Cover Story
Fraud Busters
Amid the celebration of her October 2003 wedding and the joyous reception for family and friends, Klare Richardson-Tunnell barely noticed the smiling guest with the video camera busily recording the day’s events. His, after all, was only one of numerous cameras at work. So of course the bride had no way of knowing that the…
Swazey Street standoff
If you try to go home after work on St. Patrick’s Day, only to find that your street has been blocked off by a SWAT team because a man is holed up in an recreational vehicle with a shotgun and an AR-15, there’s really only a few reasonable things to do. In my case, it…
Urban Unrest
First it was Diamond Adult World. Then it was the Victoria’s Secret window display last year. Now, in keeping with what seems to be SLO County’s zero-tolerance policy for less-than-wholesome retailers, a group of parents and their supporters calling themselves “Urban Outfitters Protestâ€? marched in front of the recently-opened Urban Outfitters in downtown SLO to…
SLO’s alcohol problem
San Luis Obispo is a college town with an alcohol problem. No news there. But what you might not know is just how much time local officers spend arresting people for violating penal code 647(f), i.e., drunk in public. # In 2004, SLO PD arrested 957 for drunk in public, which was about 44 percent…
Creating tomorrow’s designs today
The red canary was the world’s first genetically engineered animal, a project that began in 1920’s Germany, toward the end of a pet canary obsession that had already swept through much of Western Europe. It would be another 40 years before amateur scientists in England found success in breeding the crimson songsters. # Though hardly…
I hate transients
I hate transients. I hate watching them tramp along the sidewalks with their $800 Gibson guitars, dragging their sad looking dogs—or worse, cats—on a leash. I hate walking past them as they sit on public benches begging for money. Some go for the cutesy approach: a sign that reads, “I bet you can’t hit me with…
Crime craze
It was the week from Hell. Paradise lost in a hail of bullets that resulted in the deaths of four people following a senseless shooting, a high-speed chase involving kidnapping, and a SWAT standoff (see John Peabody’s story below). It could have been worse, but not much.  It all started during the lunch hour Wednesday…
FAST FACTS
Several local organizations have come together to raise funds for the family of Alanna Williams, the 10-year-old Los Osos girl nearly drowned when she was swept out to sea just north of Morro Rock. Though her condition is stable, her health is fragile and she remains hospitalized at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. A benefit…
Think of the children
First, they came for Victoria’s Secret, and even though I was not a mannequin in the window, I spoke out. Still, a grassroots citizens group managed to successfully apply the biblical mandate of clothing the naked, even though, in this case, the poor soul who received the fruits of their efforts was a chunk of…
Letters
Dumping on Pozo When did Pozo Road become a dumping ground for mountains of dirt and rocks, broken pieces of asphalt and concrete and all kinds of garbage that people want to dispose of but are too, er, ethically challenged to haul away themselves? There have been old broken-down travel trailers, cars etc., and right now…
