Malinda Lasley, a young woman who wants to someday be a diesel auto mechanic, Saturday night realized another dream of a young lifetime as she was crowned Miss Valley Center 2003.
Her court consisted of First Runner-up Marlene Zacharia and Second Runner-Up Heather Gillum.
The new queen is a 17 year old senior at VCHS, where she is an active athlete (varsity water polo, among others) who describes her philosophy as “To be a duck. Change the things you can, but don’t worry about the things you can’t. Let it roll off your back like a duck!”
Dianna Green (Miss VC ‘96) was the Mistress of Ceremonies, picking up the baton dropped when longtime MC Ed Phillips moved to Nevada.
“He will be a tough act to follow, but I think I have an advantage because I have youth and a pretty face,” she declared.
Eight young women vied on the stage of the VC Middle School auditorium for the honor of representing Valley Center in the coming year and competing for the title of Fairest of the Fair in May: LaVona Boyer, Tabitha Miller, Heather Gillum, Malinda Lasley, Jesse Oswald, Marlene Zacharia, Taryn Knapp and Monique Lawson.
An audience of close to 300 packed the auditorium, yelling and cheering for their favorite, especially when they danced their opening dance number
Each young woman, as she was introduced in casual sportswear, gave an opening speech in which she talked about herself and her aspirations.
La Vona Boyer said she wants to be a teacher and to also travel the world.
Tabitha Miller talked about her passion for dance. “Without dance I wouldn’t be able to let the world see me without walls around myself,” she said.
Heather Miller confided that she knows, “how it feels to see my world shattered in pieces,” but also that “success is self-made and luck is a relative term.”
Jesse Oswald told how her life was changed by her experience at Camp Wynola in Julian so that she wants to become a missionary youth pastor.
Marlene Zacharia described her life as being like a party, busy and chaotic. “The most important aspect of a good party is keeping a good attitude. Life is a celebration.”
Taryn Knapp told how she wants to be an exotic animal trainer and share her love of animals with disabled and special education children.
Monique Lawson described how she loves teaching Pop Warner cheerleading to children, how she has had five poems published and of her ultimate ambition to become an animator with Disney Studios.
Malinda talked about herself and described herself as being “equally at home in a New York Broadway Play as a family barbecue.” She described her love of horses, the desert, the river, friends, of being a friend and a blue-eyed blonde, and of her ambition to become an diesel mechanic in the automotive industry.
“I’d like to stand up here and tell you that I’m extraordinary but the extraordinary thing about me is that I’m a typical teenage girl. I’m a friend, a Christian, an athlete and a dreamer by choice. . . I’m special because I’m myself.”
Later on the girls appeared in evening gowns. Malinda was escorted by her father, Ted Lasley.
The final 20 points of the contest were decided on the basis of how the contestants answered a question that they did not know ahead of time.
The question was: “Malinda, what do you value most in a relationship?”
Her answer: “The things that I value most in a relationship is honesty.”
Outgoing Miss VC, Lindsey Cannon talked about her year as Miss VC, in an emotion-packed speech.
Prior to the announcement of the selection of the winner, several prizes were handed out.
Tabitha Miller won $250 for writing an essay on the topic: “Valley Center is your home and our small community is enduring a great deal of change.”
She wrote about her concerns caused by traffic in Valley Center and by student deaths in car accidents.
La Vona Boyer won the Special Achievement Award of $75 for raising the most money for the pageant.
She also won the Director’s Award for her helpfulness, patience and positive attitude.
Marlene Zachariah won the Photogenic Award.
The Miss Congeniality Award, voted by all the girls, went to Jesse Oswald.
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The theme for the evening was “Surfin’ USA” and the Beach Boys’ music and a beach mural painted by Patricia McConnell of the VC Art Assn. helped set the stage.
Kelly McPheters, this year’s Fairest of the Fair, talked about her experience at the Del Mar Fair, in which she was “on” 12 hours a day, 17 days in a row.” She greeted fair goers each day, met celebrities, signed autographs, and acted as good will ambassador of the fair.
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Judges were Elizabeth Grandy Jockinsen, Dan Foster, Pattie Vargas, Phil Warren and Linda Bulbulian-Baxter.
Refreshments were provided by the Valley Center High School sophomore class.
Joe Amaro, director of the San Diego Fairest of the Fair, who attended with his wife, Linda, during intermission told The Roadrunner, “Any time we can give Valley Center a plug we’re happy to do it! Valley Center is amazing and she (pointing at Director Karen Greene) is terrific!”
A fire on Miller Road was already fully involved when the fire started that gutted Valley Center’s landmark restaurant, Fat Ivor’s, Thursday night.
That prevented firefighters from getting to Fat Ivor’s in time to save any part of it.
Nevertheless, two firefighters were in danger of losing their lives when they went inside the restaurant to attack the fire, and were almost trapped when it erupted behind them, cutting off their retreat.
It is ironic that Fat Ivor’s went up in flames, across the street from where Corral Liquor was destroyed in December.
Chief Kevin O’Leary, who commanded the two fire incidents, said he can’t recall a time when VC has had two major structure fires occurring at the same time.
Miller Started First
The Miller Way fire, in which the home belonging to Mary Case burned to the ground, started first.
Firefighters received a ringing alarm through CDF dispatch around 9:45 p.m.
The first to the blaze was an engine from the Cole Grade fire station.
That crew reported three quarter involvement of the structure, with the blaze well- established in the attic.
The unit commander decided to attack by going in through the front door. At that time they didn’t know that Mary Case had been rescued by a neighbor, Roger Redding.
According to Chief O’Leary, “They attempted entry and couldn’t get beyond ten feet.”
More units arrived and O’Leary, who had arrived to take command, decided to attack the fire from the outside.
While they were fighting the fire CDF received another call for a fire on Miller with a different address and an injured person.
This turned out to be a call on the same fire, from a neighbor of Mary Case, where she was taken by Redding.
For a while firefighters thought they had two fires going on Miller.
Mrs. Case, meantime, was treated by Sycuan Ambulance paramedics and transported to Palomar Medical Center where she was treated for minor smoke inhalation and first degree burns to the hands.
The Miller fire continued to burn for two hours. The roof collapsed, forcing all efforts to be done from the outside.
According to Mrs. Case, she and a visiting friend had been refueling a kerosene heater when the flammable liquid overflowed. It ignited and set the carpet on fire in the living room.
The fire spread throughout the living room, up the ceiling and throughout the house.
Fat Ivor’s Fire
At 10:58 p.m. the CDF command center received a 911 call from CHP via cellular phone that the eaves of Fat Ivor’s roof was on fire.
At 11 p.m. an additional cell phone call was received saying that fire was coming from the roof of Fat Ivor’s.
At 11:01 a call was made from Fat Ivor’s from an employee saying that they had a fire in the kitchen.
By now mutual aid units from nearby Deer Springs Fire Dept. were already enroute for the Miller Way fire and were diverted to the restaurant blaze. Engines began arriving eight minutes after the initial report. O’Leary arrived to take command.
“It was fortunate that we were able to take some resources from the Miller Way fire and reassign them to Fat Ivor’s because no Valley Center district engines were available,” said O’Leary.
Units from San Pasqual Tribal Fire Dept., Deer Springs and Yuima Municipal Water District were at the scene.
When they arrived the fire was in the north eastern, barbecue area and had already spread into the kitchen.
“I made a decision to make an interior attack into the dining room area and a hose line was taken into the kitchen area, from the front corner entrance with veteran firefighters, Capt. Allan Lippe and Engineer T.J. Benson, both from Deer Springs Fire Station,” O’Leary told The Roadrunner.
Suddenly hot gases gathered in the ceiling ignited. As the ceiling flashed over, two firefighters were caught in the kitchen with the fire coming in from where they had come in. Two skylights in the dining area failed and a swamp cooler collapsed to the floor They were surrounded in the almost zero visibility and O’Leary lost radio contact with them.
He decided to pull them and the two at the entrance out and switch to an exterior attack.
While emergency horns blasted a recall, warning the two inside to evacuate, the two firefighters at the entrance were ordered in to rescue the other two. At that moment Lippe and Benson appeared in the doorway.
Capt. Lippe had heard the evacuation horn. He and Benson immediately started out. They had not been lost, but couldn’t hear O’Leary’s recall over the radio.
They were unhappy at being pulled out so close to halting the fire’s advance. With steam rising from their gear they continued to battle the blaze from the outside.
Soon after, the entire dining room ignited. Firefighters switched to a “defensive mode.” The fire was contained about 3 a.m. Friday.
“We’re considering this a very close call,” said O’Leary. “It was very fearful that we had firefighters trapped. Whenever you lose contact with firefighters under those conditions, it is a life-threatening situation. Unfor-tunately, many firefighters perish each year under the same conditions, being lost or trapped even in very small buildings or homes.”
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Fat Ivor’s plans to rebuild. Meantime, they invite residents who want to sample the same cuisine to visit their restaurant in Oceanside.
Chickens are being illegally killed in Valley Center by feeding them into a wood chipper, after all.
The County’s Dept. of Animal Services (formerly Animal Control) is investigating the possibility that the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture is behind the practice, in Valley Center at least.
This is contrary to our report last week in which we said that no chicken ranches in VC were engaging in this illegal and inhumane way of destroying excess fowls.
We cast into doubt a previous story by the Union Tribune after we called Animal Services to check up on the address of the Ward Egg Ranch, which the illegal activity was taking place.
Lt. Mary Kay Gagliardo told us that the address for the Ward Egg Ranch was in Escondido.
Later, however, after the Feb. 26 issue appeared, we learned that Ward Egg Ranch does own a ranch in Valley Center on Fruitvale nearly three miles past the primary school. It was at this location that the illegal chicken chipping was taking place.
The UT piece was actually correct in all of its particulars.
We also received phone calls after our piece appeared from neighbors of the egg ranch, including Leah Sole and Michelle Sorge, who both reported personally witnessing the birds being tossed still living into the wood chipper. Another neighbor, who asked not to be identified, claimed to have videotaped the activity.
“We could hear all kinds of chaos,” said Sole, who watched from perhaps 200 feet away on property next to the chicken ranch. “They were taking the chickens from a metal enclosure and putting both dead and live chickens into the wood chipper.”
“I could see it from my back patio,” said Sorge.
In our report last week we also quoted Lt. Gagliardo as saying that the wood chippers had been rented for this illegal activity from an operation in Valley Center.
This week, Gagliardo told The Roadrunner that they have been unable yet to determine who is renting the wood chippers, or to confirm that it was a company in VC.
They have visited Valley Center Equipment, whose owner, Mike Huffman, said he has been getting all kinds of negative phone calls ever since the article came out saying that the equipment was rented in VC.
Huffman says he is doing no such thing and told The Roadrunner, “Animal Control asked if we carry a double axle wood chipper, which we don’t carry.” Huffman said he didn’t appreciate the article, “Because we’re the only people in town who rent equipment. So if the article says someone in VC is renting the equipment, people assume that it’s us.”
Gagliardo said her officers interviewed employees at the Ward Egg Ranch on Fruitvale.
“The employees were telling us that the ranch has been sold and that they had been ordered to kill the chickens in advance of that.” She added, “We are trying to find out who told them to masserate the chickens.
“We think the USDA is at the top of it. We think they gave the orders to do it. They didn’t do their homework. There is a masserating machine to do this. You need to use that.” Such a machine has sweeping blades and is legal to use to kill chickens.
She speculates that the employees, told that they needed to masserate the birds, decided to rent a wood chipping machine.
The number of fatalities in the VC area has dropped from 16 in 2001 to four last year, according to statistics released this week.
According to Officer Tom Kerns, information officer for the California Highway Patrol, this is “pretty significant,” too significant to be just a fluctuation in statistics. It is even more profound coming as it does in a year when traffic volume has been increasing.
During the same period, as we reported last month, traffic accidents answered by the VC Fire Department went from 212 in 2001 to 196 in 2002.
What’s the reason?
First of all, we must realize that the Valley Center area included in the figures is not Valley Center alone, but includes a considerably larger area that takes in Hidden Meadows and goes down to Hwy. 76.
Kern attributes the decline in fatalities to a determined effort by the CHP to aggressively enforce traffic laws in Valley Center.
“One of the things that we obviously did was hit the area pretty hard with special enforcement units and then the Community Alliance Team headed by Officer George Salas, who is the beat officer for the area.
“On top of his work out there we have regular beat officers that are responsible for that area around the clock,” said Kern.
“We’ve extended safety presentations at the schools and businesses,” he said.
There have also been special enforcements done as part of the North County Law Enforcement Traffic Safety Council. These have included DUI checkpoints and roving patrols looking out for traffic violations.
Some violations involved DUIs, some were speeding violations, while others were failure to yield infractions.
The County has also increased the number of radar enforced roadways, which includes roads in VC, said Kerns.
“I think there was a great resolve by [CHP] Capt. Dave Webb to look at the problem and deploy people out there. He saw the statistics and responded by putting his men and women out there and making it a priority,” said Kerns.
Once Capt. Webb made VC traffic safety a priority, the CHP began looking at various factors that might be at work in the high number of fatalities, including DUIs.
“When you have a leader who says you have to address something, it gets everybody on the team to say when we are patrolling in this area to be on the look out for violations,” said Kerns.
During that time CHP officers have been very high profile and have liberally used radar to nail violators.
“We also have volunteers out there hustling too,” said Kerns. “When people see the patrol car they don’t notice if it’s a volunteer or not. The volunteers are our eyes and ears and they love working in Valley Center.
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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