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Every Year in Review issue, The Sheet “celebrates,” or rather “roasts,” the dubious accomplishments of a person who left a skidmark on history. This year, as you can see below, that skidmark was literal. 

HOUSE HUNTING  

On Sunday, Jan. 29 at approximately 12:55 p.m., local Mammoth emergency services were called to Snowcreek I condominiums. According to Mammoth Lakes Fire Marshal Thom Heller, a vehicle (later identified as a 2003 Nissan Altima) was headed westbound on Chateau Road and failed to stop for the stop sign at the intersection of Chateau and Minaret Road. The car also failed to stop for a snow bank, which it jumped, went down a hill and crashed into Snowcreek I, units 1, 2, 3 and 4.

John Graves, who lives upstairs from where the car crashed, had been outside with his dogs in the very spot the car hit just seconds before the accident.

“I was letting my dogs out [to go to the bathroom] and had just gone back inside and closed the door when I heard a loud ‘Boom!’” Graves said. “I thought something had fallen out of the closet.”

But when he opened his front door he saw the car at the bottom of the stairs. There were no injuries, but if Graves had been outside a few moments longer, it could have been a different story.

Graves estimated that the car was traveling somewhere around 40 miles per hour. He believed the car hit the snow bank and jumped, coming to a stop at his doorstep.

“I went outside and asked the two girls in the car if they were OK,” Graves said. One of the women was already outside of the car when Graves found them. She quickly told Graves that she was fine, but when he asked the other woman if she was alright, he received no response.

“The car was smoking and both airbags had deployed,” Graves explained. “I turned the car off. The one girl wasn’t responding to me, she seemed dazed so I called 911 and asked them to send an ambulance and a tow truck.”

There were no injuries, according to Heller, but the two female occupants of the vehicle were detained by the Mammoth Lakes Police Department.

By Monday evening, Jan. 30, MLPD confirmed that the driver of the car, Shannon Ellis, 21, of Mammoth Lakes was under the influence of alcohol. She was arrested and booked for 23152 (a) and 23152 (b) of the Vehicle Code (DUI) following a breath test, which showed her blood alcohol level was .22%, nearly three times the legal limit, according to the MLPD press release.

Damages included destruction of the front porch. The corner of the unit downstairs from Graves was hit and a window was broken. Two of the three legs holding the roof over the porch area were also knocked down, according to Heller.

And the runner-up? 

When the nice guy working the nightshift at the local service station tells you you’re drunk and that you’d be best served handing him your car keys … do so.

Daniel James Ryan, 19, of Carlsbad chose to ignore the advice he received at Mammoth Chevron on the morning of Feb. 19, and has a seriously damaged (if not totaled) car and pending DUI to show for it.

Ryan pulled up at the Chevron at approximately 5 a.m. in a new passenger car which was still sporting dealer plates. According to the nightshift employee, when he suggested Ryan park the car and give him the keys, Ryan told him, in so many words, to get lost.

When Ryan peeled out at a high rate of speed, the nighshift employee promptly called Mammoth Lakes Police.

Police did not initially locate Ryan in his vehicle. In fact, he was located about 30 minutes later loitering outside Roberto’s Cafe wondering why no one would open up the door and serve him some food.

A policeman gave Ryan a ride back to his dormitory room at Cerro Coso. At the time, the officer did not connect him with the earlier call, nor did he spot the overturned vehicle which Ryan had abandoned in the vicinity of Meridian Boulevard and College Parkway.

An ESTA (Eastern Sierra Transity Authority) was the one who notified police of the overturned vehicle.

By 7 a.m., MLPD officers had traced ownership of the vehicle to Ryan. They found him in his dormitory room, still quite intoxicated.

In fact, when Ryan’s blood alcohol level was finally tested between 8 and 8:30 a.m. (more than three hours after his first identification at Mammoth Chevron), he tested at .14, almost twice the legal limit.

Deputy District Attorney Tim Kendall said Ryan has been charged with DUI (Driving Under the Influence).

A person anonymously wrote The Sheet last week to complain about the Mammoth Chevron employee, saying it was not the employee’s place to call the police.

Lunch not-so-anonymously thanks Mammoth Chevron and its employees for looking out for the safety of the larger community. I also hope the car is not replaced so Mr. Ryan has more time to focus on his studies and perhaps learn a thing or two.

Town enforces T.O.T.

Town staff is moving into the next phase of  the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) enforcement  program. We are now contacting property owners who are renting their units illegally or renting without paying TOT. A business tax certificate and transient occupancy tax certificate are both required to rent a unit within a permitted zone. If a unit is in a non-permitted zone, transient rental is not permitted, however, TOT is still due on rentals that have occurred illegally in the past.

Since mailing of the Sept. 8 “Rental Enforcement Notice,” we have been receiving about 25 calls from concerned citizens each week through emails and our anonymous tip line (760.934.8989 ext. 275). We are also conducting online research and have established a number of enforcement cases through this research. Town staff are following up on these cases at this time.

The Town values visitors’ experiences and wants to make sure they are accommodated if existing rentals are cancelled. The Mammoth Lakes Tourism website www.visitmammoth.com includes a section on accommodations within Mammoth and will allow guests to secure another location within town for their vacation.

If you have questions about TOT contact the Finance Department at 760.934.8989 ext. 273. If you have zoning questions or would like to know if it is legal to rent your home, contact the Community Development Department at 760.934.8989 ext. 275. -TOML

Broken wind – Firms pull apps

Two firms investigating potential wind energy in eastern California have withdrawn their requests to install monitoring towers on public lands. The firms proposed to install 200-foot-tall wind monitoring towers for three-year testing periods to collect wind speed and direction data and other weather information.

The Bureau of Land Management’s Bishop Field Office this week approved requests from ENEL (Padoma) and EWind Farms to withdraw their proposed wind energy type II monitoring right-of-way applications for the Adobe Valley and Granite Mountain public land areas. These cases have been closed.

“We appreciate the time and energy spent by people interested in these proposals through written comments, attending public meetings, and participating in the field exam,” said Bernadette Lovato, BLM Bishop Field Office manager.

Info: contact Larry Primosch, Bishop Field Office, 760.872.5031. –BLM

Cluster box controversy

The Inyo County Board of Supervisors had a bone to pick with the U.S. Postal Service at Tuesday’s meeting in Independence. The Board took issue with how the USPS had handled installing cluster boxes in Darwin to allow the town residents to continue receiving mail after their post office is closed. This year the USPS announced that, due to lack of revenue, it would be closing as many as 3,700 post offices around the country, many in rural areas. In Inyo County, Darwin is the first community to suffer a closure.

“They wanted to install the boxes [on county property] right away,” explained Public Works Director Doug Wilson, who was present at Tuesday’s meeting to provide the Board with an update. “The county process is that you must get an encroachment permit first, which allows you to encroach on the county right-of-way.” With that encroachment permit comes the stipulation that “whoever is encroaching on the right-of-way has to take on the risk.” However, according the Wilson, originally the USPS was not planning on getting the encroachment permit, nor was it willing to indemnify the county.

In fact, said District 5 Supervisor Richard Cervantes, the USPS “sent somebody out there to pour the concrete base for the mailboxes” before the USPS had either applied for a permit or agreed to indemnify. “People ran them off,” Cervantes said.

Public Works Director Wilson reported that the USPS has now come around to the permit, and had submitted an email with proposed indemnification language to the county on Monday. The Board agreed to review the language. If it was adequate, the cluster boxes could be installed at Darwin. If the language is found inadequate, the issue will go back to the Board.

“People need their mail,” said District 1 Supervisor Linda Arcularius, “so hopefully we can figure this out.” –Vane

Tough times create stress, and stress creates, well, bad decision-making. By split decision, the winner is Jonathon Anderson, because hiding under the bed generally doesn’t work after the age of five … and didn’t work here.

READY OR NOT: Jonathon Anderson, 24, of Mammoth Lakes was arrested in early October and charged with attempted murder.

Anderson had been involved in a domestic dispute and had passed himself off as his brother Donald when the police first arrived – presumably because he had an active warrant for his own arrest.

When officers responded to the home after a second noise complaint, they found a now-battered girlfriend who acknowledged that Donald wasn’t Donald.

A search of the residence revealed Anderson hiding under his girlfriend’s bed … where she had just been sleeping.

-October 4

I’VE FALLEN … ASLEEP, AND I CAN’T GET OUT OF THE TAP: The phone rings at Sheet headquarters on Thursday morning. Deadline morning. A voice on the other end asks for Andy Geisel.

A few minutes later, Andy hangs up. I ask him what it was about. The call had been from Town Council candidate Allen Blumer. He was locked inside The Tap.

Apparently, the night before, Allen told Geisel he had decided to take a catnap on the stage and when the bartender closed, he or she forgot to check for any extra bodies lying around before locking up.

When Blumer woke up this morning, he discovered he was locked in and called THE NEWSPAPER in the hopes we could locate someone with a key to let him out.

Blumer did report to Geisel that because he’s running for office and wants to keep his Council bid unsullied, he had not helped himself behind the bar.

He did, however, admit to shooting a few free games of pool.

“I’ve done time in worse places I haven’t been able to get out of,” said Blumer. “This is easy, hard time.”

-June 5

OLYMPIC HOPEFUL CRASHES ATV … AND OLYMPIC DREAMS: Amid an unprecedented season plagued with a slew of bad luck for Olympic Snowboard team hopefuls, Danny Davis is yet another Olympic hopeful who has seen his dreams dashed … and he has no one to blame but himself.

Davis was admitted to a Utah Hospital at 3:30 in the morning after injuring his back in an accident involving an ATV, according to an Associated Press report.

The 21-year old snowboarder was celebrating a win from a Dew Tour event at Snowbasin with friends at a housing development in Park City. He was later found unconscious by friends after he crashed his four-wheeler into a closed parking lot gate.

According to an update on Davis’s Facebook page, “Doctors remain positive Danny will make a full recovery. He will undergo surgery today in Utah to repair a L3 spine fracture.”

Davis had recently won a Grand Prix halfpipe event two weeks ago here in Mammoth, strongly enhancing his chances for an Olympic roster spot.

-January 23

YOU LOOKING FOR SOME MEDIES?:

On Tuesday, Oct. 26, three plainclothes members of the Mono Narcotics Enforcement Team (MONET) were traveling in an unmarked car on the Frontage Rd. in Mammoth when they observed a Mammoth Lakes man walking past A-Frame Liquor with a large backpack.

The two Sheriff’s deputies in the vehicle pulled up to the man, later identified as James Carlson, and asked, “Hey bro’, do you know where the dispensary is?”

“You looking for some Medies? I got some right here, bro’,” replied Carlson.

Carlson stated that he had some killer Humboldt weed and a scale in his backpack.

One deputy stated that he had $70.

Carlson then asked if he could weigh it out in the undercover MONET vehicle.

The deputy literally had to move some equipment marked ‘SHERIFF’ into the trunk to make room while Carlson waited.

Carlson got into the vehicle and made the transaction.

Deputies let Carlson exit the vehicle before they gave him the bad news that he was under arrest.

Carlson stated that he had a suspicion they were cops but he went through with it because he needed the money.

Carlson was then arrested and booked into the Mono County Jail for the illegal sale of marijuana.

-October 26

Charles Darwin

Don’t feed the bears, just the stray cat

Tough times create stress, and stress creates, well, bad decision-making. This year’s Darwin nominees fed bears, shot bears, brawled with civilians, stole buses and stole other people’s homework, among other acts of senselessness. The winner? Roy Flores, who shot a bear in cold blood at Lake Mary on Sept. 26

This story originates, innocently enough, from an anonymous phone call. A woman named Jean-Marie called to inquire about local efforts to relocate Blondie the bear to Colorado.
Blondie, according to Mammoth Wildlife Specialist Steve Searles, is responsible for at least 50 break-ins of local residences within the past two years.
Oddly, though, Blondie had disappeared over the past week-and-a-half, leading Searles to wonder whether the bear had been shot or poisoned.
The name Jean-Marie rang a bell. Reason being that Searles caught a man red-handed a couple of weeks ago dumping a 25 lb. bag of dog food into a bucket in the backyard of an Old Mammoth residence. The homeowner’s name had been Jean-Marie.
Piecing together some details, The Sheet learned that Jean-Marie Webster is a second-homeowner who lives in Ojai, Calif. and is affiliated with a non-profit organization, Wild Horses in Need, which rescues and rehabilitates wild horses.
So we asked her if she’d been intentionally feeding the bears.
No, absolutely not was the reply. “I don’t believe people should feed bears,” she said. Webster added that she’d had a caretaker on the property that day “measuring.”
Yes, she admitted she’d put food on the deck for the raccoons and that there was a stray cat she’s been feeding, but no bears.
She also said she hasn’t been up to Mammoth in the past year.
Sheet: So how do you know you have a stray cat?
No response.
The caretaker was ultimately cited by Mammoth Lakes Police.
Searles said he winessed the caretaker pour a large bag of dog food into an open plastic container from a distance of 20’. “I could clearly see him, and I radioed it in. Officer Lehr responded to the call and parked behind the caretaker’s vehicle to block him in. When he [the caretaker] came out of the house, Lehr asked him if he had been feeding wildlife. The man replied that he hadn’t fed anything to the animals.”
Which is when Searles pointed out the plastic container [actually a pet carrier cut in half and turned upside down] full of dog food in the backyard.

And the rest of the nominees …

STOLEN BUS: Joshua Michael Hernandez, 23, of Palmdale, who on March 7 was arrested for the reported theft of a Westin Monache bus. Hernandez subsequently denied any involvement in the incident, even after learning he’d been captured on in-car surveillance video. It was, however, hard to argue his innocence further when MLPD officers reminded Hernandez that his cell phone was found inside the stolen van, leading to a confession.
BEAR SHOOTER: On Sept. 22, Roy Flores, 58, of San Bernardino took it upon himself to cap a bear that was raiding his food stash in the Lakes Basin area.
California Dept. of Fish and Game Lt. Marty Markham told The Sheet the shooting occurred on Forest Service land. Markham said Flores was picnicking with others when a black bear approached.
The picnickers retreated to their car while the bear soon began feasting on their food left near the shoreline. An unidentified person (later identified as Scott Calvert) managed to haze the bear away, but after the group returned to the picnic, the bear returned once more.
This time, Flores, apparently concerned about several “items” at the scene, retrieved a “large caliber handgun” (a .44 or .45) and fired a single shot from approximately 20 yards away, killing the bear.
According to Mammoth’s Wildlife Specialist Steve Searles, there were clear sightlines up and down the shore providing ample warning of bears who might be approaching in either direction.
On December 3, Mono County District Attorney George Booth’s office charged Flores with two misdemeanors: the first for what’s been called “unlawful taking of a bear with a firearm,” a violation of the California Department of Fish and Game code 4750, and the second for “discharging a firearm within a prohibited area,” that one a violation of Mammoth Lakes Town ordinance.
At his arraignment later that month, Flores pled not guilty. The case goes to trial in February.
ROMERO: Frank Romero was the Mammoth Unified School Superintendent. One of the only ways to lose that job is to plagiarize work, which Romero apparently did, lifting other people’s writing without attribution for his regular column in the Fifty Center.
The other way to lose your job is to throw tantrums and issue multiple resignations whenever challenged. Romero says this didn’t happen. Others say it did. Either way, the Board terminated his employment before the Christmas holiday.
MLPD: It’s hard to completely trash what would seem to be a stable career position as a Mammoth Lakes police officer. But it’s not impossible. Just ask our next nominee, Eric Hugelman, who managed to do just that when he and officer Dan Casabian were involved in a May bar brawl that broke out at Rusty’s Bar in Bishop. The profile of the case shot up when Bishop Police confirmed that two Mammoth Police Officers were among those in the fracas. Five months later, the Inyo District Attorney’s office filed misdemeanor criminal charges against four people in that bar fight, including Hugelman and Casabian.
The two Mammoth Police Officers were placed on administrative leave. An internal affairs investigation led to Hugelman’s termination.
The MLPD was in hot water all year. Believe it or not, the Rusty’s brawl was not Casabian and Hugelman’s first incident of the year. They also got into trouble in a bar outside Las Vegas in March.
It led to wider rumors about the general behavior of individuals within the department.
Ultimately, the MLPD was the subject of several Mono County Grand Jury complaints. That much-anticipated report was finally released in August.
The report didn’t give Police Chief Randy Schienle an ‘A’ grade for management, but didn’t devastate him either. Like many organizations, the MLPD needs work. And since that report came out, the controversy’s died down, so perhaps the MLPD has resumed looking for crooks instead of landing hooks.