SPORTS A3 Baker girls place 7th at state track meet SPORTS A5 SPORTS A6 Powder Valley, Pine Eagle athletes excel at state Baker baseball, softball teams both advance to playoff s Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com IN THIS EDITION: LOCAL • HOME & LIVING • SPORTS Council to discuss ambulance proposal to county QUICK HITS ————— Good Day Wish To A Subscriber A special good day to Herald subscriber Lorna Beam of Baker City. BRIEFING ————— Volunteers sought to set out fl ags on Memorial Day Volunteers will gather at 6 a.m. on Memorial Day, Monday, May 30, at Mount Hope Cemetery to place about 550 American fl ags, each featuring the name of a military veteran. A Memorial Day ceremony will start at 11 a.m. that day in the vet- erans section at the south end of the cemetery, and volunteers are needed to help remove the fl ags after the ceremony. Chess club plans tournament June 10 The Baker School District chess club is planning its fi rst summer chess tourna- ment on Friday, June 10, at the Baker Early Learning Center, 2725 Seventh St., from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. This tournament is for players from kindergarten through adults. There is no cost to participate. Registration is open now and closes June 1. To register, go to https://bit. ly/3lArlsN. For more information, email ian.wolfe@bakersd. org or angela.lattin@ bakersd.org or call/text 541-212-8435. WEATHER ————— Today 67/43 Sunny Wednesday 76/45 Partly sunny Full forecast on the back of the B section. The space below is for a postage label for issues that are mailed. TUESDAY, MAY 24, 2022 • $1.50 Logan Hannigan-Downs photo Baker senior Emma Baeth celebrates after winning the 1,500-meter race at the Class 4A state track meet on Saturday, May 21, 2022, at Hayward Field in Eugene. Baeth set a new school record. Even the exhilaration of winning a state title can’t mask the toll that pace takes on legs and lungs. mma Baeth was sprinting The ecstasy of success comes with the agony of fatigue. the final yards to the finish Yet Baeth was overwhelmed not line with no other runner on with exhaustion but with the rec- ognition that she was a few sec- either side, and she couldn’t quite onds away from accomplishing a goal she hadn’t quite dared to believe what was happening. hope for. “I thought, ‘oh my goodness, what’s Baeth, a senior at Baker High happening?’ ” she said the day after School, couldn’t believe she was about to win a state championship winning the 1,500 at the Class 4A state track meet on Saturday, May 21. in the 1,500-meter race. Quite a lot was happening, actually. She couldn’t believe she was go- ing to accomplish that goal in Eu- Besides claiming the coveted state gene’s Hayward Field, the place championship, Baeth had broken the where many Olympians, includ- BHS record for the 1,500 set in 2002 ing some of Baeth’s own idols, by Danielle Jordan. have competed. Baeth, who will compete in track Perhaps most shocking of all, Ba- and cross-country at Southern Or- eth couldn’t believe how good she felt. egon University, where she plans to Physically good. major in nursing, said she actually She had, after all, just run slightly had looked at Jordan’s record on the less than a mile in well under five wooden board at BHS just before minutes. leaving for the state meet. BY JAYSON JACOBY jjacoby@bakercityherald.com Jordan’s time was 4:45.83. That was about 12 seconds faster than Baeth’s best time in the 1,500. That’s a huge difference, she said — 1,500-meter runners don’t ex- pect to trim 12 seconds from their best time in a single race. “I didn’t really think I would be able to,” Baeth said. “That’s so fast.” But then the race started. And as she loped along with the lead group of runners, Baeth glanced occasionally at the elapsed times that showed every 100 me- ters. “I thought, ‘wow, we’re really go- ing fast,’ ” Baeth said with a laugh. But she was even more surprised — “shocking” is the adjective she chooses more than once in talking about the race — by how relatively easy it felt to keep the pace. “About a half-mile in I was think- ing that I feel surprisingly so good right now,” she said. See, Champion/Page A3 State confirms another wolf attack on calves near Richland Baker City Herald State wildlife biologists have confirmed another wolf attack on cattle north of Richland. The most recent in a series of in- vestigations in that area, about 40 miles east of Baker City, happened on May 19, according to the Ore- gon Department of Fish and Wild- life (ODFW). According to an ODFW report, a rancher found two injured calves while checking a herd on the after- noon of May 17 in a 600-acre pri- vate land parcel in the Immigrant Gulch area north of Eagle Valley. ODFW biologists investigated on Thursday, May 19, examining those two calves as well as four other calves that had wounds. Biologists concluded that wolves from the Cornucopia pack had attacked the two calves whose in- juries prompted the rancher to re- port the incident. The attack hap- pened about two to three weeks TODAY Issue 6 14 pages earlier, according to an ODFW report. Both calves had bite scrapes up to 1/8th inch wide on the outside of their hindquarters above the hocks, with corresponding tissue trauma, according to the report. One calf had an open wound measuring about 3.5 by 2.5 inches, as well as multiple tooth punctures about 1/8th of an inch in diameter. The other calf had a 1-inch by 1-inch open wound on the outside of its left hind leg above the hock, and a pair of tooth puncture marks 1/8th of an inch in diameter. According to the report, “The bite marks and location, size, and depth of the injuries on the first two calves are consistent with wolf at- tacks on live calves.” Biologists surmised that the calves were attacked around the same time. Of the four other calves that biol- ogists examined, one had a 1-inch Classified ....................B4-B6 Comics ..............................B7 Community News.............A2 Crossword ...............B2 & B4 Dear Abby .........................B7 Horoscope ..............B2 & B4 long by 1/8th-inch-long bite scrape with a healed puncture wound on its right rear leg near the hip. Six healed scrapes were on the same area of the leg. Biologists determined this was a “probable” wolf attack based on the size and location of the injuries, which probably happened about the same time as the confirmed attacks on the two other calves. The three other calves also had scrape wounds, but “lacked suffi- cient evidence to be able to deter- mine the cause,” according to an ODFW report. Those three cases were deemed “possible/unknown.” Earlier this spring, ODFW biol- ogists concluded that wolves from the Cornucopia pack had killed one calf and injured at least three others in the same area north of Richland. Wolves from the Keating pack also injured a calf in the Keating Valley in early May. Home & Living ............B1-B3 Lottery Results .................A2 News of Record ................A2 City manager will present draft proposal during Tuesday’s meeting BY SAMANTHA O’CONNER soconner@bakercityherald.com The Baker City Council on Tuesday, May 24, will review a draft of the city’s proposal to Baker County for continu- ing to provide ambulance service. Councilors will meet at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 1655 First St. Baker County, which is responsible under Oregon law for choosing ambulance providers, recently sent out a request for proposals (RFP) for Cannon the Baker Ambulance Service Area. The Baker City Fire Department is the current ambulance provider for that area, which includes Baker City and about two-thirds of the rest of the county. The deadline to submit proposals is June 3. On March 22 the City Council, af- ter reviewing a report from City Man- ager Jonathan Cannon about the city’s financial struggles to operate ambu- lances, voted to notify the county that the city intended to curtail ambulance service on Sept. 30, 2022. Ending that service would cost the city about $1 million annual in ambu- lance revenue, and would force the city to lay off six firefighter/paramedics, reducing the department’s overall staff- ing from 16.25 full-time equivalents to 10.5. See, Ambulance/Page A3 Baker school district hires principal for Early Learning Center Baker City Herald The Baker School Board on Thursday, May 19, approved the hiring of Cristina Hyde as director/principal of the Baker Early Learning Center starting this fall. The Early Learning Center, in the former North Baker School building at 2725 Seventh St., opened Oct. 9, 2020, after a $2.3 million building renova- tion. The facility houses service pro- viders for families of children from birth to age 5 as well as preschool and kindergarten classrooms. Money to pay for the renovation came from several sources, including the Baker School District, the state Student Investment Act, Preschool Promise pro- gram, and multiple private grants. Hyde comes to the Baker School District from Pullman, Washington, where she has worked as director of special education for the Pullman School District for the past three years, according to a press release from the Baker School District. She started her teaching career in Alaska in 2007 and moved to Oregon in 2013 to serve as Head Start director for the Coquille Indian Tribe in Coos Bay. Opinion .............................A4 Senior Menus ...................A2 Sports .............. A3, A5 & A6 See, Principal/Page A3 Sudoku..............................B7 Turning Backs ..................A2 Weather ............................B8