INSIDE: Hermiston hires fi rst in-house city attorney | PAGE A3
E O
AST
145th Year, No. 147
REGONIAN
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2021
$1.50
WINNER OF 16 ONPA AWARDS IN 2021
County: Round-Up source of new COVID-19 spike
49 cases linked to
Pendleton’s biggest
event of the year
By BRYCE DOLE AND
ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — What was
long a fear among Umatilla Coun-
ty’s health care workers appears
to be coming true — COVID-19
cases are rising because of the
Pendleton Round-Up.
In recent days, local govern-
ments and their public health
authorities began acknowledg-
ing the rodeo was having an
eff ect on the spread of COVID-
19. The Confederated Tribes of
the Umatilla Indian Reservation
Board of Trustees on Monday,
Sept. 27, ratifi ed a public health
emergency declaration made Sept.
24, which was quickly followed
by new gathering restrictions.
In a statement, a tribal health
offi cial cited Round-Up specifi -
cally when talking about a new
surge of cases on the reservation.
In an interview, Joe Fiumara,
the director of Umatilla County
Public Health, said his depart-
ment has traced nearly 50 cases
to Round-Up before admitting a
lack of contact tracing cooper-
ation from COVID-19 patients
meant the outbreak likely was
much larger. The cases stem from
venues across the event from Sept.
11 through Sept. 22 and include
people who came to the Round-Up
already having COVID-19.
“We were dropping ahead of
the state,” Fiumara said. “I believe
they are still dropping. And if
we’re not now, it doesn’t take a
whole lot of thought to come up
with some reasons why.”
Say i ng t he Pe nd le t on
Round-Up Association has not
seen the case numbers from the
tribes or the county, Round-Up
General Manager Erika Patton
declined to comment.
Rudy Owens, a spokesperson
with the Oregon Health Author-
ity, said in an email the state is
off ering “assistance to local and
tribal health authorities with
outbreak investigation, case
investigation, testing and contact
tracing.”
See Spike, Page A9
Kathy Aney/East Oregonian
Most people attending the Pendleton Round-Up on Sept. 17, 2021, did not wear
masks. Umatilla County Public Health as of Monday, Sept. 27, reports 49 cases of
COVID-19 trace back to Round-Up week.
New BMCC
president
eager to share
college’s story
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
ECHO
SAGE
TRAIL
RUN
SUPPORTS WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE
By NICK ROSENBERGER
East Oregonian
ECHO — With the sound of shoes
crunching through rocks and sagebrush, a
line of runners disappeared on Saturday,
Sept. 25, into the rolling hills of the Sno
Road Vineyards in Echo at the Echo Sage
Trail Run to raise money for women in agri-
culture and to beat a challenging, rugged
course.
The fun run, 5K and 10K were open
to anyone from runners to walkers and
was organized by the Eastern Oregon
Women for Agriculture — an organiza-
tion dedicated to uplifting and support-
ing the role of women in agriculture.
Proceeds from the event went to their
annual scholarship for women pursuing
agriculture degrees.
Two courses split out from the bottom
of the hills: a 10K winding its way south
along a ridge before meeting up with the 5k
course, which looped north past the winery
and through rows of grape vines.
“It was brutal,” said Adelaide Zumwalt,
who took fi rst place in the 5K with a time of
32:54. Her father, Tom Baker, took second
place with a time of 33:20.
Despite the diffi culty of the course, many
of the runners, such as Dan Stein or Gena
Cook, who placed third and fourth, felt good
about their race, even with slower times than
a normal road 5K.
“It’s amazing what people can do,” Stein
said. The Echo Sage Trail Run marked his
second 5K.
See Run, Page A9
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Cole Ayres leads a pack of runners in the 5K competition Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021, at the Echo Sage Trail Run at the Sno Road Winery vineyard in Echo.
PENDLETON — Mark Brown-
ing still was selling radio ads in Idaho
when he received a piece of advice that
stuck with him.
He was chatting up the owner of
a local grocery chain when the man
asked Browning about his college
plans. Browning, in his early 20s
at the time, responded with a cliche
about how those that
can’t do attend school
instead. Browning’s
remarks prompted the
man to turn from the
shelves he was stock-
ing and deliver some
impromptu advice.
Browning
“And he said, ‘The
school of hard knocks
is the most expensive tuition you’ll ever
pay,’” Browning recalled. “It took me
a number of years to fi gure that out.”
It was one of the many stories
Browning, 59, told over the course of
two interviews during his fi rst week
as the president of Blue Mountain
Community College. A former news-
caster and television anchor, Browning
considers storytelling to be one of his
primary roles as BMCC’s chief exec-
utive.
Browning will be expected lead the
college out of one of its most diffi cult
chapters, as declining enrollment, the
COVID-19 pandemic and dozens of
layoff s all have hit BMCC hard over
the past year-and-a-half.
But Browning said he thinks BMCC
still has a story to tell.
Continuing education
Browning grew up in Stevensville,
Montana, a small town less than 30
miles south of Missoula, on a family
farm while his parents ran a hard-
ware store and lumber yard. Browning
described his early childhood in idyl-
lic terms.
See BMCC, Page A9
Pendleton native rises to rank of Navy master chief
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — Pendle-
ton Round-Up week features
all sorts of honoraries and
dignitaries, but the person
with the highest rank may
have just been another face in
the crowd.
Kristi Pashkevich traveled
from San Diego to her home-
town for rodeo week, on leave
from her day job as a master
chief in the U.S. Navy.
“It was really nice to be
home and — I know it sounds
silly — to be back in my
roots,” she said. “I’ve been
down in Southern California
for so long that it was nice to
come home and feel normal
again.”
Her promotion to master
chief was recent, but it’s the
culmination of 22 years in the
Navy. But she didn’t start her
career gunning for a senior
offi cer position in the military.
In the beginning, she was just
a kid fresh out of high school
looking for something more
than the college classes she
was taking in Eugene.
“(I joined) the Navy and I
just thought that I would do it
for four years, and here I am
22 years later,” Pashkevich,
who graduated from Pendle-
ton High School in 1997, said.
The Navy did take her
far away from Oregon with
nine deployments, including
a 2004 stint in Afghanistan.
While the U.S. recently ended
its war in the Middle Eastern
country, the war still was rela-
tively fresh when Pashkevich
arrived. She was a part of only
12 Navy personnel who were
in the country at the time, trav-
eling with a communications
unit in central Afghanistan
to facilitate communications
between aircraft and Marines
on the ground.
While Pashkevich said her
deployment in Afghanistan was
“scary,” the rest of her deploy-
ments were on ships. Before
ascending to a command posi-
tion, Pashkevich worked as a
survival, evasion, resistance
and escape instructor, provid-
ing training to Navy members
who are facing deployment to
hostile situations.
See Navy, Page A9
Navy Master
Chief Kristi
Pashkevich
of Pendle-
ton poses
with her
partner
Thomas
Martin
after being
promoted
in July 2021.
Pashkevich,
who has
served in
the Navy
22 years,
recently
earned the
promotion
to master
chief.
Kristi Pashkevich/Contributed Photo