DAILY CHRONICLE
INSIDE
October 17-18, 2015 • $1.50
WEEKEND SERVING DEKALB COUNTY SINCE 1879
WEEK 8 PREP FOOTBALL SCOREBOARD
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DeKalb............................. 28 Morris.................................7 LaSalle Peru..................... 12 Harvard ..............................6 Rockford Christian Life..34 Yorkville........................... 21 Sycamore ....................... 28 Kaneland.......................... 31 Genoa-Kingston..............28 Hiawatha............................6
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State budget impasse forces VAC cuts By BRETT ROWLAND browland@shawmedia.com DeKALB – Ann Hegarty, a 71-year-old DeKalb resident confined to her bed because of a disability, will get one less meal a week starting next month when Voluntary Action Center implements service cuts brought on by the state’s budget impasse. “I don’t know what I’ll do – I guess I’ll have to see what happens,” Hegarty said. “I’m
disabled and on a real tight income. [Meals on Wheels] is a pivotal part of my day.” VAC, a nonprofit transportation and social service agency that serves DeKalb County, announced this week that it will reduce Meals on Wheels service to four days a week in DeKalb, Sycamore, Cortland, Sandwich, Malta and Somonauk. Tuesday meal deliveries will be suspended starting Nov. 3. “It really gets me angry,”
14 or 15. I don’t know why [the government] would take this away.” The cuts come after VAC reduced delivery to three days a week in more rural areas of the county that required paid Bob Pritchard drivers. The agency relies on Ellen Rogers volunteer drivers in DeKalb, Sycamore, Cortland, Sandsaid Hegarty, a Northern Illi- wich, Malta and Somonauk. nois University graduate who “State funding for Meals on previously was employed as Wheels is on hold,” VAC Intera social worker. “I worked all im Executive Director Ellen my life – from the time I was Rogers said. “The reason we
were able to hold off on [service cuts] for as long as we did is because we use volunteers. We have great, great volunteers.” But even with volunteers, cuts had to be made, Rogers said. VAC gets state and federal funding for the Meals on Wheels program, but those revenue sources only cover about 70 percent of the cost of providing the service, the agency said. More than 50 people are on the agency’s waiting
‘This feels very different’
list for services. Meals on Wheels serves from 600 to 700 people a year in DeKalb County, Rogers said. Most of the people who rely on the service are 80 or older and have a fixed income. Many have limited Social Security benefits and might not have family in the area, Rogers said. VAC also plans to cut back its Senior Luncheon program. That program operates with
See VAC CUTS, page A9
Mud strands drivers in S. California By AMANDA LEE MYERS The Associated Press
Monica Synett – msynett@shawmedia.com
The Sax family (from left), Elena, Skyler, 11, Shane, 16, and Ron, celebrate the Cubs advancing in to the National League Championship Series on Friday with a giant Cubs logo mowed into their Genoa home’s front lawn.
Cubs fans bask in success of proverbial ‘lovable losers’ By KATIE SMITH ksmith@shawmedia.com DeKALB – As a boy, Kevin Buick collected hats: one each year from his Uncle Don, whose fanaticism for the Cubs eventually turned to bitterness – but things are changing, and the time has come for those naively hopeful baseball fans, Buick said. No matter the number of disappointments, being a Cubs fan is about unconditional loyalty, said Buick. “I have been waiting for this since I was in elementary school, and it feels much different than 1998, or 2003, or even 1984,” Buick, a Sycamore attorney and die-hard Cubs fan said. After defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in the divisional round, the Cubs open the National League Championship Series at 7 p.m. tonight at Citi Field in New York, where they’ll face an old rival in the New York Mets in a best-of-seven series. Local Cubs bars like Fatty’s, 1312 W. Lincoln Highway, DeKalb, have been overflowing with enthusiastic fans throwing back blue beer and
More inside See page A13 to read about tonight’s NLCS Game 1 between the Cubs and the Mets. yelling at the TV, Fatty’s manager, Brian White said, and tonight will likely be more of the same. “We’ve been very crowded. People are very excited about the Cubs right now,” White said. “Every home run, the place is super loud; every bad call, they get mad.” Buick will be watching the Cubs face the Mets tonight alone with his wife, he said. A viewing party might sound fun in theory, but Buick gets admittedly irritated when others don’t take the game as seriously as he does. “I’ve been watching a lot of games with my wife. It’s not crazy, it’s just a very quiet, intense experience to sit and watch the games. I need to watch it in a trusted environment,” he said. “I am only now trying to learn how to enjoy the tension.” Cubs fans are well known for their suffering, and the Mets are
a classic foil. It was the Mets that eclipsed the 1969 Cubs, erasing a big lead en route to the World Series title that year. But this year might be different, Buick said. “I think at some point, and maybe this team is the manifestation of this – at some point you transcend superstitions. At some point you realize that superstitions are sort of a creation of the mind,” Buick said. “We have transcended the black cat. We have transcended the goat. We have transcended the Steve Bartman episode.” Things are looking up, and the hearts of Cubs fans everywhere are swelling with an optimism they hope will carry the team through the World Series, Genoa fan Rob Sax said. “They’re the lovable losers. [It’s] the same reason everyone in the nation is rooting for the Cubs right now,” Sax said. “... This is the start of some wonderful seasons to come. They’re the one team in baseball that’s been waiting over 100 years to win the World Series. How do you not root for that?” To show his support, Sax mowed a 40-foot Cubs logo into his lawn,
something he hasn’t done since 2008, when the team last made the playoffs. The 2008 Cubs won an NL-best 97 games – as many as this year’s team – but were swept in three games in the opening round of the playoffs by the Los Angeles Dodgers. “We’re Chicago fans through and through,” Sax said. “We love the Bears; we love the Bulls; we love the Blackhawks; we root for the Sox when they make the playoffs, but this is our year.” In fact, the Blackhawks’ recent success might have paved the way for the Cubs, Buick said. “The Blackhawks were a struggling organization. It seems as though the Cubs are following that path ... ,” Buick said. “To think of the possibilities that I could, in one year, see the Stanley Cup on ice in Chicago and see the Cubs win the World Series – there’s no doubt about it. I’m going to wonder if time is about to end. I never ever would have contemplated that possibility, and few Chicago sports fans would have either. “... This feels very different and it just feels like the beginning of a new time for the fans.”
LOCAL NEWS
LOCAL NEWS
LIFESTYLE
Marker moving
Halloween decor Assault charge
DeKalb Park District to move winged ear of corn marker / A3
Welcome Halloween with fun, DIY front-door decorations / C1
Police: Man pointed pistol, drove wheelchair into woman’s leg / A4
LOS ANGELES – Rescuers threw ladders and tarps across mud up to 6 feet deep to help hundreds of trapped people from cars that got caught in a roiling river of mud along a major Southern California trucking route, a California Highway Patrol official said Friday in what he and other witnesses described as a chaotic scene. Amazingly, officials said, no deaths or injuries were reported. The people rescued from State Route 58, about 30 miles east of Bakersfield, were stranded in a powerful storm on Thursday evening. They were rescued in darkness about 10 hours after the storm hit and taken to three shelters. “It was terrifying,” 51-year-old Rhonda Flores of Bakersfield told The Associated Press on Friday. “It was a raging river of mud. I’ve never experienced anything like it, ever.” Flores said she, her mother and her stepfather were driving back to Bakersfield from her sister’s funeral in Utah when the storm hit out of nowhere. “It started raining, and it kept raining, the water started to build up and the mud started coming,” Flores said from the church where she, her family and about 150 other people sheltered overnight. “The water’s rushing by, the mud’s rushing by, then pieces of trees started coming by and the water was past our doors.” Flores said the trio was prepared to jump out of the windows if the water got any higher. Luckily, it subsided. “I’m feeling blessed that we are here,” she said. Sgt. Mario Lopez, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, was at the scene as people were being rescued and said it was chaos. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Lopez said. “The whole side of the hill just came down onto State Route 58 ... There’s no highway.”
See RAIN, page A9
The Santa Clarita Valley Signal via AP
Dark, muddy water rushes down the canyon Thursday under Lake Hughes Road north of Castaic Lake.
WHERE IT’S AT Advice ................................ C4 Classified........................D1-4 Comics ............................... C5 Local News.................... A3-4 Lottery................................ A2 Nation&World..A2, 5, 7-8, 10
Obituaries .........................A4 Opinion..............................A11 Puzzles ............................... C4 Sports..............................B1-4 State ...................................A4 Weather ........................... A12