Rosemarie Alexander

Juneau’s cross-town rivals take to the football field Saturday (Aug. 13). The first game of the season pits the Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears and the Thunder Mountain Falcons against each other. The Falcons are just in their third year; the Bears’ football program is more than two decades old.

Though they play in different conferences, they’re starting the season in what Bears’ head coach Rich Sjoross says may be the most emotional game:

“There are so many story lines you could look at, with kids that are related to each other or have played with each other for years and now for the first time at the high school level they’re playing against each other. Coaching staff that used to work together is now split up at different schools,” Sjoross says. “And both teams are coming off a pretty successful year last year and have pretty high expectations this year, so I think that’s going to add some drama to it as well.”

Most of the Falcon’s coaching staff once coached the Crimson Bears. Some families have kids at both high schools. When Juneau’s second high school opened three years ago, the Falcons ended up in the small Southeast Conference with Sitka and Ketchikan, while Juneau stayed in the Railbelt conference with larger schools.

Saturday night’s game is a shake-down, says TMHS head coach Bill Byour. And he expects Bears to give the Falcons a real fight.

“My kids are going to come out and play hard too. But they’ve (Crimson Bears) worked together many more years. That program has been in place, it’s a quality program, so I expect the first meeting between the two schools is going to be a battle. It’s going to be a good game,” Byouer says.

The junior varsity teams kick off at 5 p.m. at Reilly Ritchie Memorial Field at Adair Kennedy Park. The varsity rivalry starts at 8 p.m.

At least $10,000 worth of heating oil has been stolen from Juneau homes so far this year. Since January, Juneau police say there’s been nearly twice the number of thefts than were reported for all of 2010.

The latest was for $200 in oil stolen from a tank at the back of a Lemon Creek area home. It’s prompted police to ask Juneau residents for help.

Spokeswoman Cindee Brown-Mills says police have no leads in any of the cases.

“We have in 2011 so far 19 cases and I wonder how many have not been reported or never discovered,” Brown-Mills says. “There’s not anyone area of town that’s been more affected than others so we don’t really have a whole lot to go on. This is really something we need the public’s help on if we’re going to catch people doing it.”

Local fuel-delivery companies say they’ve been getting their fair share of complaints about oil thieves, especially now that prices are more than $4 a gallon. Reliable Fuel says calls come in spurts, and have averaged two a month this year.

The best deterrents? Lock the tank, put it behind an enclosure, or install a video camera. Police say be a nosey neighbor and pay attention to what’s happening in your neighborhood.

Taku Oil’s Tim Hansen says locking caps will help, but a determined thief can still get your oil.

“Those plug-type caps seem to work better. They’ll go inside the hole in the tank there, rather than being up on a spout where someone can tip off the fill spout with a pipe wrench,” Hansen says. “Definitely the more obstacles you can put in people’s way, the less likely people are going to try to get some (oil) from you. Below ground tanks are pretty hard to get to.”

Juneau police say anyone with information on stolen oil should call JPD at 586-0600, or remain anonymous and leave a tip at www.juneaucrimeline.com.

The wreckage of a single-engine plane that crashed July 24th on Douglas Island rests in a Juneau hangar. A National Transportation Safety Board crew is piecing the aircraft together for the investigation into the accident that killed Charles Luck and his wife Liping Tang-Luck.

The NTSB preliminary report indicates the plane crashed very shortly after Luck communicated with the Juneau tower. So soon, says investigator Clint Johnson, that in interviews the air traffic specialist used the term “moments.”

“Mr. Luck called in, indicated that he was about 10 miles to the southeast, landing Juneau, and right after that, we’re not sure exactly how long it was, just moments after that, they received a very faint ELT signal,” Johnson says.

That Emergency Locator Transmitter signal led searchers to an aircraft debris field, at about the 31-hundred foot level of Mount Ben Stewart, near the Eaglecrest Ski Area. The fuselage and bodies were not found until the following day. It was six days before skies cleared enough to recover the bodies.

Johnson has been conducting interviews and expects to review Juneau Air Traffic Control Tower tapes later this week. He’s also awaiting autopsy results.

“What we’re doing is gathering information on the pilot, as far as past history, experience level,” Johnson says. “Obviously there was an autopsy and toxicology screen, which is very, very standard for anybody who’s killed in an airplane accident.”

Charles Luck was a physician assistant at the SEARHC health care clinic in Hoonah. According to Johnson, Luck had not filed a flight plan for his early morning trip to Juneau.

Johnson says the Cessna was being operated on visual flight rules. While weather conditions at the accident site aren’t known, the Juneau airport tower reported marginal conditions that morning.

Johnson says local pilots tell him that when the cloud ceiling is low in Juneau, it’s often even lower over the area where the plane crashed.

Juneau’s Capital Office no longer sells office supplies.

“We’re just moving our business in a different direction,” says owner Ted Quinn.

He says the 65-year-old company will concentrate on interior design and furniture for professional offices statewide.

The office supply on Commercial Boulevard near Costco has been quietly phased out. Capital Office opened in 1946, but in recent years the supply side had grown smaller and smaller.

Quinn says it’s tough to see it go.

“It was originally Capital Office Art and Engineering. Then we opened a store, Bits and Pieces, in the Nugget Mall, for doing frames and a lot of art supplies, paints, you name it,” Quinn says. “So we’ve seen things evolve over time; markets have changed. It’s kind of sad to see it go, but it just wasn’t cutting the mustard.”

He says supplies are cumbersome and a lot of work for not a lot of revenue. There are lots of outlets now for pens, paper, toner, mailroom, and other supplies, including big box stores and the Internet.

The company owns an interior design business in Anchorage and an office furniture store in Fairbanks. Last year Quinn opened a new retail showroom in downtown Juneau that includes lighting, high-density filing, and asset management for larger companies that don’t want to warehouse product. He says it’s just a better niche these days.

The company is also the statewide dealer for Steelcase and American Seating office furniture.

Services are planned this week for a young Juneau man who died recently in Arkansas from injuries suffered in a random assault.

A Rosary will be said for Kevin Thornton on Monday, Aug 8th, at 7 p.m., at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in the Mendenhall Valley.

A funeral Mass is Tuesday, Aug 9th, at 7 p.m., also at St. Paul’s Catholic Church. A reception will follow.

The 19-year-old Thornton died last week in a Little Rock hospital, apparently the victim of a beating.

Hot Spring County sheriff’s officers say Thornton was walking with a friend in the Malvern area when he was attacked. Four teenage boys ages 14 to 17 have been charged with murder and are lodged in separate juvenile detention facilities outside the county.

Thornton is the son of Bill and Darlene Thornton of Juneau.

Like most Juneau tourists, shopping, the Mendenhall Glacier, and whales were the highlights of a recent visit for 18 middle-school students from northern Japan. Amanda Compton tagged along for part of their 3-day trip.