sustainable practices. Conway said there are eight or nine small data- bases but no single, centralized one. Thompson bill fights Central Valley siphon “Everybody has word of mouth, everybody By JOHN DRISCOLL channel and banks believed nec- With all the water problems in project are working to find funds knows somebody,” she said. The Times-Standard essary to make the river a better California, there is rarely enough for an estimated $500 million The MCPA has already compiled a list of U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson has place for salmon to spawn, and money to go around for restora- restoration settled on after an 18- more than 100 businesses from those lists, but introduced legislation designed to the rest would be for operation tion projects. In recent years, the year court battle between conser- still need to verify that they are, in fact, protect the ongoing Trinity River and management. Thompson said Trinity River Restoration vation and farming interests. “green.” restoration from having its funds in a phone interview that a com- Program based on the 2000 deci- In May, the House passed leg- “We’re still in the data-gathering phase,” siphoned away by another major promise being struck on the San sion by then-U.S. Interior islation setting up a reserve fund, Conway said. restoration project in the works Joaquin could affect funds for the Secretary Bruce Babbitt has seen but one that contains no real Conway said she hopes the list can be the on the San Joaquin River. Trinity, and after hearing from the about $10 million a year. money. Hence the concern that start of a platform that can be used to bring the The North Coast Democrat Hoopa Valley Tribe, he decided to Thompson said it’s unlikely other projects could suffer to county’s 52 local conservation groups together. filed the bill on Thursday, which draft the bill. that either project will get as jump-start the high-profile San Conway said they hope to have the census would guarantee some $16 mil- ”I want to make sure that folks much money as it needs, but he Joaquin project that would send a completed in two weeks and have it ready to lion a year for the program, $6.5 don’t forget the Trinity has a lot hoped the Trinity project would- portion of the water used by present at the opening of the new Howard million of which would go toward of work to do as well,” Thompson n’t lose ground. farms in the Friant region of the Hospital, the first rural green hospital. mechanical modification of the said. Proponents of the San Joaquin valley downstream for salmon. Ben Brown can be reached at [email protected] 2 – TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 2007 DAILY DIGEST Editor: K.C. Meadows, 468-3526 The Ukiah Daily Journal [email protected] by Israeli assurances that humanitarian which carried the headline — “Hillary contributing to the delinquen- aid would go through. But Israeli offi- Clinton (D-Punjab) — and referred to POLICE REPORTS cy of a minor at 1:21 Friday. cials said they had not figured out how to Bill and Hillary Clintons’ investments in The following were BOOKED -- Rutilio The world briefly deal with Gaza’s Hamas rulers. India; her fundraising among Indian- compiled from reports Escobar, 42, of Redwood Americans; and the former president’s prepared by the Ukiah Valley, was booked into jail U.S. and Iraqi forces Yahoo chairman Terry $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a Police Department. To on suspicion of driving under Semel ends six-year company that has moved U.S. jobs to anonymously report the influence at 3:05 a.m.