VC fire directors were cold when two aides of Congressmen Darrell Issa asked, as a favor to him, to talk to the Rincon reservation about providing fire service.
Rincon’s tribal chairman John Currier (see related article on A-5) had sent a letter to the VC fire district asking to open negotiations to serve the reservation, which includes Harrah’s Rincon Casino.
The district negotiated with Rincon Reservation three years ago, only to have the negotiations break down in July of 2001. The tribe then went to neighboring tribe San Pasqual, which has provided fire protection until now.
Deadline for Rincon to get a new agreement is Nov. 30.
Issa aides Phil Paule and Karen Prescott asked, as a favor to the congressman, to find a way to resolve the issue. He asked that, in the meantime, the district provide fire protection on a monthly basis.
Paule acknowledged “some negative past history,” but said that Rincon and Harrah’s would like to put this behind them.
Paule stressed that “Rincon has said they are going to be more community-minded when it comes to common fire needs.”
If VC looked with favor on the congressman’s request it could lead to the congressman supporting some fire grants for the district, Paule said. He added that the Rincon tribe was looking to be a closer part of the Valley Center community.
They are seeking fire protection for the entire reservation, not just the casino.
“They would like to go forward with a business agreement. They are a much more professional organization than they have been,” he said.
Paule sidestepped Director Mel Schuler’s questions as to why the contract with San Pasqual was not being renewed.
“They are looking to be involved with this fire department,” said Paule.
He added that Rincon is building a fire station and that the tribe’s hook and ladder engine would be available to the VC fire district.
“Harrah’s has a vested interested in this that helps the council to be more professional,” he said.
VC Fire Chief Kevin O’Leary told directors, “The board should know that I do not believe there is adequate coverage there today. We would not be able to do it with our current staffing.”
Director Dan Thornton, who chairs the district’s finance committee, harkened back to the tempestuous negotiations the district held with Rincon in 2001.
“We ended up doing that emergency coverage that ended up going on for six months and the citizens of Valley Center didn’t get anything for it,” said Thornton. “I think they are best served dealing with Chief Maxcy and with San Pasqual.”
Schuler said that three years ago the board had recommended that Rincon develop its own fire department.
“I think that’s probably the best development for them. You look at the number of homes being built in Valley Center and the issues we have of providing fire support to Rancho Lilac. We have a major tasks in front of us just to support Valley Center. That’s not being a poor neighbor, that’s just setting priorities.”
Thornton added, “At the time we recognized that we have no way of responding to that 21 story structure. . . It would just tap this district to the point where the citizens paying the bill would be ill served.”
“I see this as being very difficult to do,” said O’Leary. “With current staff we could not meet the needs of Harrah’s.
By DAVID ROSS
Thursday night the VC fire board appointed a man who was the fire department’s first chief, more than two decades ago.
The board, by a vote of 4-0, appointed Weaver Simonsen to the seat on the board that no one ran for in the November election.
He was selected from an unusually strong field that also included Oliver Smith,who was a candidate in November for the planning group; Carlsbad Police Lt. Jim Byler, who has lived in VC for 2 1/2 years and Mike O’Connor, an Escondido firefighter who has been heavily involved in charity work for last year’s wildfire victims and makes an annual pilgrimage to New York in September to commemorate 9/11 with brother firefighters.
The vacancy was created when director Patrick Garcia declined to run for a third term. His work will require him to be in Hawaii the first few months of the new year.
Directors were impressed with the high caliber of the candidates for the vacancy and said before they voted that any of the applicants would have made a fine director.
Director Mel Schuler commented: “This is not us voting for you, as much as you are only going to get one vote. You don’t always have three good people, so we are very lucky.”
Pacheco read a statement from O’Connor, who was unable to attend.
Audience member Patsy Fritz echoed the directors’ praise for the high caliber of applicants.
“You really have the cream of the crop,” she said.
Simonsen, who has lived in Valley Center since 1975, was one of the early members of the VC Fire Dept. in 1976 and served as both a firefighter and as the first fire chief.
Over the past few years he assisted the fire board on several projects including negotiations of a contract with California Dept. of Forestry as well as serving as a member of the strategic planning group.
He has been with the County of San Diego for over two decades . His job is as the contracts manager for the county’s purchasing and contracts division. He oversees nearly $2 billion in County contracts.
Simonsen has also been active in 4-H for several years.
Four years ago he was an unsuccessful candidate for the job that he was appointed to on Thursday.
He was sworn in immediately upon being appointed.
Before Simonsen was selected the board said goodbye to Garcia. Newly elected board Pres. Stan Johnson gave him a model fire truck, complete with boots and a dog.
Garcia, who served for eight years, told the board, “Being part of a community has been something that we have loved. You don’t know how lucky we are. From the bottom of my heart thanks for voting for me and putting me in for two terms,
New officers were elected, including Stan Johnson as president, Mel Schuler as vice president, Mike Pacheco as secretary and Dan Thornton, treasurer.
By DAVID ROSS
Since, in all probability, you are going to eat a turkey on Thursday, we thought you’d like to know a little more about them, at least the local variety.
Did you know that around 1993 that a group of sportsmen, led by the Safari Club in San Diego, and in cooperation with the California Dept. of Fish & Game transplanted about 263 adult wild turkeys and released them at Eagle Peak Ranch in Julian, the Catna Rana Ranch in Julian and the McCaw Ranch near Lake Sutherland?
Beginning in 1965 wild turkeys were released into several other locations, including Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties. Other populations are doing well in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties.
According to Stan Landess of the San Diego chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation the population today in San Diego county is about 10,000.
A flock of about a dozen adult birds frequently visits our place on the top of Palomar Mountain. They started visiting this spring and summer. They stop and graze on the fresh green shoots in the yard and then wander away.
Whether the turkeys were “introduced” or “reintroduced” into California is something of a controversial subject.
In historical times the species wasn’t present. However, there were wild turkeys in Southern California 10,000 years ago.
Hunting Wild Turkeys
Wild turkey hunting season is for 37 days from the last weekend in March, through the first weekend in May.
Hunters use shotguns, and experts saw that the best place to aim is for the neck, just above the breast. They are hunted from about a half hour before sunrise to 4 p.m.
It is legal to shoot “bearded turkeys,” which are generally males. You can take one bird per day, and three for the season.
You need a California hunting license with an Upland Game Bird stamp.
Cooking Wild Turkeys
Wild turkeys are said to be excellent eating, especially if cooked on a rotisseries or a turkey fryer. If you cook one in the oven, cover it with herbs and oil and cook it in a sealed bag.
Preserving Wild Turkeys
The local chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation meets the fourth Tuesday of the month, 6 p.m. at Marie Callender’s restaurant in La Mesa.
VC’s Turkey Ranch
If you are familiar with the colorful wild turkey and you see the domesticated white turkey, it’s often a shock.
You might also be shocked to learn that Valley Center was once considered the Turkey Capitol of the World.
Where Harvest Farms is today, on Lilac Road, was the operation of the Mizpah Turkey Ranch. “Mizpah” is from the Old Testament, meaning Watchtower. The name was given by opening the Bible at random and running the finger down until it stopped on a name.
Two brothers, Steve and James Compas, owned land in the area in the 1930s.
As WWII created a need for new supplies of food, James Compas came up with the idea to start a ranch to grow food.
The turkey ranch was built in 1940-41 and was very successful. Over $2 million was invited in machinery, freezers and a huge granary.
According to the Valley Center History Museum, which provided the information for this part of the article, the Mizpah ranch was considered to be the largest turkey ranch in the world.
Editor’s Note: There is some disagreement on this point with our neighbor, Ramona, which for several years also considered itself Turkey Capital, and even had a turkey festival and Turkey Queen. We are not making this up.
During its heyday the Mizpah Ranch would have on hand 100,000-150,000 white turkeys. The freezer could freeze 40,000 pounds every eight hours.
The Compases were generous men, and each Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys were given to the Escondido and Huntington Park Elks clubs for gift baskets for the poor.
Ted Smock, a VC resident, worked for the turkey ranch as manager for 16 years. He helped establish the ranch, built the granary and dredged the land for a lake and built an island in the lake that is known today as Hide-Away Lake.
The ranch was sold twice in the 1950s and went to ruin.
In 1976, after 15 years of neglect, the ranch with 60 acres of land was purchased by Bob Hutchings, Jesse Hutchings and Clarence Slagel of VC.
They established Harvest Farms center there on 12 acres in 1981 and sold the rest of the land.
By RIK ESPINOSA
Serious criminal complaints against the Riverside man who was driving the semi-truck that slammed into a 1998 Ford minivan killing a mother, her son, sister and critically injured three other children Friday afternoon are pending the result of the accident investigation, officials said.
Eyewitnesses told the California Highway Patrol that the Mack truck hauling ore carriers loaded with gypsum rock driven by Bryant Patrick Rooney was seen driving recklessly and too fast down the Cuca Grade on Hwy 76 before the accident took place several miles later about 150 yards east of the Rincon Ranch Road.
CHP estimated that the truck was traveling at 60 mph.
Drivers who followed the truck down the steep grade told investigators they could see smoke coming from the truck’s brakes long before it crossed the double-yellow lines and slammed into the Ford minivan.
Rooney, 34, who had minor injuries, told officials he lost his brakes before the crash, could not make the curve on eastbound Hwy 76 — which has a cautionary 25 mph speed limit sign posted — and crossed into the westbound lane hitting the minivan broadside. The truck and two bottom dump trailers weighed 78,000 pounds, officials said.
Rooney was transported to Palomar Hospital, Escondido via Mercy Ambulance for complaint of pain
Three people were pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the minivan was identified by the county medical examiner’s office as Camille Merced Zulewski, 52, of Temecula; her sister Adelle Rose Woods, 47, of Riverside was in the front passenger seat and Zulewski's 6-year-old son, Michael Zulewski was in a rear seat.
CHP Officer Tom Kerns credits the fact that 4 -, 10-, and 11-year-old girls in the minivan survived the crash to the family having all the children correctly buckled in.
“There were child safety seats utilized and if there were not there would have been more fatalities,” Kerns said. “This (the fact the children survived the crash) says a lot about child safety seats.”
The two older survivors were flown to Children’s Hospital shortly after the crash but it took more than two hours to extricate the 4-year-old, who was also taken by Mercy Air to the same hospital.
The nose of the Mack truck hit the driver’s side of the minivan pushing it down a seven-foot embankment into potted plants at Village Nurseries, 17325 Hwy 76. The ore carriers pushed the truck’s cab onto the minivan threatening to shift onto rescue workers.
Orange County Fire Authority Battalion Chief Mike Rohde — a heavy rescue specialist — was in the area for a meeting with California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection officials when he was brought to the scene.
“This is one of the worst accidents I’ve seen in 32 years as a firefighter,” Rhode said. “The technical aspects of the rescue and the risk to the firefighters is tremendous.”
“It was probably one of the most dangerous wrecks I’ve been to in my 45 years (as a firefighter), CDF Division Chief Bill Clayton said.
San Diego County Tribal Council Ranger John Molina was one of the first to try to help the victims.
“The truck driver was telling us to help the children who were crying,” Molina said.
The truck tractor spilled diesel fuel after the collision and San Diego County HAZMAT was called out.
Traffic was stopped and redirected on both sides of the accident scene for many hours.
* * *
Eerily Similar
Highway Patrol officials are crediting the driver of a bus involved in an eerily similar accident with saving herself and her 20 passengers from injury when the bus also lost its brakes less than 100 yards from the site of the fatal accident on Hwy 76 on Sunday.
Express shuttle driver Katrina Lewis did not go into oncoming lanes but guided the brakeless bus into an 8-foot-tall hedge of nopal cactus on the right shoulder of the road to slow the bus, which came to rest less than 20 feet from a telephone pole.
“I could have died,” a very shaken Lewis said.
The cacti broke the front, passenger side window of the bus but none of the passengers or Lewis were injured, officials said,
The bus was taking the women home from a retreat on Palomar Mountain’s Christian Conference Center, Lewis said.
The surprise winter storm on Sunday morning played a part in the brakes going out, Lewis said. Snow and water on South Grade Road coming down from Palomar Mountain caused her to use her brakes more than usual.
But the rain also softened the shoulder of the road, helping the out-of-control bus to stop.
CHP and CDF officials said Lewis’ actions in stopping the bus without injuring her or her passengers were heroic.
The Valley Roadrunner
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Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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