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AMBOY GIRLS FINISH FOURTH AT STATE TOURNEY
Dixon Student of the Month
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TELEGRAPH Monday, June 9, 2014
SERVING DIXON AND THE SURROUNDING AREA SINCE 1851
WHITESIDE COUNTY | FIRST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
‘It’s about time’
Sterling women first same-sex couple to marry in county BY CHRISTI WARREN cwarren@saukvalley.com 800-798-4085, ext. 5521
STERLING – Theresa Walls and Lisa Schantz didn’t set out to be the first, but, as time and life would have it, they were. On Friday morning, the two became the first same-sex couple to get a marriage license in Whiteside County. “It wasn’t our goal to be number one,” Schantz says, sitting on a couch in their Sterling home. “Yeah, no, we had no idea,”
Walls says. “They were like, ‘You’re our first ones! You’re our guinea pigs!’ So we were just like, oh, OK. I assumed other couples would’ve been there before us.” The two began dating in the late summer of 2007, and had their civil union ceremony Oct. 5 at Rock River Country Club – a “big to-do” with about 200 guests, which is why they didn’t think that, to anyone other than themselves, their signing a piece of paper on a ran-
dom June day at the Whiteside County clerk’s office would be a big deal. They didn’t even really tell many people they were going. Surprise: It was a big deal! “It was an important date to us, but we didn’t really tell a whole lot of people that we were going, so we didn’t expect Michael Krabbenhoeft/mkrabbenhoeft@saukvalley.com anything,” Schantz says. “It was special to us, but we didn’t Lisa Schantz (left) and Theresa Walls, both of Sterling, met in 2006 at a Super Bowl party. The couple was legally married in think it was to everyone else.” Friday in Whiteside County after a law went into effect June 1 MARRY CONTINUED ON A2 that allows same-sex marriages in Illinois.
AP EXCLUSIVE
DIXON | KING KAT TOURNAMENT
A reel hot streak
Ill. has 22 fugitive escaped inmates BY JOHN O’CONNOR AP Political Writer
Photos by Michael Krabbenhoeft/mkrabbenhoeft@saukvalley.com
Joe Dyer, of Rock Falls, unloads his boat Saturday after completing a second day of fishing during the Cabela’s King Kat Tournament Super Event along the Rock River. Dyer and his teammate, Dan Dippel, of Ottawa, won the tournament for a second consecutive year with a 10-catch total weight of 72.5 pounds.
Dyer and Dippel take King Kat title for second consecutive year BY CHRISTI WARREN cwarren@saukvalley.com 800-798-4085, ext. 5521
DIXON – It was about 5 p.m. Saturday when a light rain started to fall on the Rock River. The boats and pickups and people all started clearing out of Page Park. The announcement had been made, and it was official: For the second year in a row, Joe Dyer and Dan Dippel were taking home the big money – $4,500 – in the Cabela’s King Kat Tournament Super Event in Dixon. The first-place winners, from Rock Falls and Ottawa, respectively, have been competing in the catfish tournament since it started in 2009, and
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they’ve placed in all but one year. This year, over the course of 2 days, their fish weighed in at 72.50 pounds, and they caught about 15 total, though only 10 of them could be counted in the final weigh-in. Of the final 10, Dyer and Dippel brought in three channel catfish and two flathead catfish on Friday, and two flathead catfish and three channel catfish on Saturday. The second-place team of Brock Law, of Rock Falls, and Aaron Schrader, of Sterling, trailed by just 1.98 pounds – all the edge Dyer and Dippel needed to win.
INDEX
REEL CONTINUED ON A5
Terry Stone of Prophetstown unloads his catch Saturday at the weigh-in site at Page Park in Dixon.
SPRINGFIELD – Zakar Elbay apparently found religion. The 44-year-old state prison inmate was living at a transition center finishing a 6-year sentence for possession of a stolen vehicle when he got a Christmas Day 2013 pass to work at a religious facility. He never returned. Zakar Elbay Now he’s among nearly two dozen Illinois inmates The Associated Press discovered as “escaped” after compiling and analyzing state data. There’s also Anthony Anthony Hebron, Hebron who was serving 4 years for drug possession when he skipped out of a transition center just a week before Elbay’s disappearance, after getting Jared a pass for dinner Carter and a movie. Donald Scroggins, who would be 86, slipped away from a low-level Menard prison intake facility in southern Illinois on July 31, 1974, where he had been placed after he violated parole on 1960 burglary and weapons charges. And the granddaddy of Illinois fugitives is Harlan Graham, who hasn’t been heard from since April 18, 1955, and would be 111 years old. The AP review was spurred by the escape last summer of Jared Carter from a prison work crew outside the walls of Robinson Correctional Center, which raised questions about how many escape and how quickly those who do are caught. Carter was found 4 days later and was sentenced in March to 11 more years behind bars. ESCAPED CONTINUED ON A4
COMICS ............... A9 CROSSWORD......B9 DEAR ABBY ......... A7
LIFESTYLE ........... A7 LOTTERY ............. A2 NATION/WORLD .. A5
OBITUARIES ........ A4 OPINION .............. A6 SPORTS ...............B1
Today’s weather High 77. Low 57. More on A3.
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