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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 23, 2019)
CGSENTINEL.COM 3 Est. 1889 WEDNESDAY EDITION | OCTOBER 23, 2019 | $1.00 S entinel C ottage G rove VOL. 131, NO. 41 S ERVING THE COMMUNITIES OF C OTTAGE G ROVE , C RESWELL , D ORENA , D RAIN , E LKTON , L ORANE AND Y ONCALLA Your Local News Delivered Your Way: In Print. Online. On the Go! PakTech fi ts into local ‘mold’ PERSONAL | BUSINESS BENEFIT PLANNING | SURETY (541) 942-0555 The Eugene-based company aims to be a plastics-reprocess- ing success story PayneWest.com /Cottage-Grove WEATHER By Damien Sherwood dsherwood@cgsentinel.com Partly cloudy with a high of 63 and a low tonight of 44. Full forecast on A5 COMMUNITY Swinging Bridge gets official name A3 DAMIEN SHERWOOD/COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL SPORTS — B The house at 850 E Quincy Ave. serves as a sober living environment for women recovering from addiction to transition back into a healthy lifestyle. At-risk residents find ‘Safe Haven’ By Damien Sherwood dsherwood@cgsentinel.com T Lions take loss on Homecoming B1 • RECORDS Obituaries Police A2 his May, Cottage Grove Safe Haven opened the city’s first transitional home for women recovering from addic- tion. Five months in, the nonprofit is still looking for more residents. The ‘Booher House’ — named after Darrell Booher, the former owner of the house who was also in addiction recovery — came to the nonprofit amid a challenging search for property in the Cottage Grove area. After Booher passed away, his surviving family, aware of the group’s mission, happily agreed to let Safe Haven use his property. Safe Haven board member Billie Bird is the current ‘house mother’ at the Booher House. “There’s nothing else like it in Cottage Grove,” she said of the program. Though the project has gar- nered a degree of local populari- ty and support, only two women in recovery currently reside in a space which can house up to six. Resident Heather Thompson is the first to use Safe Haven’s ser- vices. Earlier this year, Thompson had her own business and was engaged to be married in Tacoma, Wash., when her brother’s sudden death at age 29 brought her back to her hometown of Cottage Grove. After attending the funeral, she felt com- pelled to stay in town. “I couldn’t find it in my heart to leave my family because they were so devastated,” Thompson said. The strain of her brother’s death had taken a heavy toll on the en- tire family and self-medicating be- came the prevalent healing mech- anism among them. “It was getting to the point where everyone was fighting and See SAFE 6A For better or worse, plas- tics are an enormous part of our lives. The versatility and relative light density of the material has made it a ubiquitous element of the modern world, but its durability also makes its a semi-permanent fi xture of our accumulated waste. The last couple years have seen a sea change in the way we deal with our plastic waste. China’s Janu- ary 2018 ban on the import of plastics threw the recy- cling programs of countries worldwide into disarray. Government bodies, local organizations and private businesses have since been coming up with solutions in a touch-and-go approach that has seen both successes and failures. Local company PakTech aims to be one of the suc- cess stories. “Being a creator of the demand for reprocessed plastic is one of our big things right now,” said Pa- kTech Vice President Zak Borg. “We’re championing that effort.” PakTech fabricates 100-percent-recycled plas- tic handles for the beverage and consumer goods in- dustries from high-density polyethylene (HDPE), oth- erwise known as #2, which is used to make milk jugs, detergent bottles, toys and some plastic bags. The reprocessed HDPE comes in from Californian and Canadian sources. See PAKTECH 8A • LORANE NEWS A5 • CLASSIFIEDS Listings and public notices B6-B7 FOLLOW US FOR THE LATEST NEWS : /CGS ENTINEL @CGS ENTINEL CGS ENTINEL . COM Lane, Douglas counties outpace state in bullying rates By Joshua Leach Intern for The Sentinel jleach@cgsentinel.com 541- 942-3325 ph • 541-942-3328 fax P.O. Box 35, Cottage Grove, OR 97424 Pushing. Shoving. Name-call- ing. Online malfeasance. It’s a tale as old as time: kids can be jerks to one another. October is National Bullying Prevention Month and unfortunately, bullying has nearly always been a part of the school experience. It’s worse for LGBT youth, who reported higher bullying rates, according to a 2017 report by the nonprofit Oregon Safe Schools and Communities Coalition (OSSCC). There have been some glimmers of hope — the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has said that the number of kids reporting being bullied has decreased by 11 percent in the last decade. Jim Goodling - Mike Grant 330 OR-99 Suite C • Cottage Grove, OR 97424 541-942-0165 Sometimes viewed as a rite of “Every bullying situation has eighth-graders reported being bul- passage through life, bullying can two victims, both the bullied and lied. Closer to home in Lane and have real health consequenc- Douglas counties, that num- es for children and teens. ber was higher, at 34.2 percent HHS says that bullied kids and 42.2 percent, respectively. are more likely to go through For eleventh-graders, the depression, anxiety and may numbers were lower, but still even see changes in their alarming: 1-in-5 across the diet and sleep patterns. This state, including Lane and could continue into adult- Douglas counties, report be- hood. ing bullied. That number Bullying has the added ef- matches up with 2017 data fect of hurting kids academi- on eleventh-graders from the — Oregon Health Authority 2017 Healthy National Center for Educa- cally, too. Victims of bullying Teens Survey are “more likely to miss, skip tion Statistics. or drop out of school” and Nationally among eighth can feel the effect on their graders, the number is high- report cards. the bully,” said Terry Bennett, su- er, with 1-4 reporting being bul- The bullies, on the other hand, perintendent of North Douglas lied, which is still a lower rate than are more likely to get into fights, School District (NDSD). those reported in Oregon. abuse alcohol, be sexually promis- The Oregon Health Authority’s And it’s not just that the rate is cuous in their youth, be domestic (OHA) 2017 Healthy Teens Survey See BULLY 7A abusers and have criminal records. revealed that 3-in-10 Oregonian Nationally among eighth graders, 1-in-4 students report being bullied, which is still a lower rate than those reported in Oregon.