Saturday, July 9, 2016
OFF PAGE ONE
OFFICERS: ‘He gave his life in service of others’
MOURNING: Community also
shortly after high school in Fort Worth,
Continued from 1A
eight years on active duty and then
expressed support for law enforcement NEWLYWED STARTING A serving
in the reserves, according to the Navy. The
Page 12A
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
iff’s Association in a state-
ment requested all Oregon
oficers wear the black band
until after the last funeral
of the oficers. The OSSA
also praised the work of the
Dallas Police Department
even as their lives were at
risk.
“In the face of an ambush
and unknown assailants,
police oficers in Dallas
continued to protect citizens
at great risk to their own
lives,” the statement said.
In Hermiston, community
members also publicly
expressed support for law
enforcement oficials across
the nation and at home.
Patrick Temple is a
ifth-grade teacher at High-
land Hills Elementary in
Hermiston and posted this
message of support Friday
on a local Facebook group:
“I witnessed Hermiston
police
pursuing
David
Bjurlin down Highland
Avenue (yesterday) and later
saw the crash site. I drove
away breathing thanks to
our law enforcement oficers
who intervene on behalf of
public safety. Given events
in Dallas, I want to express
my appreciation to our
Hermiston police and staff
who do a great job of serving
and protecting the public.”
In response to this post,
one commenter expressed
his frustration with police,
but
the
overwhelming
majority
of
comments
expressed support for local
law enforcement.
Teresa Best, wife of a
retired Hermiston police
oficer, said, “Thank you for
showing support. They need
it. Believe it or not even in
Hermiston our oficers put
their lives on the line every
day.”
SOLAR: CDA agreed to water compromise
Continued from 1A
All three solar sites would
be in the section of depot
land designated for wildlife
refuge, and some of the lease
money would go toward
habitat preservation projects
within the refuge.
The decision was a
disappointment to Skeeter
Amstad, who requested that
Amstad Produce be allowed
to grow crops on the land
that NextEra wanted to
lease. Amstad told the board
it was prime, lat farmland
and his company already had
the water infrastructure in
the area from growing crops
adjacent to the depot.
“From a farming stand-
point it would be sad to see
that land covered up with
solar panels, when you can
put solar panels on roofs,”
he said.
Amstad said he couldn’t
compete with out-of-state
solar corporations on lease
prices, but he could offer
the promise of economic
activity and jobs generated
by farming the land.
Smith told the board that
other agricultural companies
had also expressed an interest
in farming the same section,
which Amstad said could
probably produce about 750
acres of crops once terrain
and wasted space around
center pivots were taken into
account.
Board
members
discussed the importance
of agricultural production
in the region but in the end
decided that moving forward
with the solar option was in
the authority’s best interest.
The board also approved
negotiating a price for a
year-by-year sublease with
Wyatt Enterprises of Herm-
iston to use the old air strip
on the depot site to dry out
materials for pet food. Smith
said the company has prom-
ised there will be no odors,
and other places that have
leased land to the company
for the same operation told
him odors have not been an
issue.
On Friday the board also
discussed water negotiations.
Smith said his goal had been
for the CDA to retain 80
percent of the water on the
depot, giving the remaining
20 percent to the National
Guard. After months of
negotiations, the CDA is
being offered 70 percent of
the water outright. One well
would be split between the
CDA and National Guard
with the understanding that
the CDA would be able
to use any excess of the
National Guard’s portion,
representing approximately
7 percent in additional water.
“(The irst well) we could
use, but they could cut us off
at any time for any reason,”
Smith said.
He said he absolutely
agreed with Gary Neal, who
said if the CDA accepted the
agreement they would be
giving up water that should
be theirs according to water
needs studies done by the
National Guard itself. If the
CDA wanted to stick to its
guns, Smith said, he was
willing to not budge.
However, he said doing
so would inevitably extend
the transfer process, which
has been drawn out for years
longer than expected, by at
minimum another year. The
longer the process takes,
he said, the more money
the region is losing through
stalled economic develop-
ment opportunities, some of
which may not still be on the
table by the time the land is
transferred,
Smith also said that if
the land is not transferred to
the Columbia Development
Authority by early 2017
they will lose out on the
possibility to get millions
of dollars from a transpor-
tation infrastructure funding
package that the state legis-
lature plans to put together
for the 2017 session.
The CDA needs that
money to redesign the inter-
change where vehicles will
access the depot’s industrial
land from Interstate 82 on
what is now a dificult to
navigate S-curve designed
with national security in
mind. Smith said it would
be “extraordinarily dificult,
if not impossible” for the
project to be included in the
legislative package if the
land was not turned over to
the CDA before then.
After an executive session
the board voted to notify the
Army it would agree to the
water deal on the condition
that the depot land intended
for the CDA be conveyed
to them at the same time
that the rest of the land was
conveyed to the National
Guard.
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at jmcdowell@eastorego-
nian.com or 541-564-4536.
HOFFMAN: Tribes want to bring youth back to rez
Continued from 1A
hasn’t
thought
about
returning to the Pendleton
area, even if it comes after
an extended period of inter-
national travel.
“Honestly, I do feel pres-
sure sometimes,” she said. “I
don’t know about others ...
but a part of me feels like I
should, so I probably will.”
According to the 2010
U.S. Census, only 22 percent
of the country’s 5.1 million
American
Indians
and
Alaska Natives live on a
reservation or trust lands.
More locally, about
half of the CTUIR’s 3,000
enrolled members live on the
reservation,
CTUIR Deputy Execu-
tive Director Deb Croswell
said the tribes are making
a concerted effort to bring
tribal youth like Hoffman
back to the reservation.
Croswell was a college
graduate who felt the pull
back to the reservation,
albeit during a different time
in the tribes’ history.
When Croswell left the
area to attend Oregon State
University in the 1980s,
the tribal government was
a much smaller entity and
didn’t offer much in the way
of employment.
Croswell returned to
Pendleton in 1991 after a
stint in Wenatchee, Wash-
ington, but she went to work
for the U.S. Forest Service
instead of the tribes.
Croswell started working
for the CTUIR in 1994,
coming aboard just as
the tribes got involved in
gaming, an industry that
would eventually lead the
CTUIR to become one of the
top employers in the region.
Between the Wildhorse
Resort and Casino, tribal
government
and
the
CTUIR’s other enterprises,
Croswell said any tribal
member can now get a job
with the tribes as long as
they have a will to work.
For Croswell, the deci-
sion to return to Eastern
Oregon and the reservation
was about returning home.
Croswell said the tribes are
trying to educate their youth
that a return home also brings
economic opportunities with
it.
But the decision to return
to the reservation is still a
far off thought for Hoffman,
who’s still navigating a
summer job with Cayuse
Technologies and planning
an August trip to the east
coast where she’s hoping to
visit her future roommate in
Virginia.
Pendleton High School
teacher Stu Clem has known
Hoffman for quite some
time, having coached both
her AAU and middle school
basketball teams.
Clem
watched
as
Hoffman grew from a shy
preteen to a conident leader
who was elected senior class
president and is a member of
the tribal youth council.
Clem said Hoffman has a
rare gift that allows her to get
along with everyone, a skill
she used in a program to help
freshmen get acclimated to
high school life.
Hoffman doesn’t foresee
too much trouble accli-
mating to college life when
she moves to Seattle in
September.
She said she’s grown
more culturally aware as
she’s grown older and she
pointed toward the universi-
ty’s longhouse-style facility
that hosts academic and
social events in support of
American Indian students.
Even though the univer-
sity’s student population is
almost three times larger
than Pendleton’s population,
an earlier trip to the campus
in the heart of the North-
west’s largest city assuaged
any fears Hoffman had.
“I thought I would be
very intimidated or afraid
because of how large it was,
but I wasn’t,” she said.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra at
asierra@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0836.
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SECOND FAMILY
Brent Thompson, 43, worked as an
oficer with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit
authority for the last seven years. There he
found love, marrying another transit oficer
within the last two weeks, according to
DART Chief James Spiller.
On Thursday, he became the irst DART
oficer killed in the line of duty since the
agency’s police force was founded in 1989,
according to spokesman Morgan Lyons.
Thompson had six grown children
from a previous marriage and had recently
welcomed his third grandchild, according to
Tara Thornton, a close friend of Thompson’s
22-year-old daughter, Lizzie. Thornton said
Thompson and his close-knit family would
often get together and have classic rock
singalongs, with Thornton and his son, Jake,
playing guitar. He lived an hour’s drive
south of Dallas, in Corsicana.
“He was a brave man dedicated to his
family,” said Thornton. “He loved being a
police oficer. He instantly knew that’s what
he wanted to do. He knew he wanted to save
lives and protect people. He had a passion
for it.”
Before joining the DART force,
Thompson worked from 2004 to 2008 for
DynCorp International, a private military
contractor. According to Thompson’s
LinkedIn page, he worked as an interna-
tional police liaison oficer, helping teach
and mentor Iraqi police. Thompson’s last
position was as the company’s chief of
operations for southern Iraq, where he
helped train teams covering Baghdad to
the southern border with Kuwait. He also
worked in northern Iraq and in Afghanistan,
where he was a team leader and lead mentor
to a southern provincial police chief.
“We are deeply saddened by the tragic
loss of one of our alumni,” said Mary
Lawrence, a spokeswoman for Virgin-
ia-based DynCorp. “Our thoughts and
prayers are with his family and friends in
this most dificult time.”
———
NAVY VETERAN WITH AN URGE
TO SERVE
Patrick Zamarripa had an urge to serve
— irst in the Navy, where his family said
he did three tours in Iraq, then back home in
Texas as a Dallas police oficer.
“He went over there (to Iraq) and didn’t
get hurt at all, and he comes back to the states
and gets killed,” his father, Rick Zamarripa,
told The Associated Press by phone Friday.
The elder Zamarripa described his son as
hugely compassionate.
“Patrick would bend over backward to
help anybody. He’d give you his last dollar
if he had it. He was always trying to help
people, protect people,” Rick Zamarripa
said. “As tough as he was, he was patient,
very giving.”
Zamarripa, who would have turned 33
next month, was married with a toddler and
school-age stepchild. He joined the Navy
Navy doesn’t release deployment details,
but a Dallas Morning News reporter encoun-
tered Zamarripa in 2004 as he helped guard
one of the offshore oil platforms that help
fuel Iraq’s post-war economic rebuilding.
“We’re protecting the backbone of Iraq,”
Zamarripa, a petty oficer who also used the
irst name Patricio, told the newspaper. “A
terrorist attack here would send the country
down the drain.”
After doing security work in the Navy,
a police career seemed a natural it once he
returned to Texas in 2009. Zamarripa joined
the Dallas force about ive years ago and
recently was assigned to downtown bicycle
patrols, his father said.
Zamarripa realized policing could be
dangerous. His father recently put him in
touch with an in-law who works elsewhere
in government, hoping his son might leave
the force.
“‘No, I want to stay here,”’ was the reply,
according to his father. “‘I like the action.”’
Rick Zamarripa knew his son was
assigned to patrol Thursday’s demonstra-
tions, so when he saw news of the shooting
on TV, he texted his son to make sure he
was all right. The father did that whenever
he heard oficers were in danger. Typically,
his son would text back quickly to say he
was ine and would call back later.
This time, no reply came.
Zamarripa is survived by his wife, Kristy
Villasenor, whom he’d known since high
school; their 2-year-old daughter, Lyncoln,
and a 10-year-old stepson.
———
‘HE NEVER SHIED AWAY FROM
HIS DUTY’
Michael Krol, 40, was a caring person
who always had wanted to help others, his
mother said Friday.
“He knew the danger of the job but he
never shied away from his duty,” Susan
Ehlke of Redford, Michigan, said in a
prepared statement the day after her son was
killed.
Krol’s family said he moved to Dallas
to become a police oficer in 2007 because
Detroit wasn’t hiring. He had worked secu-
rity at a local hospital, then been a deputy at
the Wayne County jail. He graduated from
the Dallas Police Academy in 2008.
Meanwhile, family members told the
Detroit Free Press that Krol was single with
no children, but had a girlfriend in Dallas.
He had texted her the night of the protest
saying everything was going peacefully.
She later told Brian Schoenbaechler —
Krol’s brother-in-law — that she became
concerned when word spread about
shots being ired and Krol was no longer
answering his phone.
Krol, who was athletic and had a love for
basketball, was known for helping others,
according to family and friends.
“He was a guy that was serving others,”
said Schoenbaechler. “And he gave his life
in service of others.”
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