LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Playful young cats needing room to grow are available for adoption at Lake County Animal Care and Control.

The cats range in age from 4 months to 3 years, and all have been spayed or neutered, and received medical checkups to be ready to join new homes immediately.

In addition to spaying or neutering, cats that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are microchipped before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets there, hoping you'll choose them.

The following cats at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (other cats pictured on the animal control Web site that are not listed here are still “on hold”).

Male orange tabby kitten

This male orange tabby kitten is 5 months old.

He has a short orange and white coat, weighs 5 pounds and has been neutered.

Find him in cat room kennel No. 53a, ID No. 36862.

Female domestic short hair kitten

This female domestic short hair kitten is 5 months old.

She has a short black and white coat and has been spayed.

She's in cat room kennel No. 53b, ID No. 36863.

Orange tabby

This male orange tabby is 3 years old.

He has a medium-length coat and gold eyes, weighs almost 11 pounds and has been altered.

He's in cat room kennel No. 61, ID No. 36800.

Calico kitten

This female calico kitten is 4 months old.

She has a short dilute calico coat and green eyes, weighs 3 pounds and has been spayed.

She's in cat room kennel No. 66a, ID No. 36705.

Calico kitten

This female calico kitten is 4 months old.

She has a short dilute calico coat and green eyes, weighs 3 pounds and has been spayed.

She's in cat room kennel No. 66b, ID No. 36706.

Calico kitten

This female calico kitten is 4 months old.

She has a short dilute calico coat and green eyes, weighs 3 pounds and has been spayed.

She's in cat room kennel No. 66c, ID No. 36707.

Calico kitten

This female calico kitten is 17 weeks old.

She has a short tortie calico coat and green eyes, weighs 3 pounds and has been spayed.

She's in cat room kennel No. 66d, ID No. 36708.

Adoptable cats also can be seen at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Cats_and_Kittens.htm or at www.petfinder.com .

Please note: Cats listed at the shelter's Web page that are said to be “on hold” are not yet cleared for adoption.

To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LUCERNE, Calif. – A water main break last week caused a sink hole to open up in a Lucerne roadway.

The break took place at Country Club Drive and Hotel Road in front of the Lucerne Hotel.

Residents in the area reported a utility truck responded to the location at around 2:30 a.m. Thursday, at about the same time that water in the area went off temporarily.

County Public Works Road Division crews barricaded the hole, which grew larger; at one point, a barricade fell into it.

By Saturday, two large cover plates had been placed over the hole.

Public Works reported that California Water Service Co. – which owns the town’s water system – is expected to repair the hole this week.

Lucerne’s aging infrastructure has led to previous line breaks along Country Club Drive and other areas of the town, where Cal Water currently is in negotiations with the state to raise water rates about 60 percent.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

Parents with a child who has developmental disabilities face different challenges during the life of their disabled child. These can be grouped into four different stages based on age. Let us consider what is important at each stage.

Stage 1, from birth till age 3, involves the “Individual Family Services Plan” (“IFSP”).

The IFSP is developed with a service coordinator in order to identify individualized supports and services that enhance the child’s development. It is about creating opportunities for learning interventions in everyday family routines and typical family activities.

Stage 2, between ages 3 and 15, involves the Individualized Education Plan (“IEP”). School districts are required to offer the child “free appropriate public education.”

After the child’s needs and abilities are assessed, an IEP is developed to assist the child’s unique needs to meet educational objectives.

The IEP takes the collaboration of the disabled student, the student's parent(s) or guardian(s), a special education teacher, case manager, at least one regular education teacher, a representative of the school or district who is knowledgeable about the availability of school resources, and an individual who can interpret the instructional implications of the child's evaluation results (such as the school psychologist).

Stage 3, from age 16 to 21, involves the transition to high school and college. This is a very critical stage because this is when the child attains majority at 18.

Let’s consider what age 18 means. First, for a disabled child to receive the generous support of the local Regional Center client, the child must be diagnosed as developmentally disabled prior to turning 18.

If diagnosed as developmentally disabled, the child qualifies for Regional Center programs that provide substantial lifetime assistance.

It is very important, therefore, for the parents of children who may qualify as developmentally disabled to apply timely to their local Regional Center for a determination of eligibility.

Second, the parents must consider whether a limited or general conservatorship is needed to oversee issues relating to the child’s estate (income, assets, and legal matters) and the child’s person (health and welfare issues).

Once the child turns 18, the parents no longer have the control over these issues as they did when the child was a minor. That reality is sometimes overlooked due to ignorance of the law.

Third, at age 18, a disabled child is also likely to become eligible for SSI/Medi-Cal because the parents’ resources are no longer deemed as the child’s resources for eligibility purposes – as they are prior to age 18.

Moreover, a special needs trust may now become necessary in order to prevent any non exempt assets received by the child as gifts or inheritances from being counted as available non exempt assets subject to the $2,000 non exempt asset limitation.

Fourth, at age 18, a disabled child will no longer be allowed to live at a home for minors with disabilities. They will now move to a supervised adult home for the care of persons with disabilities.

Stage 4, at age 22 onwards, involves the transition to adult living. Special education entitlement ceases at age 22. Now, the disabled child must seek residential, vocational, and transportation services.

If the child is a developmentally disabled client of a Regional Center, the child will be assisted in these regards.

Clearly, it is important for families to get their child diagnosed as developmentally disabled and apply for enrollment at a regional center prior to age 18. An oversight in diagnosing developmental disability prior to age 18 cannot be rectified with a determination after age 18.

Clearly parents must look down the road and plan ahead. Not planning can result in missed opportunities and hardships. Planning, however, can allow smoother transitions at each stage.

Dennis A. Fordham, attorney (LL.M. tax studies), is a State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Law. His office is at 55 First St., Lakeport, California. Dennis can be reached by e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by phone at 707-263-3235. Visit his Web site at www.dennisfordhamlaw.com .

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – The airline whose plane crashed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday morning issued details about the flight and its passengers later in the day.

Asiana Airlines flight OZ214 – also identified as Flight 214 – crashed during its landing on San Francisco International Airport’s runway 28 at 11:28 a.m. Saturday, according to the report.

The plane had departed Incheon International Airport on Saturday at 4:35 p.m. (Korean time) bound for San Francisco, Asiana Airlines reported.

Law enforcement officials said two people were killed in the crash.

There were a total of 291 passengers – 19 business class, 272 travel class – and 16 cabin crew aboard, the airline said.

The majority of the passengers were comprised of 77 Korean citizens, 141 Chinese citizens, 61 US citizens, 1 Japanese citizen, for a total of 291 people, Asiana officials said.

San Francisco International Airport reported late Saturday that 181 passengers were sent to local hospitals and 123 were uninjured and being processed at the airport.

Airport officials worked to reopen runways, and they reported that airport restaurants would stay open all night to accommodate flight disruptions and overnight passengers. The Red Cross also offered assistance following the incident.

National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration officials reported that they were deploying teams to the airport to conduct an investigation into the crash.

Asiana Airlines is currently investigating the specific cause of the incident as well as any injuries that may have been sustained to passengers as a result.

The airline said it will continue to cooperate fully with the investigation of all associated government agencies and to facilitate this cooperation has established an emergency response center at its headquarters.

Anyone with a scheduled flight into or out of San Francisco International Airport on Sunday is urged to call their airline for information and updates.

When NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity blasted off from Cape Canaveral in 2003, many onlookers expected a relatively short mission.

Landing on Mars is risky business. The Red Planet has a long history of destroying spacecraft that attempt to visit it. Even if Opportunity did land safely, it was only designed for a three-month mission on the hostile Martian surface.

Few, if any, imagined that Opportunity would still be roving the red sands of Mars – and still making discoveries – 10 years later.

On July 7, Opportunity celebrates the 10th anniversary of its launch and more than nine years on Mars.

Opportunity is celebrating by driving. The rover is currently en route to “Solander Point,” a place on the rim of Endurance Crater where a treasure-trove of geological layers is exposed for investigation.

After nine-plus years of traveling, Opportunity recently set the US space program’s all-time record for mileage on another planet.

The milestone occurred on May 15, 2013, when the rover drove 80 meters, bringing its total odometry 35.760 kilometers or 22.220 miles.

The previous mark had been held by the Apollo 17 moon rover, which astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt drove for 22.21 miles across the lunar surface in December 1972.

Over the years, Opportunity’s travels have been punctuated by hundreds of stops to photograph and sample the Martian landscape.

The surface of Mars of today is bone dry and hostile to life as we know it. Opportunity’s mission is to hunt for places where it wasn’t always so, places where ancient water might have nourished life forms native to Mars.

So far so good; the rover has found abundant evidence that liquid water was once present. For the past 20 months, Opportunity has been “working” the rim of Endeavour Crater.

There, Opportunity found deposits of gypsum probably formed from groundwater seeping up through cracks in Martian soil.

Also, Opportunity has also found signs of clay minerals in a rock named “Esperance”.

“A lot of water moved through this rock,” said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for the mission. “These results are some of the most important findings of our entire mission.”

Solander Point, where Opportunity is heading now, has two key attractions:

For one thing, while Opportunity’s most recent stop, Cape York, exposed just a few meters of geological layering, Solander Point exposes roughly 10 times as much. A visit to Solander Point will be like reading a Martian history book.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, there are north-facing slopes at Solander Point where the rover can tilt its solar panels toward the sun and ride out the coming winter. The minimum-sunshine days of this sixth Martian winter for Opportunity will come in February 2014.

If Opportunity survives another year--and who now would bet against it? -- the rover might yet break the all-time extraterrestrial driving record set by Lunokhod 2, a Soviet robotic vehicle that traveled an estimated 26 miles across the Moon in 1973.

After that lies the 26.2 mile mark. In other words, stay tuned for the first Martian Marathon.

To follow Opportunity and other rovers on Mars, visit http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/

Dr. Tony Phillips works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

A film director looking for a location where a movie about Mars could be shot might consider the Atacama Desert, one of the harshest landscapes the planet has to offer.

Due to the accidents of its geography, Atacama – located in South America – is the driest place on Earth.

Some scientists believe there was no rain to speak of in part of the Atacama between 1570 and 1971. With little moisture in the air its salt lakes, sand dunes and lava flows broil or freeze and are blasted by ultraviolet radiation.

The conditions make the Atacama a splendid place to test instruments for future Mars missions.

“If you're practicing to find life on Mars, you don't want to go to a lush environment,” said Alian Wang, PhD, research professor in the earth and planetary sciences Washington University in St. Louis and a participant in NASA's ASTEP program to advance the technology and techniques used in planetary exploration.

This month, under the auspices of ASTEP, a Carnegie-Mellon University rover named Zoe set out into the Atacama.

It is scheduled to spend the next four weeks traveling between waypoints with interesting geology and analyzing soil samples, both ones from the surface and ones dredged up from deep underground.

Subsurface samples pulled up by a meter-long drill and dumped into sample cups carried by a carousal to be examined by a laser Raman spectrometer called the Mars Microbeam Raman Spectrometer, or MMRS.

Wang, the principle investigator for the spectrometer, also remotely operates it from her office in St. Louis. Her colleague Jie Wei, PhD, a research scientist in earth and planetary sciences, is traveling with the rover in the Atacama.

Wang said they are hoping Zoe will drive 40 to 50 kilometer and drill 10 to 15 boreholes.
                
Ready for prime time

The MMRS in its current compact, robust configuration is the culmination of 18 years of work at WUSTL and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), led first by former WUSTL professor Larry Haskin, and now by Wang.

The MMRS was originally scheduled to ride on the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity but after NASA lost two missions on approach to Mars – the Polar Lander and the Climate Orbiter – the MER rovers were downsized and offloaded. The Raman spectrometer, because it was the newest analytical instruments on the rovers, was a casualty of this process.

However, it is now the top candidate among instruments being considered for a 2020 mission to Mars and Wang has just received $3 million from NASA to make sure that it will be mission ready.

What's special about Raman? The spectrometer shines a laser on the sample and measures the energy of the photons the sample scatters back.

“Compared to other spectroscopies,” Wang said, “Raman spectroscopy returns a very clear spectrum. So if you analyze a mixture (rock or soil) you see peaks for each mineral phase and organic molecule. You don't have to do complicated spectral processing to identify what's in the sample. So compared to other spectroscopies, it's very diagnostic.”

Don't fail me now

The journeys in the Atacama are intended is to test the MMRS (and other instruments) until they fail.

If a power system is going to fail on Mars, it will probably fail as well in the Atacama. And far better it should fail while still Earth-bound, than when it is 34 million miles away on the Martian surface.

Last year Wang was part of a team that tested instruments in the desert, without the rover, boring holes with hand-held equipment and operating the instruments manually.

Wang was the PI for three of the instruments. “We found some problems we never expected,” she said.

“The heat generated by cooling the Raman spectrometer's detector is dissipated by a cooling fan. When we came to the Atacama we were sometimes as high as 4,500 meters (14,800 feet) above sea level. The air is so thin at that altitude, the fan labored to get rid of the heat. That's one lesson we learned.”

“Of course it will be different on Mars,” she said, “where the atmosphere is much thinner, but we learned where the instrument is vulnerable.”

On the other hand the laser in the Raman probe has to stay within a certain temperature range to operate properly.

“But when we came to Laguna Lejia suddenly we weren't getting a strong enough signal,” Wang said. “We started checking and discovered the laser power was only a fifteenth of its normal value. It was so windy and cold the laser couldn't warm up. We had to run it longer before taking measurements to get a good signal. So we learned we had to work out a better temperature control for this laser.”

Both discoveries were invaluable since they will allow the team to safeguard against these problems so that they don't occur on Mars.

It's alive!

After the Viking landers failed to find evidence of life on Mars in the late 1970s, a group of scientists took duplicate instruments into the Atacama, where they, too, failed to find evidence life.

They did, however, encounter oxidizing soil conditions in the Atacama that destroyed organic molecules, a leading hypothesis for the apparent sterility of the Martian soils.

The Atacama soil tests done last year confirmed the presence of microorganisms in the desert soils. The presence of life in the Atacama does not of course guarantee its presence on Mars. But it does show that if there is subsurface life, the instruments will be able to detect it.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – More new dogs have arrived at the county’s animal shelter and are being offered for adoption this week.

Mixed breed dogs with Pomeranian, dachshund, Chihuahua, pit bull, chow chow, German Shepherd, Labrador Retriever, boxer and pointer ancestry are waiting for new homes.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.

In addition to the animals featured here, all adoptable animals in Lake County can be seen here: http://bit.ly/Z6xHMb .

The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).

Pomeranian-dachshund mix pup

This female Pomeranian-dachshund mix is 14 weeks old.

She has green eyes, a medium-length white and tan coat, and she’s been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 4b, ID No. 36291.

Pomeranian-dachshund mix pup

This female Pomeranian-dachshund mix is 14 weeks old.

She has green eyes and a medium-length tricolor coat, and she’s been spayed.

Find her in kennel No. 4d, ID No. 36293.

Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup

This female Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup is 13 weeks old.

She has a short brown coat, weighs nearly 15 pounds and has been spayed.

She's in kennel No. 5a, ID No. 36715.

Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup

This female Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup is 13 weeks old.

She has a short brown coat, weighs almost 16 pounds and has been spayed.

She's in kennel No. 5b, ID No. 36719.

Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup

This male Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup is 13 weeks old.

He has a short brown coat, weighs nearly 18 pounds and has been neutered.

He's in kennel No. 6a, ID No. 36718.

Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup

This female Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup is 13 weeks old.

She has a short brown coat, weighs 14 pounds and has been spayed.

Find her in kennel No. 9a, ID No. 36713.

Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup

This female Labrador Retriever-shepherd mix pup is 13 weeks old.

She has a short brown coat, weighs almost 16 pounds and has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 9b, ID No. 36717.

Pit bull terrier mix

This male pit bull terrier mix is 3 years old.

He has a short blue coat and has not yet been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 10, ID No. 36931.

‘Cat’

This German Shepherd mix has been dubbed “Cat.”

He is 2 years old, weighs 46 pounds and has been neutered.

Find him in kennel No. 11, ID No. 36825.

'Bella'

“Bella” is a 2-year-old Pomeranian-dachshund mix.

She has a long black and white coat, weighs 11 pounds and has not yet been altered.

Shelter staff said Bella is great with women and children but needs a home with no men.

Find her in kennel No. 12, ID No. ID: 36294.

Chow chow mix

This male chow chow mix is 1 year old.

He weighs nearly 55 pounds, and has a medium-length black and tan coat. Shelter staff did not report if he was altered.

He’s in kennel No. 12, ID No. 36925.

‘Zap’

“Zap” is a 1-year-old pointer-boxer mix.

He has a short red and white coat, and he has been neutered.

Find Zap in kennel No. 15, ID No. 36927.

Chihuahua mix

This female Chihuahua mix is 3 and a half years old.

She has a short black and white coat, weighs nearly 11 pounds and has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 18, ID No. 35315.

To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A thunderstorm earlier this week sparked several small wildland fires in the Mendocino National Forest.

The storm, which passed through the region late Wednesday and early Thursday, contributed to thousands of lightning strikes around Northern California, as Lake County News has reported.

Tamara Schmidt, public affairs officer for the Mendocino National Forest, said the lightning set off several small fires in the forest.

She said there were six lightning fires resulting from the storm on the forest's Grindstone Ranger District, all of which are now contained.  

The largest was the Anderson Fire, which burned six acres, while Schmidt said the remaining fires were all less than one-tenth of an acre.  

On the Upper Lake Ranger District, just one lightning-caused fire was identified, which also has been contained, Schmidt said.

“We are continuing to watch for additional smoke as conditions dry out, so more fires could be potentially identified in the coming days,” Schmidt told Lake County News.

Elsewhere around Northern California, more than 750 acres have been burned by 24 fires sparked by the week's lightning storms, according to Cal Fire.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – Two women suffered major injuries late Wednesday when they were struck by a vehicle in Middletown.

Misty Myers, 30, and Elicia Mendoza, 36, were injured in the late night crash, which occurred at 11:55 p.m. on Highway 29 at Armstrong Street, according to a Friday California Highway Patrol report.

Gerardo Garces Barahona, 22, of San Mateo was driving his 2010 Chrysler Sebring southbound on Highway 29, approaching the intersection with Armstrong Street, the report said.

Myers and Mendoza were traveling across the intersection in a westerly direction and were hit by Barahona's car, the report stated.

Both women had major injuries and were transported by REACH air ambulance to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, the CHP said. The CHP did not have an update on their condition.

The CHP said alcohol may have played a factor in the crash.

The crash remains under investigation, the CHP said.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

NORTH COAST, Calif. – Two Stockton men have been taken into custody in connection with an armed robbery in Hopland on Friday, with a third suspect still being sought.

Gregory Ladel Jenkins Jr. and Michael Edwin Steele, both 24 years of age, were arrested after being identified as suspects in the Friday evening robbery, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

At 6:15 p.m. Friday the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office received a report of an armed robbery that had just occurred in the 700 block of Harrison Street in Hopland, the agency reported.

The suspect vehicle was described as a black Dodge Challenger with tinted windows that had possibly left southbound on Highway 101 with three black male suspects with handguns. Sheriff’s officials said the reporting victim said the suspects took marijuana during the robbery.

Sonoma County law enforcement agencies were notified and the suspect vehicle was spotted and pursued by officers from the Cloverdale Police Department.

Upon arriving at the robbery scene deputies received conflicting statements from the numerous victims, but ascertained there had been a marijuana transaction where two of the suspect – who later were identified as Jenkins and Steele – allegedly had produced handguns and stole the marijuana, cell phones and one of the victim’s car keys before leaving in the black Dodge Challenger.

Once the suspect vehicle was stopped in Healdsburg, the three suspects fled on foot, sheriff’s officials said.

Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputies located Jenkins around 11 p.m. Friday and took him into custody. The report said Jenkins was positively identified by a victim as being one of the robbery suspects.

At 5:30 a.m. Saturday two more individuals thought to be suspects were detained by Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputies and were transported to Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies, according to the report.

One of the suspects, identified as Steele, also was positively identified by one of the robbery victims, officials said.

The third subject later was determined to have responded from Stockton at Steele’s request; Steele had told him he had been robbed when he was trying to purchase marijuana in Santa Rosa. Authorities said that third subject was unaware Steele was being sought by law enforcement in regards to the Hopland robbery.

After corroborating the third subject’s statement, he was released without charges, the report explained.

Sonoma County law enforcement agencies were advised to be on the lookout for the third suspect who fled from the Dodge Challenger and is outstanding at this time, officials reported.

Jenkins and Steele were booked into the Mendocino County Jail, with each to be held on $250,000 bail.

The investigation into the Hopland robbery is ongoing and anyone with information is urged to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Tip-Line by calling 707-234-2100.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Clear Lake Area California Highway Patrol will offer free “Start Smart” traffic safety classes for teenage drivers and their parents/guardians.

The two-hour classes will be offered at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 25; Wednesday, Aug. 21; and Wednesday, Sept. 18, at the CHP office, located at 5700 Live Oak Drive in Kelseyville.

The leading cause of death for Americans 15-20 years old is motor vehicle collisions, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the CHP's goal is to reduce the death rate among teenagers as the result of these collisions.

The CHP’s Start Smart program is aimed at helping newly licensed and future licensed teenage drivers understand the critical responsibilities of driving and to understand that accidents happen, but collisions are 100-percent preventable.

The program is designed to provide teens and their parents/guardians with an interactive safe driving awareness class which will illustrate how poor choices behind the wheel of a car can affect the lives of numerous people.

Start Smart also focuses on responsibilities of newly licensed drivers, responsibilities of parents and guardians, and collision avoidance techniques.

“The CHP wants to make our resources available to parents and teens when they have questions or issues about new driver development. We want to make ourselves available to the public to allow them to call or come down to talk face to face regarding any issue,” said Lt Greg Baarts. “This is a valuable program for parents and their newly licensed or soon to be licensed teen.”

Space is limited for this class. For more information or reservations, call Officer Kory Reynolds at the CHP office, 707-279-0103.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A teenager who escaped from Lake County Juvenile Hall in May has been arrested and now will be charged as an adult for the escape.

Isaiah Dominguez, 18, was arrested by Probation Officer Kevin O’Brien and Senior Probation Officer Dennis Reynolds at the Cache Creek Apartments in Clearlake shortly after 5 p.m. Friday, according to the Lake County Probation Department.

Dominguez escaped from the Lake County Juvenile Hall on May 14, the day after his 18th birthday, as Lake County News has reported.

He was in custody for a property crime, and during a mandatory school session scaled a perimeter fence and fled on foot, with a subsequent search of the area failing to locate him, authorities said.

Over the last few weeks, Probation Officer Wendy Mondfrans received numerous tips and reports of sightings of Dominguez in the Clearlake area, Probation Department officials reported.

Several checks were made by the Probation Department and Clearlake Police Department at locations where Dominguez was suspected of staying, officials said.

Acting on recent information, Probation Department officers located Dominguez at the apartment complex Friday and took him into custody without incident, the agency said.

Because Dominguez now has adult status since turning 18, Probation Department officials said Dominguez was being transported to the Lake County Jail early Friday evening for booking pursuant to an arrest warrant issued as a result of his escape.  

The Lake County Probation Department said it was grateful for the cooperation received from citizens in the community and for the assistance of the Clearlake Police Department.