HEADLINES & HISTORY SINCE 1879
Goldendale, Washington
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2023
Vol. 144 No. 44
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Meet the Candidates The Sentinel continues its interviews with local candidates for political office. This week we present our conversation with Filberto Ontiveros, running for Goldendale City Council Position 2. Sentinel: What is your experience in community service to date? Filiberto: It’s a long list of things here in Goldendale. I joined the Goldendale Fire Department in, I believe, 2017. It was the first year that our family moved here, and I’ve been with the department since then. I made lieutenant within a couple of years. Also, I became an EMT a couple of years ago as well for the fire department. Along with that, I think my whole life is volunteering. Sometimes it’s with organizations and sometimes it’s just jumping in and helping out wherever I can. It’s just been a whole life of service for our communities. Where we lived before back in Nevada, it was a small town, kind of like Goldendale, one grocery store and everybody willing and able to help. Everything is service-oriented. There are no big organizations, businesses, or agencies that provide help, so you have to fill in unlike in the big cities where you would have big services. Sentinel: Why do you feel you are the better candidate for this position? Filiberto: Because I like to be involved, and I like to be informed. Our son was born in 2008. He was born with a con-
LOU MARZELES
CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATE: Filiberto Ontiveros is running for Position No. 2.
genital condition. I was involved with a disabilities community and the Governor’s Council of Developmental Disabilities in Nevada, and I learned how to advocate for people whose voices are quieted or who don’t have voices of their own. In that I feel I’m the better candidate, to often speak for those who either don’t have the ability to speak for various reasons or are in a position where their voice doesn’t count as much. I’m often looking at: what is the bigger picture? What are those voices that need to be brought up? I’m in continued involvement with the community, through school services with my kids attending here at the high school. They’re all graduated, and then we have a couple in online school, but I became involved with the different activities, always supporting the school. In the small community, you cannot have a good community without good programs at the school. You cannot have a
See Vote page A8
This Sunday
The Soul of Addiction
The Horror
Fentanyl users and their families share their experiences Part 3 LOU MARZELES EDITOR Today The Sentinel continues a multipart series of first-hand accounts from fentanyl users. The information is compiled from a variety of sources, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity either directly with The Sentinel or through an intermediary. To protect their privacy, names and details that could be used to identify the sources have been altered, though the information about how their experiences unfold is accurate. Here is a brief recap of key information from previous stories in this series: • A dose of fentanyl small enough to cover the tip of a pencil can be sufficient to cause death • The fentanyl high is brief, typically two to three hours • It takes progressively more fentanyl to get high as the body develops resistance to the drug • The need for increased quantities of fentanyl to get high increases the risk of lethal overdose • Withdrawal from fentanyl occurs virtually as soon as the high wears off • Withdrawal is horrifically painful, leading users to immediately seek additional doses to avoid the pain
• Narcan will save a life in the event of an overdose, but it also instantly initiates painful withdrawal • Fentanyl tablets are cheap, usually less than the cost of a candy bar • To keep a steady supply of fentanyl—enough to forestall withdrawal upon the cessation of the high—ends up costing large amounts of money Ben Annie normally avoided her friend Ben when he was on fentanyl. She wasn’t all that crazy about being around him in general—he was a little too pushy with his affection, though that was more of an annoyance than a serious problem. When he was high, he was just incoherent, like he couldn’t put two sentences together. She got tired of trying to follow a conversation with him. She would find out later his drug-induced incoherence was likely a heightened reaction to an existing psychological condition. Sometimes, she was told, a drug can exacerbate mental illness states. Before the crisis, Ben held to Annie like static cling. He was just always in her orbit. She grew to recognize and accept that. Even so, his usage was risky for her, she realized. She was not that
long off the habit that had captured him. What she could follow in his highs was bothersome. He spoke in dark imagery, using language that was scary and offensive. She was reluctant to repeat it for this story, and even if she did—judging from the brief samples she shared—we couldn’t run it. But it was the tone more than the content that worried her. Ben had been on a rebound. Annie had never seen him like this. He was five days clean of drugs, three days sober. He said that hadn’t happened since he was a teenager. Now, in his 40s, there was a hint of hope. Annie was inspired to help him get into a fullscale detox program. The way detox works is, first you go through a detox regimen for three days. Then you could get into a treatment bed for the follow-through to being rid of drug dependency. If they could just find a bed in a detox facility for him. It wasn’t that easy. To get the bed, you had to go through detox for three days. But Ben was clean at the moment. It was a bizarre catch-22. Annie Annie was 15 when she had her first experience with fentanyl. A dealer trolling for fresh clients
See Horror page A8
Internet service down for most of a day LOU MARZELES EDITOR The man on the phone at an area internet provider described it as “someone accidentally shut off the wrong switch.” He called it a third-party entity, as opposed to someone from the internet providers that were shut down for almost 12 hours in some places all through Wednesday, October 25. Blue Mountain, Rally Networks, and CenturyLink were among the providers hit. For much of the day, much of the community felt trapped in a 1950s science fiction movie about how time stopped around the world because the pilot of an alien spaceship was trying
to warn mankind about its errant path. It was almost eerie to discover how dependent people have become on the ability to access the world through a screen on their desks. Around Goldendale, multiple businesses were affected. Internet was down at the Klickitat County offices. The Sentinel could not upload news to its website the entire day. Yet some small pockets of residents around the city were unaffected. Rally was able to restore service by mid-afternoon. Blue Mountain came back online around 6:30 p.m. Reports vary on CenturyLink’s restoration. The man who described the in-
See Internet page A8
LOU MARZELES
HAPPY WINNER: Ralph Daub of White Salmon is winner of The Sentinel’s front-cover photo contest for its Klickitat County 2024 calendar. Here he holds the calendar and his Amazon Fire HD8 Plus tablet he takes home as his prize.