Yucca Valley Newspaper

Mesquite has plenty of news

Besides that, I already hear more of people’s private telephone conversations than I want to. (See last week’s column.)

Even if we were so inclined and unfettered by ethics, we wouldn’t have the time to be digging into people’s private communications in search of stories. We have to run at a full gallop to keep up with the stories obtainable through legitimate means. We try to get through the stories we have to do, with the hopes of spending time on the stories we want to do. (Sometimes they’re the same; sometimes not.)

Occasionally, when I’ve told people what I do, they ask: “What do you do for news in Mesquite?”

To be honest, in these lazy days of summer, I will sometimes wake up on a Monday morning and wonder what I’m going to put on the front page. But the newspaper gods always smile upon us, and there seems to be just the right amount of material to fill the paper.

The problem is not a shortage of stories, but a shortage of resources to pursue them. Some of you will remember The Naked City, an ABC television series that ran from 1958 to 1963. Each week it closed with the now-famous line: “There are eight million stories in the naked city; this has been one of them.”

The series was about New York City, when the population of that metropolis was eight million. Using that formula, in Mesquite we have the potential for 16,000 stories in the summer and 20,000 in the winter. Add a few thousand more for Bunkerville and Beaver Dam, and you can see we have a motherlode we can keep mining for the next hundred years or so.

The Virgin Valley has no shortage of characters, home-grown and imported. By characters, I don’t mean weirdos and wackos (not that we’re short of those), but interesting people who have led interesting lives. Think of almost anything in recent history, and someone from the Virgin Valley was likely involved. I know a man who was a Navy spook on a nuclear submarine and was witness to some high-level espionage incidents. I would love to write his story, but he’s constrained by matters of national security. You’ve heard the line: “I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.” He’s never said that to me seriously, but I’ve seen the evidence of his involvement in official documents and at least one book.

Yucca Valley woman arrested for leaving baby in hot car - San ...

JOSHUA TREE -- San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputies arrested a woman Tuesday after she allegedly left her 9-month-old baby screaming in a hot car while she visited a friend.

The woman, Winona Albers, 26, of Yucca Valley, allegedly visited her friend at Sunburst Park in Joshua Tree and left the child in the car while temperatures were in the upper 90s.

Witnesses heard the baby screaming and called police.

Deputies arrested Albers on suspicion of child cruelty. She was booked at the Sheriff's Morongo Basin Station. Her bail was set at $100,000.

In the Sheriff's booking log, Albers' occupation is listed as 'caregiver.

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