INSIDE: We can dig it ... Island Life, A12
Record South Whidbey
SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 2013 | Vol. 89, No. 48 | www.SOUTHWHIDBEYRECORD.com | 75¢
Jim Larsen / The Record
Deborah Congdon pets her dog Ostella as she watches her apartment turn to ashes. She was sleeping next door in her parents’ home when a neighbor’s shouts woke her up. She and the dog escaped as flames were approaching the house.
Jim Larsen / The Record
Walt Congdon, owner of the garage and apartment that burned, explains how he sees the situation to South Whidbey Fire/EMS Chief Rusty Palmer. Congdon arrived home from lunch while the building was still burning.
Woman escapes house as apartment burns next door By Jim Larsen Record editor A raging fire destroyed a two-story garage with an apartment on the top floor near Mutiny Bay early Wednesday afternoon. South Whidbey Fire/EMS responded to a
call that came in about 1:30 p.m. to find the garage entirely engulfed in flames, said Chief Rusty Palmer as he watched firefighters pour water on the black, smoky remnants of the building. The building was near the intersection of Mutiny Bay and Bush Point roads. The apartment resident, Deborah
Congdon, was taking a nap next door in her parents’ house. “I’m fine, they saved me,” she said, sitting in a neighbor’s vehicle as her apartment smoldered. Nancy Manjikian, a nurse at Whidbey General Hospital, saw the flames as she was coming home with her parents, George and
Extra year proves a worthy investment By BEN WATANABE Staff reporter Anthony Banks is a popular kid at South Whidbey Academy. He walks a fine line with his social life. He had to, it almost cost him his high school education. “I wasn’t ready for adulthood, to go out and live on my own,” Banks said. “Dropping out and getting my GED wasn’t the answer.” As a senior last year, he learned he did not have enough credits to graduate. It was tough for him
to hear. Once graduation rolled around and pictures of his peers in their caps and gowns popped up on Facebook, it was nearly unbearable. “People were seeing that I wasn’t graduating, that was a challenge for me and hard to accept,” he said. Banks, 18, bucked up, took on that challenge and will graduate from the South End’s alternative school next week as the student choice class speaker. For the fifthyear senior, simply receiving See Banks, A6
Miriam Clark. “It was fully engulfed,” Nancy said. She ran across the field to the house in which Congdon was sleeping, perhaps 50-feet from the burning garage. She started yelling at anyone inside the See Fire, A16
Academic wanderer finds home at academy By BEN WATANABE Staff reporter
Ben Watanabe / The Record
Anthony Banks and Colleen Klock take a break from classes at South Whidbey Academy in the alternative school’s last few weeks of the school year. Banks, a fifthyear senior, is the student choice class speaker at the graduation June 17. Klock is the school’s valedictorian with a 3.98 grade point average.
Attending eight schools in 13 years of schooling is quite a feat. Colleen Klock tried various academic arenas, public, private, charter and home school. None really clicked. Then her family moved to Clinton where she found Bayview School, the South Whidbey School District’s former alternative high school. “I’m a curious person,” said Klock, 18. “I like to try out different things.” The Michigan native
quickly grew fond of her new home. For one, she no longer braves “freezing cold winter.” Instead she gets to walk through the woods around her Clinton home, even in the rain. “I love the rain,” Klock said. Whidbey Island provided Klock, a hobby painter, with abundant inspiration for landscapes and nature. An older population on the South End gave her ideas for other paintings and photographs of elderly men, like her long lost favorite painting of an See Klock, A6