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Wednesday, December 25, 2013 – Daily News Venture capitalist proposes splitting California SAN JOSE (AP) — A California venture capitalist says the state is too big to govern — so he wants to split it up. The San Jose Mercury News says Tim Draper is proposing a voter initiative calling on Congress to split the state into six regions. One would be called Silicon Valley and include the Bay Area and even Monterey. Other folks might find themselves living in the states of South California, Central California and Western California. The wine country would be folded into North California and the far north would become Jefferson — a state first proposed in the 1940s. Draper, who's reportedly a Skype and Hotmail billionaire, submitted the ballot proposal last week to the state attorney general's office. Political observers, though, say the measure has zero chance of success. High pressure bringing warm, dry Calif. Christmas LOS ANGELES (AP) — As large sections of the U.S. deal with severe winter weather for the holidays, California is sunny and dry with high temperatures rising into the low 80s in some southern areas. The National Weather Service said Tuesday that the fair conditions and above-normal temperatures are being brought by high pressure that will persist through the end of the week. Southern California will at times feel Santa Ana winds, the gusts that blow out of the northeast toward the coast. Forecasters say the offshore flow will range from weak to moderate, and the combination of wind, falling humidity levels and abnormally dry vegetation will bring elevated-to-critical fire danger for much of the week. Much of California is on pace to mark 2013 as the driest calendar year on record. Brown pardons mostly target drug offenders SACRAMENTO (AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown issued 127 pardons on Tuesday, the vast majority of them to people who had been convicted of drug dealing, cultivation or possession. Typical of the handful of crimes that were not direct drug offenses is that committed by a Humboldt County woman, who was convicted in 1995 after she broke into a home to steal food so she could feed her children. A statement from the governor's office said all those granted pardons had completed their sentences and had been released from custody for more than a decade without committing additional crimes. The Democratic governor said he issues pardons to those who earn them by demonstrating ''exemplary behavior'' and living productive lives. A gubernatorial pardon does not erase a conviction but rather restores certain rights, such as allowing the person to serve on a jury. It also gives them the ability to own a gun, unless they had been convicted of a crime involving a dangerous weapon, and allows them to work as a county probation officer or state parole agent. Brown has granted 341 pardons since taking office in 2011. The practice was relatively commonplace until the 1990s. Ronald Reagan, a Republican, granted 574 during his two terms as governor while George Deukmejian, a Republican and former state attorney general, granted 325 during his two terms. The practice declined after that. Former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who was elected to the first of his two terms in 1990, granted just 13 pardons, while former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued 15. Gray Davis, a Democrat, issued no pardons before he was recalled from office in 2003, partway through his second term. Nevada gunman told patients to flee before killing RENO, Nev. (AP) — Newly released 911 tapes paint a scene of panic and terror at a Nevada medical office where dozens of callers hid in bathrooms and exam rooms from a suicidal gunman who killed one doctor and shot another. One said the gunman told patients to leave or he'd shoot them after he entered the Urology Nevada office in Reno last week. The caller said the man armed with a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun told him he had a vasectomy at the office and it ruined his life. Other terrified callers included a woman hiding under a desk in an exam room and another who whispered ''Oh, my God'' as apparent gunshots can be heard in the background. Police on Tuesday confirmed that the shooter, 51year-old Alan Oliver Frazier, had been a patient at the facility and had complained about a botched 2010 surgery. Tulare County Sheriff's deputy dies in crash VISALIA (AP) — Authorities say a Tulare County Sheriff's deputy died in a crash while transporting two inmates to the county jail in Visalia. The single-vehicle crash occurred around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. Sheriff's officials say the deputy, 31-year-old Jeremy Meyst, was ejected from a van after apparently hitting a cement guardrail on the road. The California Highway Patrol is investigating what led to the crash. The two inmates suffered minor injuries. Meyst, a correctional deputy, was transporting the inmates to the main jail from the department's Porterville substation. Sheriff's officials say there is no indication the inmates had any role in the crash. In a statement, Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said Meyst's death left him heartbroken. Meyst is survived by his wife and two young children. FEEDING Continued from page 1A less to build a permanent shelter there. According to minutes of a city Planning Commission meeting on Oct. 29, PATH board president Alene Dering said the winter shelter averages about 30 people, and about 200 have used the shelter over the season. Nearby, Mikal McLean, 32, sat side colliding into another oak tree. As a result of the colliContinued from page 1A sions the right side of the vehicle was pushed The pickup spun in a inward and the roof counterclockwise direc- crushed downward. tion resulting in the right CalFire arrived and PIGS MUSEUM Continued from page 1A serve time through the county jail — an opportunity to make constructive use of that time benefiting the community of which they are a part. TCM Board member Jim Bacquet, who works in the Probation Department, brought the program to the attention of the Museum Board and plans were made for an August workday to prep the Museum grounds for the September Jubilee. Trees were trimmed, lawns were edged, brush was cut back, fill dirt was moved in to the east end of the Annex and trash was hauled away. The meals at the Vineyard are "wonderful," she said. "They keep us healthier." The Vineyard lunches, which are served year-round Mondays through Fridays, are put on by Sacred Heart Catholic Church Mondays through Wednesdays. The Vineyard Christian Fellowship takes Thursdays, and North Valley Baptist Church serves on Fridays. "When you get right down to it," the 78-year-old Vidaure said, "it's a service to feed the hungry." began extricating the occupants. Around 7:30 p.m. both occupants succumbed to their injuries and were pronounced deceased. State Route 36W was closed for more than an Additionally, Burt and Joyce Bundy of Los Molinos collaborated with Kinney Nursery of Vina to provide mulch for the long planter in front of the main building, and the Work Release crew weeded and leveled the planter, laid down the weed barrier and spread the mulch. At the end of the day, Board President Chris Bauer was so impressed that he joined in the group photo. "It was all such a cooperative effort, where does one start to say 'thank you?' — the Probation Department for a wonderfully helpful program, the inmates for jobs well-done," Bauer said. "I was so impressed with their work and attitude, I just had to don one of their hour for emergency personnel. The driver's impairment was unknown as of Tuesday morning, as is the identity of either the driver or the passenger. vests for the picture. The Bundy's and people like them who support the museum year after year, Kinney Nursery for the compost. We at the TCM are seriously grateful for the support." Muench said the work release program does not compete with private contractors, and it does not work on private land. On request by other public agencies, non-profit agencies and churches — and schedules permitting — they will come out with a crew and do cleanup work, yard work and similar projects as a service to the community. Interested parties should call the Tehama County Probation Department at 527-4052. California family celebrates 3 heart transplants SAN MARCOS (AP) — Deanna Kremis remembers the exhilarating day her young sons first had the energy to race each other up a flight of stairs. The brothers, then ages 7 and 10, could barely walk before having heart transplants just a month apart. As they flew up the steps two at a time, jostling and shouting, she recalled, ''my friend turned to me and said, 'Are YOU ready to get one now?''' It was a joke that became prophesy. Her health, too, was slipping away because of the same inherited cardiac condition. By the time she received her own transplant in July, her heart was so weak she fainted while walking down the hall, collapsed mid-sentence and passed out in the middle of dinner at a friend's house. Her decline was terrifying for her sons, who were just beginning to embrace their lives with donor hearts and now saw their worst memories reflected in their mother's struggle. All three have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic condition that causes the heart muscle to thicken until it can't pump properly. Kremis' mother and brother also have it, as did her grandmother. ''We just didn't like seeing her go through the pain and stuff,'' said Trevin, now 13. ''We knew what it felt like.'' The 44-year-old stay-athome mom for this family of five now finds herself in the unusual position of getting advice on post-transplant life from her sons while coordinating a neverending regimen of pills and doctor's appointments that has become her fulltime job. She also homeschools Trevin, who struggles with severe osteoporosis from the anti-rejection medicine he takes daily. In the daily whirlwind, she still worries about her sons, who are thriving but face the constant threat of organ rejection and infection. Matthew has been hospitalized once for rejection and Trevin had eight fractures in one year from his osteoporosis. A third son — her eldest — and her husband are healthy. ''It's just really hard seeing your babies go through anything. They're amazing,'' she said, holding back tears. ''My goal was to get in and out of the hospital faster than them and I didn't quite make it. And for them not to worry. I didn't want them to worry about me. They're my No. 1 priority.'' It's not unheard of to have more than one transplant in one family when a genetic condition is involved, but the tripletransplant Kremises are a rarity even in the world of advanced cardiac specialty medicine. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy affects up to 600,000 people in the U.S. alone and is a leading cause of sudden death among young athletes, said Dr. Gregory Perens, one of the boys' pediatric cardiologists at Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA. Many don't have symptoms until there is a strain on the heart, while others experience shortness of breath and chest pain but have a milder version that can be controlled through medication and a pacemaker. A parent who carries the gene has a 50 percent chance of passing it along. ''For most families even having one child or one parent going through a transplant is a very big deal,'' Perens said. ''So to have three is an extraordinary amount of work.'' Still, the family never stops thinking about the anonymous donors who gave them all a second chance. After his transplant, the family would find Trevin crying quietly, worried about the family who had lost a child so he could live. ''I'll take anything to feel the way I feel now,'' said Kremis. ''We've been blessed, just blessed, as a family and you live every day as best you can.'' The trio's shared cardiac history is in plain sight around their house in suburban San Diego County, from the color-coded plastic bins that hold their prescriptions to the identical Simple Cremations starting at $ .00 Setting it straight –––––––– It is the policy of the Daily News to correct as quickly as possible all errors in fact that have been published in the newspaper. If you feel a factual error has been made in a news story, call the news department at 527-2153. with his wife Penny. Mikal lost his minimum-wage job sorting waste in Corning in July. The two have been homeless since. "People look at us funny when we walk in a store," Mikal McLean said. "And, you know, it's a bad feeling. But you know we are still people. We are people, and we just had a wrong turn in our life." The McLeans were recently married, and get CalFresh assistance, but Penny McLean, 50, said it's not enough for a month of food. 7A 929 5530 Mountain View Drive, Redding CA 96033. Call 530-241-3400 to prearrange your wishes • www.BlairsCremation.com FD2153 chest scars. Medical bills with eye-popping sums pour in for Kremis' recent transplant and the family is still paying off the boys' treatment six years later. The family moved from Arizona to live with Kremis' parents in San Marcos so they could to be close to the pediatric cardiology team at UCLA. Kremis' husband, Richard, landed a job with AT&T. They have decent insurance, but with a high deductible, so that the boys can stay with the same specialists who oversaw the transplants. ''Has it affected our family? Yeah, but it's just life,'' said Kremis. ''It doesn't make our problems worse than anyone else's. It just means when it comes, you just deal with it and you move on.'' Deanna Kremis' grandmother, a no-nonsense outdoorswoman from Alaska, was not diagnosed with the condition until she was in her early 70s. When Kremis was pregnant, her grandmother told Kremis to get her children's hearts checked before they played sports — but said nothing more. Her first son was healthy but when Matthew was born, doctors said he wouldn't live past age 10. The family had to learn CPR just to take him home. His lips and nail beds were blue and his skin was so pale the veins in his chest and stomach popped through ''like a see-through kid,'' his mother said. ''They just told us to take him home and cherish him,'' she said. ''He's been on medicine since the day he was born and he's still on meds. It's been his whole life.'' Doctors checked Trevin for the condition in utero, at birth and then every three years. The tests were negative until he turned six. Within a year, Trevin needed a transplant — just as Matthew's health spiraled out of control. THE PASSING PARADE (From Dave Minch's I Say circa 1943) Modern Screen, one of those movie magazines says "The boys in Camp Beale in Marysville haven't seen a pretty girl in months." The only reason I can figure is that they must be taking blind men as draftees…but perhaps it was just a joke. *** The African War news has certainly made it impossible for Errol Flynn to get on the front pages the last couple of weeks. Did you happen to notice that most of the boys who were rescued after weeks of near death in life boats that nearly all had said they spent plenty of time praying. There is something about approaching death that makes people forget their ordinary mask of indifference about religion and admit that there is no question in their mind about atheism. *** Wednesday night, while preparing to leave the plant, I noticed some pigs standing in a muddy pen and decided I would sleep better if they were under a roof and on a dry floor. When I started to drive them to a dry pen, all went willingly except one white pig…and this one refused to go out even though I walked it up and down the fence through the mud and toward the gate. In the process I got madder and madder and finally picked up a one inch stick and smacked the pig over the snout. However all the pig did was lay down. I worked it over some more and finally got help to drag the pig out of the pen. I then felt a warm glow of having accomplished what I set out to do. However, looking down at the pig with blood oozing out of its nose, I stopped to consider why I was so anxious to get the pig to a dry pen. The answer was that I was trying to make life more pleasant for him…but he was in no condition to appreciate it. The only motto I could think of was "You can kill somebody with kindness". *** The meat shortage is quite acute in the bay area. When one of our big rigs pulled up in front of the 10th Street Market in Oakland Monday morning, women swarmed around the truck wanting to know if the market was really going to have some meat to sell and if there would be enough to go around. The manager of the market, not wanting a riot, remained closed for the rest of the day, and then opened for just a few hours the next morning. *** Having been appointed chairman of the road committee of the Grand Jury, I am extending an invitation to write to me regarding any matters concerning roads, equipment or bridges. But bear in mind that in this coming year, the gasoline tax money will be from one third to one half less than in previous years…and it will be impossible to buy road oil to mix with gravel. Dave Minch 1900-1964 The Passing Parade is brought to you by by Minch Property Management, 760 Main Street specializing in commercial leasing and sales. 530 527 5514