DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2018
145TH YEAR, NO. 181
PREPARING
YOUR PETS
Cannon Beach
launches new
disaster response
team for animals
C
See PETS, Page 4A
Oregon
looks
to end
waiver
trials
Defendants waived
rights to get out of jail
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
ANNON BEACH — Bob Kroll
has spent most of his life treat-
ing animals in distress. Some-
times that meant working as a veterinar-
ian in an emergency clinic. Other times,
it meant treating severe seizures in dogs
at his practice in Clackamas.
But as Kroll enters into retirement,
the longtime second homeowner may
be tackling his toughest challenge yet —
designing a plan to save the four-legged
friends of Cannon Beach.
This spring, Kroll is teaming up with
the city to launch a Disaster Animal
Response Team — a volunteer group
with the mission to assist pets and pet
owners during an emergency.
With Kroll at the helm, part of the
team’s role will be to recruit volunteers
who can be trained in proper animal han-
dling and basic pet medical care. As it
grows, another goal will be to set up a
network of animal shelters in conjunc-
tion with human shelters for misplaced
or stranded animals.
The idea came to fruition after Kro-
ll’s wife, a retired nurse, attended a Med-
ical Reserve Corps meeting a little over a
year ago in Cannon Beach, where dozens
of retired doctors and nurses train for a
natural disaster. When it came time from
Kroll to retire, she asked the leaders of
the group if they could use a veterinarian.
“It turns out the answer was ‘yes,’”
Kroll said.
The group will join a growing trend
of animal preparedness in Oregon, but is
a first for Clatsop County.
“A lot will be about education, like
how we tell people to prepare with a
go-bag — it’s the same kind of thing
for your pet,” Kroll said. “You want to
pack some food and water, prescriptions,
ONE DOLLAR
By DERRICK DePLEDGE
The Daily Astorian
Bob Kroll, who is helping launch the Disaster Animal Response Team, plays
with his dog, Betty, at his Cannon Beach home.
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
ABOVE: Pets playing on the sand is a common sight near Cannon Beach.
BELOW: Two visitors to Cannon Beach walk and play with their pets.
Kristin Medina’s drunken-driving trial
was quick and efficient.
She did not object when the prosecutor
asked a Seaside police officer to describe
how she failed a field sobriety test. She
did not challenge the results of a breath
test that put her blood alcohol content at
0.23 percent,
nearly three
MORE ONLINE
times
the
legal limit.
Read House Bill 4149
at bit.ly/2FO0Fl5
She did not
offer a sin-
gle word in
her defense.
Medina wasn’t even in court.
As a condition of release after her
October 2012 arrest, Medina, who lived
in Washington state, signed a waiver of
appearance for trial. When she did not
show up, the criminal justice system
moved on without her.
“We’ll catch up with her at some point,
I would assume,” Circuit Court Judge
Cindee Matyas said after finding Medina
guilty of misdemeanor drunken driving in
January 2013.
With an overcrowded jail and a signifi-
cant share of defendants who live outside
the North Coast, Clatsop County has rou-
tinely required people accused of misde-
meanors to waive their right to appear at
trial as a condition of release.
But the state Legislature, concerned
the waivers are too high a price to get out
of jail, has overwhelmingly voted to ban
the practice in Oregon.
“I think the most important thing the
state does is the criminal justice system,
because it’s where the full power of the
state is on one person,” said Kirk Winter-
mute, a criminal defense attorney in Asto-
ria who urged the Legislature to change
the law. “And if that person is not there to
answer that, and they’re not there to ques-
tion their accusers, I think that’s pretty
significant.”
District Attorney Josh Marquis
predicts the change will make it easier
for defendants to wriggle out of con-
victions by never showing up for court
and — if caught years later — claiming
they were denied the right to a speedy
trial.
Judge Paula Brownhill, the presiding
judge of the Circuit Court, cautions that
the potential impact may be overstated.
In 2017, defendants in Clatsop County
signed waivers in 372 misdemeanor
cases, but only 11 led to trials where the
defendant was not in court.
“We have a lot of defendants sign
waivers of appearance as a condition of
release, but we don’t try very many of
them,” the judge said.
See WAIVER TRIALS, Page 3A
Sandpiper Square sold to Salem investor
New owner
pledges to
‘preserve what
is already there’
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
CANNON BEACH —
Sandpiper Square, the iconic
shopping complex that anchors
downtown Cannon Beach,
has been sold to Salem-based
entrepreneur and investor
Roger Yost for $4.2 million.
Yost purchased the property
from Coaster Properties LLC,
the company that developed
the complex in 1973 along
with other well-known prop-
erties like the Coaster Theatre
Playhouse, Mariner Market
and the U.S. Bank Building.
Yost is a former marketing
executive at Jantzen, a Port-
land-based swimwear com-
pany, who lived in Arch Cape
for nearly 30 years before pur-
chasing and restoring land-
mark Salem properties like
the Reed Opera House, Cap-
itol Center and Alessandro’s
Restaurant building in 2003.
All three were sold in the last
three months in an attempt to
move back to his coastal roots,
Yost said.
“I didn’t build any sand-
castles, but I definitely have
watched many be built,”
Yost joked, referring to the
town’s long-running Sandcas-
tle Day celebration. “I’ve had
a long connection with Can-
non Beach. When I sold my
house in Arch Cape, I instantly
regretted it.”
Yost said he intends to keep
almost everything about Sand-
piper Square as is. Part of
what made the sale attractive,
he said, was the building’s
The Daily Astorian
See SQUARE, Page 4A
Sandpiper Square hosts community traditions like the
holiday lamp-lighting ceremony.