A 21-year-old transient was arrested Wednesday night on auto theft charges.

South Lake Tahoe police officers on Sept. 16 stopped Tarra Sheffield driving a 1991 Honda Accord that had been reported missing last weekend.

Tarra Sheffield

This was one of four vehicles that had been reported stolen between Sept. 11 and Sept. 12. In every case, the ignition keys had been left in the vehicle. The other three vehicles have been recovered with no identified suspect.

Officers said when they searched the Honda they found methamphetamine, heroin and drug paraphernalia. Scheffield also faces methamphetamine, possession of heroin, and possession of drug paraphernalia charges.

“Until November of last year, each of the offenses for which Sheffield was arrested last night constituted a felony offense, punishable in state prison for four years in the case of auto theft,” Lt. Brian Williams said in a press release.

Local officers are blaming Proposition 47 for the 12 percent spike in property crimes this year.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

The Great Sierra River Clean Up is Sept. 19.

There will be cleanup sites at various locations all around the basin, with more than 10 sites in South Shore, including Kiva Beach, Regan Beach, Trout Creek, and the Upper Truckee River.

Click here to see a list of all the available sites, cleanup times, and to register. Cleanup supplies will be provided and all ages are welcome.

Start times vary by site, but most begin at 2pm.

The event is part of a larger effort, the Great Sierra River Cleanup, where volunteers will clean waterways all across the Sierra Nevada from Mt. Whitney to Lassen National Park.

El Dorado County students in grades 8-12 in South Lake Tahoe are invited to participate in the juvenile justice system through the Teen Court program.

Orientation training is Oct. 1 from 5-6:30pm at the Superior Court, Department 4, 1354 Johnson Blvd. in South Lake Tahoe. After completing the mandatory orientation training, teens will serve as court personnel for real cases in which a minor has committed an offense, admitted the offense and chosen to be judged by his/her peers.

Teen Court hearings are Thursday nights at 5 from Oct. 22 through May 2016.

For more information, contact Jorge Orozco at 530.573.7964.

Great Basin National Park in Nevada is known for its dark skies. Photo/National Park Service

By Kyle Roerink, Las Vegas Sun

GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK — The 60-foot laser beam streaked like a lightsaber across the night sky, playing connect-the-dots with constellations in the plane of the Milky Way.

On a hillside 300 miles northeast of Las Vegas in the Great Basin National Park, Derek Demeter controlled the light with shifts of his wrist. Each movement sent the laser on a light-years’ long course.

It was 10pm on a recent weekend and 300 park guests craned their necks toward the heavens. Some peered through telescopes and others followed the vivid path of Demeter’s wand. Faces weren’t visible, but the stars, the Milky Way and distant galaxies were.

Read the whole story

By Benjamin Spillman, Reno Gazette-Journal

On Wednesday Epic Rides announced plans to launch the Carson City Off Road, a three-day event that will include single-track riding and racing, a bike expo and music festival.

The event is the result of a five-year agreement between Tucson-based Epic Rides, Carson City and the Carson City Visitors Bureau. The two local entities will cover costs associated with hosting, everything from traffic and crowd control to staging for entertainment. Travel Nevada also contributed a matching grant.

The inaugural event is expected to fill up with 600 riders and, based on experiences with other Epic Rides events, could draw as many as 2,000 by 2021, the end of the contract. It could mean as much as $15 million to the local economy.

Read the whole story

Turning the summer herb garden into medicinal remedies for the whole family is subject of a Sept. 26 talk in Truckee.

Slow Food Lake Tahoe is hosting local herbalist Shanna Strong of Strongheart Medicinals. This Skillshare Class will cover poultices, oil infusions, salves, teas blends, syrups, and easy immune boosters. Participants will be able to make their own tea blend or bath blend to take home.

The event will be in the Truckee Demonstration Garden (Truckee River Regional Park, 10500 Brockway Road) from 10am-noon.

Tickets are $10 for Slow Food Lake Tahoe members and $15 for non-members.  Ticket may be purchased online.

Tinder dry terrain in California is causing explosive fires. Photo/CalFire

By Julia Prodis Sulek, San Jose Mercury News

LAKE PORT — CalFire Capt. Scott Rohrs and his three crewmen were racing to the scene of the Valley fire when the foreboding news crackled over radio dispatch: four elite firefighters had been overrun by flames, suffering serious second-degree burns.

The fire was barely an hour old, but driven by fierce winds and the most intense, dry conditions of California’s four-year drought, those men had been forced to deploy their zip-up shelter bags, survival gear of last resort.

“This is what we’re getting into,” Rohrs told his men from the Cloverdale Station on Saturday afternoon as they headed toward the darkening plume of smoke. “This is going to be a career fire, one of the worst ones we ever encounter.”

Firefighters throughout California are encountering the unforgettable in 2015 — an epic fire season fueled by a record drought that has turned much of the Golden State’s forests into a matchbox of more than 12 million dead trees. And with global temperatures rising and the Sierra Nevada snowpack at its lowest level in five centuries, concern is growing that the unpredictable ferocity of the Valley Fire could become a new reality for the men and women who battle the blazes.

What’s been so stunning to firefighters this year is the swiftness of the flames. July’s Rocky Fire, about 10 miles east of the Valley fire, devoured 20,000 acres in just five hours. The Valley Fire grew to 40,000 acres in 10 hours last weekend, cracking the list of the top 10 most destructive fires in California history.

Read the whole story

By Jackie Valley, Las Vegas Sun

The Silver State Health Insurance Exchange will not operate brick-and-mortar enrollment stores during this year’s sign-up period for government-subsidized health insurance.

“It wasn’t fiscally prudent to walk in that direction,” Bruce Gilbert, executive director of the exchange, told board members at a meeting last week.

Last year, the exchange opened two enrollment stores — one in northern Nevada and another at the Boulevard Mall in Las Vegas — where consumers could enroll through Nevada Health Link with the help of insurance brokers and navigators.

Read the whole story

The South Lake Tahoe Police Department is starting to use a new technology — essentially DNA for property — to assist in combating property theft.

The technology is called Anti-Theft Dots. Applications of this technology include a special substance that can withstand extreme elements including salt water and temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees. Suspended inside this special substance are thousands of microscopic dots which are smaller than a grain of sand. Each dot has a unique PIN, identifying the property owner.

The substance may be applied to all types of property, from bikes, electronics, tools, equipment, metals, copper and more. The user applies the substance to her valuables and registers the PIN in the Law Enforcement National Recovery Database.

The South Lake Tahoe Police Department has been equipped with scanning tools to determine if the property has been marked with this substance. If it is determined the property is marked, a special digital reader is applied to the substance so law enforcement can read the PIN on the microscopic dots. That PIN is entered into the Law Enforcement National Recovery Database, allowing law enforcement agencies to retrieve ownership in real time.

Officers will supplying the dots to cyclists at the Bijou Bike Park opening on Sept. 19. After that date the department plans to initiate a campaign to reduce property theft in the city by working with businesses, public works, utilities, and the school district.

Balance and Fall Prevention is the topic of a free wellness lecture being put on by Barton Health.

What allows us to balance and what prevents us from falling? Learn the answers at the Oct. 8 talk.

Physical therapist Juliana Macan will talk about the components that make up balance, and share exercises to improve balance and prevent vertigo and dizziness.

The free talk is from 6-7pm in the board room at Lake Tahoe Community College in South Lake Tahoe.