Snow rescue leads to better equipment Curry County orders Sno Cat to help in future rescue attempts BY DAVID RUPKALVIS The Pilot
Four men may owe their lives to a group of search and rescue deputies from the Curry County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff John Ward said the men became stranded in the mountains
late in January when a winter storm dumped three to four feet of snow in the higher elevations. That night, Jan. 26, just turned out to be the night the four men, Sean Farris, 30, Aaron Farris, 28, Shawn Miller, 29, and Bjorn Schaller, 21, decided to go up into the mountains and make a campfire to cook some food. When they didn’t return home, Shawn and BJ Farris of Brookings called the sheriff’s office to report them missing. Shawn Farris explained the men went up into the mountains before the storm hit. When they had not returned by
midnight, Shawn Farris attempted to go find them himself, but he got stuck in the snow and was forced to return home. Despite the winter storm, search and rescue coordinators Deputy Walter Scherbarth and Deputy Jared Gray got to work. At 4 a.m., the two responded with a search and rescue volunteer to the area only to find the heavy snowfall made it difficult to reach. Ward said due to the conditions, his team knew it had to react immediately. “Situations like this, when there’s extenuating circumstances, one of them was disabled, we just go out
no matter what time it is,” Ward said. “The circumstances dictated to us we need to get out there as soon as possible.” Using a side by side with snow tracks, the search and rescue workers continued to make their way up the mountain. After about six hours of searching, close to 10 a.m., the search and rescue team located the pickup truck the men drove up the mountain in. It was stuck in snow on Wildhorse Road. Sean and Aaron Farris were with the vehicle, and they reported Schaller and Miller had left about an hour earlier to try to hike out.
Deputies took the Farris brothers down the mountain where they were picked up by their father. The sheriff’s office ATV, which had made it up the mountain, was struggling to continue because of the deep snow, making it clear better equipment was needed to find the remaining two men. Ward called Josephine and Jackson counties to ask about using Sno Cat machines, only to learn none were available. Ward then reached out directly to the Tucker So Cat Company in Medford, and they More Rescue, Page A3
Gold Beach looking to expand BY ZACK DEMARS The Pilot
Contributed Photos
Laurie Peterson and Meghan Brace are among the Curry Health Network employees helping with the vaccination efforts.
Curry County ramps up vaccine efforts ZACK DEMARS The Pilot
As supplies of the COVID-19 vaccine slowly become more stable, Curry County’s hospital system is ramping up its vaccination effort. As of Monday, data from the Oregon Health Authority showed just over 1,400 people in Curry County have received a COVID-19 vaccine, including just over 170 who’ve been fully vaccinated with the two-dose sequence. Curry Health Network has been vaccinating health care workers and other Phase 1A populations since it received doses of the vaccine in December. But just last week, staff at the hospital took the first step of expanding vaccine access with several clinics across the county. The clinics aren’t mass vaccination events, and appointments are required for the narrow group which is eligible to receive vaccines under state guidelines – but hospital CEO Ginny Williams says staff are doing all they can to get shots into arms. “Honestly, I think we’ve done a good job,” Williams said. Currently, individuals in Phase 1A and educational staff are eligible to
receive vaccines. Williams said the hospital reached out to a number of organizations in health care settings early in the vaccine rollout to offer vaccination appointments for staff. “For those that want it, we’re almost 100% complete with those folks,” Williams said. Teachers and other educational staff – the next group after health care workers on the Oregon vaccination schedule – are well on their way to being completely vaccinated, too, with Williams projecting they’d be complete by the end of the week. The hospital receives shipments of vaccine each week, and the goal is to use up that quantity by week’s end, maximizing efficiency with appointments scheduled online and a staff of volunteers which moves vaccine recipients from registration to post-shot observation in a matter of minutes. So far, Williams said CHN has come close to that goal, usually with a small handful of each week’s doses still in vials by the end of the week. But a fact she’s proud of? “To date, we have not wasted one dose,” Williams said. More Vaccines, Page A5
Carol Betush and Eleanor Foskett fill out virus paperwork.
Harmony and Me: Bringing people together BY DAVID RUPKALVIS The Pilot
In a time of a global pandemic where it feels like people are always fighting, Tricia Bartlett-Iverson has a suggestion – turn to music. The founder and executive director of Harmony and Me Music, Bartlett-Iverson has seen firsthand the power of music to bring people and cultures together. “Music is the most powerful tool,” she said. “It does so much for therapeutic purposes alone. There are very few people in the world
who can’t engage with music.” Bartlett-Iverson knows how music can impact people, and she hopes to bring that impact to more and more people. Her nonprofit Harmony and Me is based in Brookings, but she hopes to bring it and the power of music to Crescent City and many others places soon. By any description, Bartlett-Iverson had a difficult childhood, spending most of her youth in foster homes. Music gave her a sense of direction then, and her vision of using music to bring people together first started as a 5-year-old.
“It was an experience I had in the community I was in, and I didn’t like it,” she said. “There were all these differences, and no one was coming together. So, I started dreaming of a way to bring us together. We’re all suck here, we might as well get along.” In 2009, while living in the San Francisco area, Bartlett-Iverson launched Harmony and Me as a way to teach young children music and provide comfort and entertainment to the elderly. She taught music to pre-schoolers at Mission San Jose and would
bring the youngsters to assisted living facilities where they would sing for the patients. The result was inspiring for both age groups. When she moved to Brookings, Bartlett-Iverson brought her idea with her and relaunched Harmony and Me. While the pandemic has changed things, it has not stopped her dream. “Right now, we do Zoom classes,” Bartlett-Iverson said. “It’s OK. We might do outside classes. I’m doing babies up to 10 years old.” More Harmony, Page A2
Gold Beach may be getting a little bit bigger. At its meeting Monday, the Gold Beach City Council made another attempt to expand the city limits, reaching up Jerry’s Flat Road to several city-owned lots and one privately owned lot. The move aims to extend the city further up the Rogue River towards the edges of its urban growth boundary and connects the city’s water intake infrastructure with the rest of the city. “Since the 2016 adoption of the Water Master Plan, it had been the plan to annex the city’s critical water infrastructure parcels into the city - under our jurisdiction and control once we had secured the raw water intake parcel,” city staff wrote in planning documents supporting the move. “This plan was put into motion when we acquired the parcel in 2018.” The city also hopes the annexation will encourage future annexations on the road, encouraging development which benefits the city, and will allow the city to exercise more control in the area, city staff wrote. “Local ownership and inclusion within the city limits will provide markedly improved security and the ability to protect, enhance and conserve the property’s scenic and natural resources,” part of the Feb. 1 council report read. It’s the city’s first annexation since 2007 — but Monday’s meeting was the city’s second go-around to make it happen. The first came in December, when councilors considered a similar proposal. At the time, the council approved the first reading of the annexation ordinance, the first of two such approvals it would have to make. But that plan was interrupted by objections from Curry County, which raised concerns about the inclusion of the piece of privately owned property in the annexation plan. Three pieces of property in the plan are owned by the city around the water intake, totaling just under 11 acres. But a fourth piece of property, over 150 acres, is privately owned and has been largely vacant since an old mill burned in 1991, according to city documents. County staff and commissioners objected to the inclusion of that property in the plan, as well as some of the plan’s technical aspects. The county sent a letter to the city council before it considered the first ordinance, and then-chair of the board of county commissioners Chris Paasch reiterated that letter before the city council in December. More Gold Beach, Page A3