Valley fire calendar features animals who survived Lake County disaster

Check out ‘June’ in the beautiful, moving 2016 calendar, “Year of Recovery,” that illustrates the Valley fire and some of the animals that survived it.

The June page stars Ditto, a miniature horse whose family lost its Middletown home to the firestorm. Ditto suffered a face injury that claimed an eye. But Ditto’s doing well, thanks largely to the caring of the staff of Middletown Animal Hospital.

Glen Ellen’s Julie Atwood, an animal lover and founder of Horse and Livestock Team Emergency Response (HALTER), created the $20 calendar to help the Middletown Animal Hospital recover financially after acting as a volunteer MASH unit for animals throughout Lake County’s fiery crisis.

The calendar is on sale throughout Lake and Sonoma counties and beyond. For locations, go to halterfund.org.

TIME STOOD STILL at what was fleetingly the shortest checkstand queue at the Santa Rosa Costco.

Here was the problem: the elderly and apparently confused man at the front of the line was unable to complete his purchase. He was paying with cash, and he had far too little of it.

His checker, Gale, suddenly excused herself. At least one of the shoppers in the line thought she went for a manager.

Instead, Gale ran to her locker and pulled out her purse. Grabbing her bank card, she hastened to the store’s ATM, then returned to her post and handed the old fellow $80.

Startled, he handed back the cash to complete his purchase. Gale then wrote something on his receipt and told him he could send her a check.

He thanked her and pushed his cart slowly toward the door.

ONE YEAR AGO, you may recall, Petaluma school-bus driver Angela Ibleto noticed an awesome array of Christmas decorations on a house on Hartman Lane, but she and the kids passed by too early in the morning and the afternoon to see them turned on.

Angela found the courage to go by on her own time and ask homeowner Michael Crushon if he’d please hit the switch early the morning of the last Friday before the holiday break, so her kids could see the lights.

When Friday morning arrived, rain fell as Angela’s bus approached the house on Hartman at Ely Road just before 7:30. But she could see the glow.

And as the gloriously illuminated house came into view, Angela and the kids spotted Crushon. He stood in the yard, in the rain, and held a sign that declared “Merry Christmas!”

This year, Angela was too busy to stop by and ask if he’d hit the lights. But last Friday morning, the students went wild to see the display fully aglow, and Crushon and his wife and son waving to them from the yard.

He told Angela, “It’s a tradition now.”

$40,000 WILL BUY an enormous amount of food for people who rely on the Redwood Empire Food Bank.

But Bruce Cohn, the vintner and Doobie Brothers manager who days ago donated 40 grand, knows it won’t meet the need.

Cohn said he donated the money, profits from his fabulously successful 2015 Sonoma Music Festival headlined by Ringo Starr, Chicago, the Doobies and Gregg Allman, mostly in hopes he might inspire others to take up the cause of ending hunger in the region.

“Even if they donate $10 to the food bank,” he said, “whatever they can afford, it helps.”

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