Rosemarie Alexander

A laptop computer with donors’ financial information has been stolen from the Anchorage office of the Byron Mallott gubernatorial campaign.

The laptop was discovered missing about 7 p.m. Wednesday, as volunteers were wrapping up their day.

Campaign advisor Bruce Botelho says the laptop was in a restricted area at the back of the office.

“What we believe may have happened was the back door had not latched properly. Someone had come in through the back door while volunteers were working in the front public area of the campaign and it was removed.”

Botelho says nothing else was taken.

PDF copies of checks and credit cards were on the computer, including each contributor’s name, mailing address, phone number, bank account, or credit card and security code numbers, as well as occupation and employer.

A letter went out Thursday to more than a thousand Mallott contributors, recommending they verify and monitor their bank and credit card accounts. State law requires immediate notification of lost or stolen personal information, unless a criminal investigation calls for delay.

“Important to this entire incident is the fact that the computer was password protected and was shut down at the time,” Botelho says. “In that respect that lessens the risk, I think, to any of our donors. But nevertheless, there still is a risk.”

Botelho believes it was a random theft and not targeted at the Democrat’s campaign for governor.

Anchorage police are investigating the incident.

This is a breaking story. Check back for more details.

A celebration of life will be held at Eaglecrest Ski Area this weekend for the guy who probably taught first aid to more people in Juneau than anyone else.

Ron Dippold died in January at the age of 78.

He could tie bandages like nobody’s business,” says Juneau Ski Patrol member Mick Lowry.

He says Dippold could have written a book on first aid.

Dippold was a member of the National Ski Patrol for 52 years and taught first aid to patrollers from the beginning. He also taught first aid and CPR courses for the American Red Cross – not just to students but to instructors.

Ernie Mueller sometimes taught alongside Dippold.

He was kind of a guiding light for all the instructors that worked with him in the Red Cross,” Mueller says.

It’s rare for someone to stick with a volunteer endeavor for half a century, but it became a way of life for Dippold.

He grew up in western New York, attended forestry school, did a stint in the U.S. Navy then got back to the woods with the U.S. Forest Service. He was able to spend much of that forestry career in Juneau.

He also was Southeast Regional Director for the Alaska Division of the Red Cross for several years, but those who knew him best say it was the years he worked without pay that define his legacy.

“The volunteers that we have, they’re a gold mine to us, especially those that stay active for as long as Ron has,” says Red Cross Disaster Response Specialist Roger Rettig. “I don’t think we have anyone that’s close to six decades.”

In 2006, the Red Cross created a Southeast chapter volunteer of the year award and named it after Dippold. He was the first recipient.

“He was intense,” Rettig says. “He was serious about everything he taught, everything he said.”

Mueller says for many years Dippold was the face of the Red Cross in Juneau. He also helped people recover from disasters such as home fires and floods. And when he was teaching, he had a way of reaching them even when they didn’t want to be there.

“You know, you can teach a class and you can tell that this person is here because they have to be here. But when you’re teaching the ski patrol or Red Cross volunteers you’re teaching people who want to be there, because they want to be there for other people,” Mueller says. “I think Ron really responded to both groups.”

Maybe it was easier to teach those classes because he loved to bike, kayak and ski and wanted to be prepared himself.

“I know some of the people that are on the patrol now, he actually pulled them down in sleds when they were younger,” says ski patroller Lowry. When they joined the patrol, it was Dippold who taught them first aid.

Early in his ski patrol career, Dippold received what’s known as a National Appointment for demonstrating leadership and extraordinary service to the skiing public and the National Ski Patrol.

The appointment is for life, but a patroller can lose it. Lowry says Dippold just kept earning it.

“It’s a very prestigious award, there’s not a whole lot of them done. There’s maybe 20 in the whole state of Alaska,” he says.

Throughout his more than 50 years volunteering for the ski patrol and the Red Cross, Dippold had to continually keep up to date on the changing protocols for administering CPR and first aid. He never missed a re-certification.

Mueller believes he knows what drove Ron Dippold to be the ultimate volunteer.

He had an underlying belief that it was important for people to have skills in the event of an emergency, which might require somebody to get first aid treatment, or CPR, or even react to a natural disaster,” Mueller says.

Friends and family will gather at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Eaglecrest to celebrate Dippold’s contributions to their lives and to Juneau.

A Juneau man owns the same picture of a little boy with John F. Kennedy found in the attic of the governor’s house.

Gov. Sean Parnell’s office has been hoping to identify the boy in the photo, thinking he was an Alaskan.

The black and white photo shows Kennedy shaking the boy’s hand. There are no dates or places on the back of the framed photo, no one at the state museum could identify it, so the governor’s office asked the public for help.

Terry Van Leuven saw the picture in the Juneau Empire on Wednesday.

“How shocked I was when I opened the paper and seen that picture that’s hangin’ on the wall here in my bedroom,” he told KTOO.

VanLeuven says his late wife took the photo, when Kennedy, then a U.S. Senator, was campaigning for president in Oregon.

VanLeuven says the boy was Brian Kennedy, who was 8-years-old at the time and no relation to John F. Kennedy.

“That’s a logger’s son in Myrtle Point, Oregon, and that picture was taken in the community building in Coquille, Oregon, I think about 1961 when he was running for president.”

When Kennedy was elected president, VanLeuven was 21 years old and voting for the first time. He was a Democrat and cast his ballot for Kennedy.

VanLeuven moved from Coquille to Alaska 33 years ago, and the picture came with him.

When Gov. Steve Cowper, a Democrat, was elected in 1986, Van Leuven decided to give the new governor a copy of the picture, though it had nothing to do with Alaska.

“I had the picture and we blew it up and we framed it and I thought it was beautiful. I thought John F. Kennedy would have liked somebody young to do that so I had my daughter and her boyfriend to give it to Gov. Cowper,” VanLeuven said.

He had his daughter Tracy present the picture to Cowper at a Christmas open house at the Governor’s Mansion. VanLeuven says he watched it that night on the television news.

He told his story Wednesday to someone at Gov. Parnell’s office, but says he hasn’t had any calls back.

Parnell spokeswoman Sharon Leighow says the office already knows the boy is not a son of the late Territorial Gov.  Mike Stepovich, or Juneau Sen. Dennis Egan, whose father Bill Egan was the state’s first governor.

She says it could be one of “Boucher’s kids, Andrew Lundquist from Fairbanks, not the right age though. Everybody’s got their theories.”

H. A. “Red” Boucher, now deceased, served as lieutenant governor under Bill Egan. Lundquist is an oil industry executive.

VanLeuven thinks he has the answer and hopes someone from the governor’s office will call him.

Alaska Marine Highway workers have authorized a strike, if the union and state can’t agree on a new contract.

The Inlandboatman’s Union of the Pacific could call for workers to strike within the next month.

More than 600 ferry workers statewide are represented by the union. Their current contract expires on June 30, but the state and IBU have been at impasse over several issues, primarily cost of living adjustments. The state wants to reduce the COLA for new workers to close the gap between revenue and ferry operation costs. The union has said it would concede to no pay raises for two years, but wants to preserve the current cost of living adjustments for future workers.

With no agreement on the horizon, the union called for a strike authorization vote as a sign of solidarity and bargaining power. Union representatives said in April they hoped to get 80 percent of workers to support it. In a press release Tuesday, the IBU said 99 percent of workers voted to call a strike if bargaining remains stalled.

The state and union plan to meet June 10 for another round of negotiations.

Juneau-Douglas High School seniors entered the gymnasium solemnly on Sunday, accompanied by the march Pomp and Circumstance. But graduation quickly became a lighthearted affair celebrated with selfies, beach balls and confetti.

Student speaker Manuel Guillen told the 164 graduating seniors that when in doubt, do what feels right.

“Now is the time where everything we’ve been taught is going to be tested to the limits.”

The ceremony also was marked with moments of silence for two members of the class of 2014, who passed away in accidents. Jessica Billy died in a vehicle accident in March and Savannah Cayce died in 2012 from injuries in an accident on Auke Lake.

Forty JDHS students finished with a grade point average of 3.5 or higher.

In the Mendenhall Valley, 158 graduated from Thunder Mountain High School, the fifth graduating class since the school opened in 2008.

Twenty-six had a GPA of 3.5 or higher, and three were valedictorians, meaning they had a perfect 4.0, or “A” average for their four years of high.

Valedictorian Jenna Luhrs challenged her classmates to be thankful for what they have, always keep moving forward, and be compassionate along the way.

“Our education thus far has encompassed countless blessings, and I’m not talking about the ability to write in cursive, or the skills required for a book report. I’m referring to the teachers who never gave up on us, the coaches who always believed in us, and our friends and family who continue to support us unconditionally.”

Retired JDHS teacher Clay Good spoke at both graduations, telling the students to live a life that creates meaning.

At TMHS, assistant baseball coach Joe Tompkins recalled the words from the 1977 Fleetwood Mac song “Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow.”

If you stop thinking about tomorrow and dwelling in the past, he said, you will stop living your life.

Before the TMHS graduates received their diplomas, Tompkins warned them to celebrate without alcohol and drugs. He was paralyzed in a 1988 alcohol-related car accident near Auke Bay. Tompkins got a standing ovation from the crowd for his speech.

Graduation ceremonies for Yaakoosgé Daakahídi Alternative High School were held at Centennial Hall earlier in the day, with 38 students earning their diploma.

Juneau School District Superintendent Glenn Gelbrich attended commencement ceremonies for all three Juneau high schools for the last time. Gelbrich has been hired as superintendent for the Kelso, Wash. school district. He has been superintendent in Juneau since 2009.

Two observances are scheduled in Juneau for Memorial Day.

The annual downtown service will be held at 11 a.m. on Monday at Evergreen Cemetery, hosted by Taku Post 5559 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

The Mendenhall Valley observance is at Alaskan Memorial Park on Riverside Drive, also at 11 a.m. It will be hosted by Auke Bay Post 25 of the American Legion.

While many people think of Memorial Day as a day off work and the beginning of summer, it was first observed after the American Civil War when families would decorate the graves of their loved ones who died in the war.  It was known then as Decoration Day.

It is now an opportunity to remember all of those who have served their country.

On Memorial Day, the American flag should be flown at half-staff until noon then raised to full staff.