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CRIME | San Juan County Sheriff ’s Call Log [3] NEWS | New home for the Orcas Off-Leash Area? [6] COMMUNITY | Library Fair is coming up this weekend [9] ARTS | Hildreth, McCune and Lund in concert [11]
WEDNESDAY, August 5, 2015 VOL. 48, NO. 31 75¢ islandssounder.com
Canela, the wonder dog by COLLEEN SMITH ARMSTRONG Editor/Publisher
When Dwight Guss rescued his dog Canela from a gutter in Mexico, she fit in the palms of his hands. At 7 weeks old, her eyes were barely open and she was covered in fleas and ticks. Guss has brought back a handful of dogs from south of the border and found homes for them on Orcas. But there was something special about Canela – Spanish for cinnamon – and he knew he had to keep her. Five years later, she was able to return the favor and save a fellow canine in need. On Aug. 6, Salvatore Annino lost his 2-year-old bull terrier Jake while on a walk near his home on Loon Song Lane. After searching all day and into the night, he called Orcas Fire and Rescue for help the following morning. Volunteers began a search and rescue effort, which included EMT
Guss and his beloved Canela. After smelling the bed of the lost pup, she went into the woods with Guss by her side. After just 15 minutes, she took off down a steep trail. Guss ran after her and found Canela sitting next to Jake, whose leash had become stuck on a tree root. “She just knows what to do,” Guss said. “She led us right to the dog, who was shaking and scared. We would have walked right past the trail. He wasn’t even barking.” Annino and his partner Peter Dennis are brand new residents of Orcas, having arrived on the island from Florida only four days before Jake went missing. “I am so relieved. It was traumatic,” Annino said. “The entire community response has been incredible.” Dennis says Jake has been an urban dog and is still getting accustomed to having so much freedom to run. Annino estimates
Contributed photo
Right: Dwight Guss and Canela, who helped find Jake in the woods. Above: Jake after his big ordeal. he walked past the area where Jake was several times and didn’t even know he was there. He was missing for just about 24 hours. Their dog is now getting a GPS collar. “Orcas Fire and Rescue was remarkable,” Dennis said. “They treated us like family.” Colleen Smith Armstrong/Staff photo
What it means to New reservations website be county coroner by MEREDITH M. GRIFFITH Sounder contributor
Editor’s note: This story contains information that may be disturbing for some readers. by CALI BAGBY
Journal interim editor
When the call comes in, Randall Gaylord drops whatever he is working on – whether he is sitting down to a meal or prepping for an important court case. “When they come up, they become more urgent than anything else,” he said. “People need to be contacted … all of this has to happen right away, but it can be very disruptive.” As county coroner, Gaylord is the first person in line to deal with unexpected or violent deaths. Like all counties with a population less than 40,000, Gaylord is the coroner as well as the county prosecuting attorney. Since he was elected prosecuting attorney in 1994, dealing with death has become a part of his life on a weekly basis, revealing a part of the island that is not entirely visible to the general population. But facing death is not unique for a coroner. What makes Gaylord’s job peculiar is the absence of a morgue facility or a coroner vehicle. When tragedy strikes or even when someone passes from a long illness, what becomes of the body and what steps are taken to ensure that the person is laid to rest is more complicated in an island setting. The call to the coroner’s office is just one stop on a longer journey in the death process on the islands. “Every case has a puzzle to it,” said Gaylord. “There is always an extra element, a puzzle that we have to solve.” Cases that fall under the coroner’s office are defined as a death that is unexpected or of violent causes. If a person dies from natural causes, but was not seen by a doctor, the coroner could be called to investigate the
SEE CORONER, PAGE 6
When Ballard resident Michael Murray visited Orcas Island with his wife this March, they almost missed their ferry home. “I didn’t realize there was a reservation system, and there was a really small amount of drive-up space available,” said Murray, an entrepreneur with a background in energy conservation and software development. “We just got lucky.” He tried using his smartphone to book a spot, but it was too close to the sailing time and the reservation was not allowed. “I thought, this is going to hit a lot of people off-guard,” he said. Later, as he browsed the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) ferry reservations website, Murray saw room for improvement. “This is a great example of services that come from government agencies that are really lacking in some respects,” he said. Murray thought it would be “fun” to create his own user-friendly gateway website designed to automate some functions and to take some
of the frustration out of the reservations experience. “The expectations that people have of websites today are so incredibly high,” he explains. “Companies like Amazon and Netflix have literally tens of millions a year that go into website usability. We know for a fact that WSDOT does not have those kinds of resources, so there is this increasing gap between user experience and expectations, so that’s a gap I like to play in.” Murray’s new site, aptly named FlexFerry, is designed to soften some of the rigidity structured into the state reservations portal. Currently WSDOT makes 90 percent of all vehicle spaces on ferry sailings reservable. Thirty percent of available normalheight vehicle space on each ferry is released two months prior, another 30 percent at two weeks prior and the last 30 percent two days prior. Since there is no waiting list, ferry riders’ best chance at nabbing a certain sailing is to lurk online at 7 a.m. on the exact release day. All over-height vehicle space is released during the initial wave, causing additional difficul-
ties for business owners needing those spaces with less advance notice. And there is no provision made for islanders on non-
SEE WSF, PAGE 7
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