Mountain Views News          Saturday, August 28, 2010

4

 
Mountain Views News Saturday, August 28, 2010

New Public 
Health 
Director 
Appointed

Recent Bank Robberies Linked 

Leaders Gather on 90th 
Anniversary of Woman’s 
Right to Vote

By Dean Lee

 FBI investigators now say 
that a man who robbed a 
Wells Fargo Bank Tuesday 
has been linked to at least 
one other bank robbery in 
the city, earlier this month, 
and are now calling him the 
“Drywaller Bandit.”

 FBI Public Information 
Officer Laura Eimiller said 
an unidentified white male 
has also been linked to the 
robbery of a Citibank in the 
100 block of West California 
Boulevard August 13. 

 In both cases she said 
the suspect committed 
takeover style bank robberies 
and demanded cash with 
verbiage, “This is a holdup. 
Nobody move. Give me all 
the money.”

 According to police they 
received a 9-11 call at 
approximately 10 a.m. 
Tuesday of a bank robbery, 
possibly still in progress, 
in the 300 block of 
Colorado Boulevard. Police 
spokesperson Janet Pope-
Givens said arriving officers 
secured the area but the 
suspect had already fled the 
scene. 

 “He was last seen running 
down St. John Avenue,” she 
said. “We don’t know what 
that means, he had a car 
somewhere and jumped in 
that, fled on foot, or hid in an 
apartment complex, we don’t 
know yet.” 

 Pope-Givens said according 
to witnesses the suspect 
entered the building lobby 
wearing a mask, took an 
employee at gunpoint and 
then entered the bank 
demanding money. She said 
the suspect got away with an 
undisclosed amount of cash.

 Eimiller described the 
suspect as late 30s with a 
medium build. The suspect 
wore sunglasses and carried 
what was described as an 
automatic handgun she said. 
He was further described as 
having worn black gloves and 
carried a maroon velvet bag. 
In both cases he also wore a 
baseball cap and a dust mask 
covering his face

 The August 13 robbery also 
occurred in the morning. 
There was no getaway car 
seen in either case. 

 Pasadena Police Chief 
Phillip Sanchez announced 
that Wells Fargo offered a 
reward of up to $10,000 in 
exchange for information 
leading to an arrest. “Anyone 
with any information is asked 
to contact the Pasadena 
Police Department Detective 
Section at 744-4522 and/or 
FBI at 888 CANT HIDE (888 
226-8443),” he said.

 
Dr. Eric G. Walsh has been 
appointed as the director 
of public health and public 
health officer for Pasadena 
City Manager Michael Beck 
announced Tuesday. 

 According to Beck, Walsh is 
set to provide overall medical 
direction and guidance for 
the Pasadena Public Health 
Department and will be 
responsible for enforcing local 
and state public health orders, 
ordinances and statutes. As a 
key coordinator for emergency 
response planning and 
operations, he will work with 
local, state and federal agencies 
to take preventive measures to 
protect and preserve the public 
health Beck explained. 

 “Dr. Walsh is filling a strategic 
executive management 
position and will be actively 
involved in community 
health policy development, 
planning and service delivery,” 
Beck said. “I am impressed 
with Eric’s passion for public 
health and expect Pasadena’s 
Public Health Department 
will become a national model 
under his leadership.” 

 Before coming to Pasadena, 
Walsh worked for the Orange 
County Public Health 
Department as medical 
director of the Family Health 
Division. He served on the 
President’s Council on HIV/
AIDS and the National 
Advisory Council on Sexual 
Health. 

 “I am excited for the 
opportunity to work in a city 
with a rich history, strong 
civic leadership and a highly 
recognized heritage of public 
health work,” Walsh said. “I am 
sure we will build on the strong 
foundation of public health in 
Pasadena and continue to be a 
beacon of great public health 
programs and outcomes in 
California and beyond.” 

 Walsh and his wife Annette 
live in Orange County with 
their children Johan, Jasmine 
and Eric III. They plan 
on moving to or near the 
Pasadena area. 

 Pasadena’s previous director 
of public health, Dr. Takashi 
Wada, became the director 
of the Santa Barbara County 
Public Health Department in 
March. 

 Pasadena is one of only three 
cities in California that have 
municipally managed public 
health departments not under 
the jurisdiction of the county.

 For more information visit 
www.cityofpasadena.net/
publichealth or call (626) 744-
6055.

 About 100 women took part Thursday during a march around city 
hall signifying 90 years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment 
giving women the right to vote. A gathering in the courtyard 
after included speeches by Councilwomen Jacque Robinson and 
Mayor Bill Bogaard among others including former presidents of 
the league of Woman Voters. Many wore white with purple sashes 
and a hat to signify the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

 

 The United States Justice 
Department has asked a 
federal court to permanently 
bar a local business man from 
promoting alleged sham 
pension-plan and welfare-
benefit-plan tax fraud 
schemes, they announced 
Thursday. 

 The civil injunction suit 
against William Alexander, 
and his two companies – 
Retirement Plan Services Inc. 
and Lyons Pensions Inc. – was 
filed in U.S. District Court in 
Los Angeles. Officials said 
the scheme allegedly cost 
the U.S. Treasury at least $30 
million. 

 According to the complaint, 
Alexander helps small 
business owners adopt sham 
pension plans. He allegedly 
falsely advises customers that 
they can claim significant 
deductions for purported 
contributions to these sham 
pension plans in order to 
reduce or eliminate their 
federal income taxes. The 
complaint also alleges that 
Alexander fraudulently re-
characterizes his customers’ 
non-deductible personal 
expenses as purported 
deductible pension-plan 
contributions.

 According to the complaint, 
Alexander helps customers 
adopt pension plans that 
illegally exclude rank-and-
file employees. The complaint 
cites a letter Alexander 
allegedly sent to one of his 
clients, a California physician, 
in which Alexander explains 
that the goal is to “exclude 
the employees from this rich 
pension plan that I use for 
the owner.” The complaint 
further alleges that Alexander 
tries to conceal his pension-
plan scheme by purposely not 
filing required documents 
with the Internal Revenue 
Service and Department of 
Labor.

 Alexander’s promotion 
of the pension plan and 
welfare-benefit tax fraud 
schemes have allegedly cost 
the government at least $30 
million.

 In the past 10 years the Justice 
Department’s Tax Division 
has obtained hundreds 
of injunctions against tax 
scheme promoters and tax 
preparers. Information about 
these cases is available on the 
Justice Department website.

Justice 
Department 
Sues 
Pasadena 
Man to 
Stop Tax 
Schemes

Citizen Journalism Meet-up

 

 

 

 

 The Pasadena Community 
Network and this newspaper 
are holding a workshop on 
Citizen Journalism. 

 This group is the place where 
aspiring journalists can learn 
from trained professionals 
and support their local 
community by covering 
what’s really happening in 
their neighborhoods.

 We will put the news in your 
hands. Learn how to find 
the story, the tools needed 
to capture the story and the 
means to tell the story using 
the power of video, audio 
and print along with online 
social media The next 
meeting will be September 
14, from 6pm to 9pm at 
the Pasadena Community 
Network - Studio G, 2057 N. 
Los Robles Ave.

 For more info call 
626.794.8585 or visit 
pasadenan.ning.com.

 
Learn not just how 
to blog but how to 
report the news

County Anti-Smoking 
Efforts Announced

PCC Receives $1.5 Million Grant

Altadena 
Library to 
Hold Writer’s 
Workshop

 The Pasadena City College 
Program for Academic 
Support Services (PASS), 
which provides support 
and preparation for highly 
motivated, low-income, first-
generation, and disabled 
college students to graduate 
and transfer to a four-year 
institution, recently received 
a $1.5 million grant from 
the TRIO/Student Support 
Services Programs with 
the U.S. Department of 
Education. The grant was 
made possible through 
efforts by Rep. Adam Schiff 
(D-29th District).

 PCC will receive $301,692 
each year for five years 
for a total of $1,508,460. 
“Receiving this grant means 
that PASS can continue 
assisting underrepresented 
students to retain and 
persist in higher education,” 
said Nick Mata, director 
of PCC’s PASS. “There are 
so many barriers out there 
for students, and programs 
such as PASS not only 
provide valuable services, 
but often times serve as 
the only advocates and 
mentors students have when 
everything else is stacked 
against them.” PASS has 
been continuously funded 
by the U.S. Department of 
Education since 1990 and 
serves 200 students annually.

 The TRIO Programs were 
established in 1965 under 
Title IV of the Higher 
Education Act. Congress 
established the TRIO 
programs to help low-
income Americans enter 
college, graduate, and move 
on to participate more fully 
in America’s economic and 
social life.

 For more information, 
contact Mata at (626) 585-
7816.

From Staff Reports

 Health and Human Services 
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius 
joined Los Angeles County 
Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky 
and Mark Ridley-Thomas 
and county Health Officer 
Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding 
Wednesday to announce 
the start of the most 
aggressive, comprehensive 
anti-smoking campaign in 
L.A. County history to reach 
communities with high 
smoking rates across the 
county. 

 “Tobacco use is the single 
most preventable cause of 
disease, disability, and death 
in the United States,” Sebelius 
said. “The Department 
of Health and Human 
Services is committed 
to helping communities 
reduce smoking prevalence 
and decrease exposure to 
secondhand smoke. We are 
proud to be working with 
Los Angeles County, one 
of the leaders in tobacco 
prevention and control.”

 Sebelius explained, this 
anti-tobacco effort will 
include several policy-
based initiatives, social 
services and support for 
quit smoking efforts, as well 
as a high-profile and highly 
targeted media campaign 
to support a broad range 
of tobacco control efforts 
and raise awareness of free 
and low-cost resources to 
help smokers quit. These 
tactics will aim to ultimately 
reduce secondhand smoke 
exposure, discourage tobacco 
use, reduce consumption of 
tobacco products, strengthen 
youth smoking prevention 
efforts, and increase access 
to and utilization of effective 
tobacco cessation services.

 According to The 
Department of Health and 
Human Services overall 
smoking rate for L.A. 
County -- at 14.3 percent -- is 
substantially lower than the 
national average, there are 
still more than one million 
adults and adolescents in 
the county who continue to 
smoke. And smoking rates 
among certain populations 
continue to be much 
higher than the general 
population, including 
African Americans, Asian 
males, LGBT, those living in 
poverty, and those suffering 
from mental health and 
substance abuse problems. 
Among those racial and 
ethnic groups with smoking 
rates higher than the general 
population are: African 
American males (32.1 
percent) and females (19.6 
percent); Latino males (17.7 
percent); Korean males (44.8 
percent); Chinese males (16.4 
percent);Filipino males (17.1 
percent) and Vietnamese 
males (24.8 percent).

 The campaign will 
be funded by a federal 
stimulus grant from the 
Department of Health and 
Human Services (HHS) 
and the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention’s 
(CDC) Communities 
Putting Prevention to Work 
initiative. L.A. County is one 
of 44 communities across 
the nation to receive funding 
from the highly competitive 
initiative and is the largest 
grant recipient, receiving 
$16.2 million for tobacco 
prevention and $15.9 million 
for obesity prevention, for a 
total of $32.1 million.

 Best-selling novelist, award-
winning poet, screenwriter, 
dramatist, journalist, 
commentator and creative 
writing professor at USC, 
Jervey Tervalon, will be 
presenting a workshop 
for writers of all ages and 
experience levels through 
the process of telling their 
story. The workshop is ideal 
for participants looking 
to develop their skill at 
chronicling their life stories, 
assist others who hold valuable 
oral histories by preserving 
their written history, or who 
want to jumpstart a variety of 
writing in a supportive and as 
inspiring environment! 

The workshop starts, 2:00 p.m. 
September 11, in the Altadena 
Library Community Room. 
For more information call: 
(626) 798-0833.

Pet of the 
Week


Study Finds El Niños Are Growing Stronger

 A relatively new type 
of El Niño, which has its 
warmest waters in the 
central-equatorial Pacific 
Ocean, rather than in the 
eastern-equatorial Pacific, 
is becoming more common 
and progressively stronger, 
according to a new study 
released last week by 
NASA and The National 
Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration. 

 The research may improve 
our understanding of the 
relationship between El 
Niños and climate change, 
and has potentially significant 
implications for long-term 
weather forecasting.

 Tong Lee of NASA’s Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory 
and Michael McPhaden 
of NOAA’s Pacific Marine 
Environmental Laboratory, 
Seattle, measured changes 
in El Niño intensity since 
1982. They analyzed NOAA 
satellite observations of sea 
surface temperature, checked 
against and blended with 
directly measured ocean 
temperature data. The 
strength of each El Niño 
was gauged by how much 
its sea surface temperatures 
deviated from the average. 
They found the intensity of 
El Niños in the central Pacific 
has nearly doubled, with the 
most intense event occurring 
in 2009-10.

 “Our study concludes the 
long-term warming trend 
seen in the central Pacific 
is primarily due to more 
intense El Niños, rather than 
a general rise of background 
temperatures,” Lee said .

 “These results suggest 
climate change may already be 
affecting El Niño by shifting 
the center of action from the 
eastern to the central Pacific,” 
said McPhaden. “El Niño’s 
impact on global weather 
patterns is different if ocean 
warming occurs primarily in 
the central Pacific, instead of 
the eastern Pacific.

 “If the trend we observe 
continues,” McPhaden 
added, “it could throw a 
monkey wrench into long- 
range weather forecasting, 
which is largely based on our 
understanding of El Niños 
from the latter half of the 
20th century.”

 Results of the study 
were published recently 
in Geophysical Research 
Letters.

 For more on El Nino, visit: 
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

 What a wonderful dog! Ray, an 
adorable and unique looking, two-
year-old pug mix is calm, well-
behaved, and loving. Ray went out 
with our Mobile Outreach Unit 
and was friendly and personable 
with all the people he met. He got 
along with all the other dogs too! 
Come visit him today!

 The regular dog adoption fee 
is $120, which includes medical 
care prior to adoption, spaying 
or neutering, vaccinations, and a 
follow-up visit with a participating 
vet.

 Please call 626-792-7151 and 
ask for A260687 or come to 
the Pasadena Humane Society 
& SPCA, 361 S. Raymond Ave 
, Pasadena CA , 91105 . Our 
adoption hours are 11-4 Sunday, 
9-5 Tuesday, Wednesday, 
Thursday, and Friday, and 9-4 
Saturday. Directions and photos 
of all pets updated hourly may be 
found at www.pasadenahumane.
org

Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com