SOUNDER THE ISLANDS’
Serving Orcas, Lopez and San Juan County
WEDNESDAY, February 24, 2016 VOL. 49, NO. 8 75¢ islandssounder.com
S pr ing 2 016
HEALTH & WELLNESS Guide
renew • reflect • revitalize A SUPPLEMENT TO THE JOURNAL OF THE SAN JUAN ISLANDS, ISLANDS’ SOUNDER AND ISLANDS’ WEEKLY
Annual guide inside this edition
Building Jordan a set of wheels by Colleen Smith Armstrong Editor/Publisher
One of Jordan Griffin’s greatest wishes is to downhill mountainbike alongside his best friends. As a paraplegic, that requires a very specialized and expensive piece of equipment. Driven by the desire to see his friend’s dream become a reality, Spencer Sare has built that bike, detailing the process from start to finish as his college senior project.
“When we started last September, everyone kind of laughed at us and said we couldn’t do it,” said Sare, who was joined by three other Washington State University mechanical engineering students on the endeavor. From his design on the computer to long hours spent in the WSU machine shop, the bike took three months to complete. Sare says it is one of the most ambitious senior projects that has ever been
Contributed photos
Above: Jordan Griffin sitting on his specially made mountain bike. He is pictured with the team who built it. L-R: Andrew Graham, Christopher Ryan, Spencer Sare and Curtis Zehnder, Right: The completed bike.
Sheriff apologizes Islanders targeted for slow response by ‘IRS’ scams time in assault case by Meredith M. Griffith Sounder contributor
A reward for information about the alleged home invasion has reached nearly $20,0000 by Courtney Oldwyn Journal reporter
Assaulted at gun point in the middle of the night in his home on Orcas Island two weeks ago, Josh Mayson and his family are still reeling over the fact that a sheriff ’s deputy didn’t arrive to investigate until 8:30 a.m. the next morning. “This was a huge error on the part of the dispatcher and the onduty supervisor that night,” said San Juan County Sheriff Ron Krebs. “The family is rightfully incredibly upset, as are we here at the Sheriff ’s office. Everyone involved understands it was not the right thing to do.” Mayson, a newly hired OPALCO apprentice lineman, was staying in
a vacation rental cabin when a masked, gloved assailant allegedly came into his home around 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 9. He says the man held a gun to Mayson’s head, threatened to kill him and his daughter and stated that he “had nothing left to live for” and was “not afraid to die,” according to Mayson’s stepfather Dan Kimple, who spoke during an OPALCO board meeting on Feb. 19. According to Kimple, Mayson texted his brother just after the assailant left. His brother came to the cabin, where they together called 911. They both spoke with the dispatcher who allegedly told
It’s tax filing season again, and area scammers seem to think it’s also open season on taxpayers: a time to bilk people of their hard-earned savings, or out of enough sensitive information to steal their identity. Local residents have been targeted in the past few days. Emergency dispatchers say one day recently saw 20 calls from islanders reporting phone scam attempts. “Obviously they were hitting this county,” said local undersheriff Brent Johnson. “With 20 calls reported in one day, really, you can assume there’s many more.” The swindlers appear to be working a few different angles. Lopez resident Jasmine Luckhurst said scammers claiming to be the IRS have phoned her house daily, for weeks, until she finally gave them a good sound ticking off. San Juan Islander Amelia Felton reported receiving multiple text messages claiming to be from Net Spend, the company that works with TurboTax to distribute prepaid cards containing tax refunds. The messages, sent to even her school-aged child, asked her to phone about a “disabled” - and completely imaginary - Net Spend card. And Orcas Islanders Nicole Kraayeveld and Lynn Cunningham reported voicemails threatening a lawsuit by the IRS. Many others noted similar experiences. The IRS itself warns against such scams on its website, offering the following tips to avoid becoming a victim: • Scammers make unsolicited phone calls or emails, demanding that victims pay bogus tax bills by sending them cash, most often via a
SEE ASSAULT, PAGE 5
SEE SCAMS, PAGE 5
executed at WSU. As two sets of identical twins on a tiny island community, Spencer and Sam Sare and Jordan and Josh Griffin have been best friends for more than decade. The four boys bonded over sports and outdoor adventures, but when Jordan became paralyzed from the chest down in a 2008 snowboarding accident, their focus changed. He was still included in their outings – but now as a bystander. After high school, Jordan studied film and media production at the Art Institute of Seattle. He is currently on medical leave but will be at the University of Washington-Tacoma by this summer. Despite some health setbacks, Jordan has been able to ski, water-ski and go hand-cycling. But mountain-biking was still an unattainable dream, as most bikes go for $12,000. “When I was looking all the different adaptive sports I could do, I had mentioned it (downhill biking) to Spencer briefly. I didn’t really think he was actually going to build one,” Jordan said. In his freshman year of college, Spencer created a 3D prototype of a bike that Jordan could use on the mountain. He later revisited the design during his senior year as
SEE BIKE, PAGE 6
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