Just as well he can't say where he's been

When the phone rang days ago at Melinda Merman and Frank Walburg's home in Santa Rosa, they'd gone more than 13 years without George.

It was June of 1995 when the sturdy, gray, yellow-eyed, personable young cat went missing. To say Melinda and Frank did everything possible to find him doesn't scratch the surface of their efforts.

"I literally traveled from the Healdsburg animal shelter to the Petaluma animal shelter (and all the shelters in between) every two or three days," Melinda said. She wrote and described George to every veterinarian in the phone book.

Nothing, for 13½ years. Then, the recent call.

It was from Northtown Animal Hospital, which Melinda and Frank have used forever. The news: The manager of a mobile home park down Santa Rosa Avenue last week trapped a sickly, scrawny old cat.

Staffers at the county animal shelter scanned him for a microchip, found one and traced it to Northtown, whose staff traced it to Frank and Melinda.

They rushed to George and cried every sort of tear. He'd weighed more than 14 pounds the last time they saw him, now he's barely 6. Frank said they're not sure if George will survive.

But he's back at his family's home off Steele Lane and he's eating pretty well. Frank said that on Monday George jumped at a flicker of light on the wall, like he used to.

Patients and staff at Sutter still talk about what Crystal Barrett did when it dawned on her that being in a hospital bed would prevent some people from voting.

The medical social worker obtained permission to ask every patient if he or she was registered to vote and wanted to cast a ballot.

Crystal found 10 who'd hoped to vote but figured they were out of luck this year. On Election Day, she gave them ballot requests for their signatures, then drove the requests to the Elections Department.

There, an elections clerk verified the names and gave her 10 ballots. Crystal took them to the patients, who voted and placed their ballots in envelopes that she gathered and returned to election central.

"It was a real blessing," she said, to help assure that people hospitalized on Election Day didn't lose their voice.

Someone out Shalimar Vavra's way, in the Hall Road area west of Santa Rosa, may be cutting costs. That's not all bad.

But the mystery person's tactic for economizing is starting to annoy Shalimar. Several mornings now, she's walked out to her Press Democrat box to find the newspaper missing. Somebody is taking her PD out of the green box -- and leaving a quarter in its place.

The newsstand price is 50 cents, so Shalimar limits herself to being only half as irritated as if the person were outright stealing her paper. Quarter or no, she does wish the bargain hunter hadn't taken the day-after-Election-Day keepsake PD.

Brothers and Analy High grads Lucas and Jasper Oshun are talking up their effort to improve the world one globally engaged student at a time. And folks are listening.

"I see this as a totally worthwhile exercise," Analy teacher Susan Swanson said of the Oshun brothers' new Global Student Embassy.

Luke, 23, and Jasper, 25, are working with contacts in Argentina and Peru to prepare Sonoma County students to perform community service projects in those countries, and to prepare students down there to come do the same here.

The Oshuns are cooking up a Global Student Embassy benefit dinner (www.Seb.org) for Friday evening in Sebastopol. It's a lasagna feed that may change lives. Who knows, maybe change the world.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.