Powerful. Kind-hearted. Loving. Hard-working.

These words are how the daughters of Donald Lee Reed described their father following his death April 28, 2010. Yet, Don was so much more than these simple words.

He began life Dec. 12, 1934, in Sioux City, Iowa, as the eldest son of Ray and Isabell Reed. The family lived in Beresford, S.D. Don’s boyhood was filled with adventures with his siblings Kleo and Howard, and later, with his much younger brother, Tom. The family moved to a variety of places in the Midwest before landing in Rapid City, S.D.

Don Reed

It was in Rapid City that Don met his wife, Cleo. They were high school sweethearts. He was the town boy, she the country girl. They married Aug. 14, 1955.

Don graduated from the South Dakota School of Mines in 1958 with a degree in mining engineering. Don’s high regard for his alma mater was evident for the rest of his life as he encouraged every family member to attend the School of Mines. By the time Don graduated college he and Cleo were expecting their second daughter, Tami. She joined big sister, Jann, right before graduation. A third daughter, Pam, arrived before the family moved from Rapid City.

Don’s work in the construction industry took him and his family all over the country. His career started as an engineer on Minuteman missile sites in North Dakota, which lead to work on the Cape Canaveral Operations Building in Florida, and project manager on metro systems in Boston and Washington, D.C. Youngest daughter, Kae, was born while the family was in Florida. Don’s last career move was to open Donald L. Reed Construction Consultants, using the skills he had obtained to assist others with their construction challenges. He retired in 2007.

Don had a work opportunity to return to California in 1973. Don and Cleo resided in Concord for 34 years and watched as each of their children graduated college and moved away to start their lives. Nurturing his girls as they gained their independence was a source of great pride to Don.

Don and Cleo were introduced to boating and water skiing when the girls were young, which quickly became the favorite family activity. Don loved cars since he was a young man, and although he thought a Cadillac was going to be his ultimate driving machine, once he test drove a BMW, he was hooked. He and Cleo crisscrossed the country multiple times in their BMW visiting their wide circle of family and friends along the way.

Don was involved with the First Presbyterian Church in Concord where he volunteered in the Stephen Ministry – something he continued to do in Paradise at Paradise United Methodist Church.

Don and Cleo moved to Paradise, Calif., in 2007 to be closer to their children in Chico, Redding and South Lake Tahoe. Special trips to Minnesota were made to visit his long-distance daughter. He found ways to make a contribution to his new community by being a volunteer at Feather River Hospital and Butte County Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA). Don believed strongly in helping others.

Don is survived by his wife, Cleo Reed; daughter Jann Reed and husband Lester Wong; daughter Tami Jordan and husband Mike Jordan; daughter Pam Valentine; daughter Kae Reed and partner Sue Wood; grandchildren Joseph Jordan, Chris Jordan, Veronica Wong, Oliver Wong and Jacqueline Wong; great-grandson Michael Jordan; sister Kleo Karst; brothers Howard Reed and Tom Reed; several nieces, nephews, and cousins.

Services will be May 6 at 2pm at Paradise United Methodist Church. His ashes will be buried at a later date at Pine Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Rapid City near the Black Hills.

Contributions to honor Don may be made to Butte County CASA, 10 Independence Circle, Chico, CA 95973; or Malawi Africa Mission New Horizon Church International, 1770 Ellis Ave., Ste. 100, Jackson, MS 39204; or to your favorite charity.

The El Dorado County Transportation Commission and the 50 Corridor TMA are hosting events to support “May is Bike Month” beginning with the 5th annual “Great Bike Ride” on May 4 at noon. Visit www.mayisbikemonth.com to register and log miles in support of “Million Mile May.” Free T-shirts at all events!.

Great Bike Ride No. 5

May 4 noon-1pm

The ride will begin in the Breezway of Building A and participants will ride along the newly constructed section of the El Dorado Trail from Forni Road to the Weber Creek Bridge or Missouri Flat Road. If you plan to participate and want a complimentary lunch, RSVP to hazel@50corridor.com. Bring a bicycle and a helmet.

Ride ‘n’ Roll Youth Bike Ride

May 8 9am-noon

Kick off Bike Month with the El Dorado County Youth Commission and local High School Mountain Bike Teams. Sponsored by the El Dorado County Youth Commission, this event is for kids of all ages. The ride will begin in the Breezway of Building A and participants will ride along the newly constructed section of the El Dorado Trail from Forni Road to the Weber Creek Bridge or Missouri Flat Road. Bring a bicycle and a helmet. All participants must sign a waiver for this event.

Bike to Work Mondays with Placerville’s Mayor

May 3, 10, 17 and 24 at 7:15am

Meet at Ivy House Parking Lot and bike to work at the El Dorado County Government Center with Placerville Mayor Pierre Rivas. Don’t forget your helmet.

By Ray Hagar, Reno Gazette-Journal

Friends, family and business associates all say Mike Pegram is one lucky guy.

It’s a good thing, because the noted Kentucky racehorse owner and McDonald’s restaurateur is becoming a major player in Northern Nevada gaming.

“I have always loved action, whether it was the racing or card games or dice games,” said the 58-year-old Pegram. “You can say I have a propensity for gaming and that is just my personality.”

Two years ago, Pegram and his partners — the Carano family of Reno and Eldorado executive Rick Murdock — built and opened Bodines, a 250-slot casino and sports book in Carson City. The choice of location — next to U.S. 50, which takes visitors to and from Lake Tahoe — was strategic.

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Gather up a foursome of friends or co-workers and join the Humane Society of Truckee-Tahoe for the Ruth Frishman Memorial Golf Tournament on May 28 at the Northstar-at-Tahoe Resort golf course.

Sign up by May 5 and get $25 off the regular registration price. Tournament cost is $125 per golfer on or before May 5 and $150 after that date.

Entry fee includes golf, shared cart, range balls, coffee during registration, lunch, buffet dinner and prizes.

Visit www.hstt.org to register online or call HSTT at (530) 587.5948 to sign up over the phone.

The Northstar-at-Tahoe Resort golf course in Lake Tahoe, California is an 18-hole, par-72 (men and women) course that will both challenge golfers’ skills and appeal to their senses. Designed by Robert Muir Graves, the course integrates Tahoe’s rugged, wooded landscape with wavy bunkers and putting greens. The result is an active golf course whose features create a flow of movement that seamlessly moves in and over the natural terrain.

Registration starts at 9am with a shotgun start at 10am. The Casino hole and other contest holes allow for fun competition throughout the tournament where golfers can win prizes while raising money for the Humane Society of Truckee-Tahoe.

The Humane Society of Truckee-Tahoe is dedicated to saving and improving the lives of pets through adoptions, community spay/neuter services and humane education programs in the Truckee and North Tahoe area. To meet adoptable dogs, go to HSTT’s Adoption Day, every Saturday from noon to 2pm at the Town of Truckee Animal Kennel, or call (530) 581.3199 to schedule an appointment. To learn more about HSTT, call (530) 587.5948 or visit www.hstt.org.

Explore Tahoe: An Urban Trailhead is joining the American Hiking Society on June 5 to celebrate the 18th annual National Trails Day in South Lake Tahoe. This year’s theme is “Find Your Happy Place.”

For more information, click on trails.

By Laurie Brazil

“Hopes and Dreams for Everyone” is the appeal to Soroptimist members worldwide to work together collaboratively to prevent violence against women and children. This week Soroptimist International of Tahoe Sierra hosted an international member, Rita Offerson, who shared the vision of her Hillerod Soroptimistklub in her hometown in Denmark which is working to address this issue.

In today’s globalized and changing world, it is time to make a difference by addressing the root causes of violence against women and girls – to promote women’s equality and ensure that rights are respected, protected, and fulfilled.

According to the United Nation’s Secretary General-Ban Ki-mooni, “Violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women’s lives, on their families and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence – yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned”.

The facts in evidence are that violence against women occurs every day in every country in the world. Every woman faces the possibility of violence but those from indigenous, ethnic, indigent, or other minority communities are even more at risk. Lack of access to economic and social rights such as education, land and housing as well as discrimination and violations of civil rights increase women’s vulnerability.

One of the worst forms of violence against women and girls is human trafficking; 66 percent of those trafficked are women and 13 percent are girls. Humans are trafficked for many reasons – although most reported cases of trafficking involve sexual exploitation, but trafficking for forced labor is also rapidly growing, rarely reported, and much harder to detect, with trafficked persons working in ‘invisible’ locations, such as agricultural fields in rural areas, mining camps, garment factories, or within closed environments of the home in domestic servitude.

Some of the projects and ideas that these clubs bring to life are providing life-skill education and sustainable living conditions for women and vulnerable children. The aim is to give young girls knowledge about the danger of trafficking, access to education, a place to live, work possibilities, and an economy that enables them to maintain a decent way of living in familiar surroundings.

“There was so much need to reach out to the girls, to empower them and give them hope. We realized that they needed food, counseling, clothes, skills and much more” states a Women in Crisis.

Protecting women and girls from violence is central to the attainment of women’s human rights therefore women’s rights organizations, such as Soroptimist International, were pivotal in first drawing these issues out of the private domain and into the spotlight of the public eye. In fact, a recent convention in Reno featured a well informed and riveting speaker, Truckee Police Chief Nicolas Sensley, who focused directly on this concerning issue.

Both South Shore Soroptimist clubs endeavor to make a difference by inspiring and taking action to improve the status of women and girls through their projects, at local, national, regional, and international levels. Together, we can add to the worldwide effort to learn more about what works by collecting stories and sharing these conditions. Rita not only enjoyed our unique beauty of the Lake Tahoe area, which she will share back in her native country, but also illustrated that we can join our voices together for international advocacy efforts. We can contribute to worldwide learning about the different forms of violence women and girls around the world experience, and our combined forces are critical to developing and implementing successful interventions.

Laurie Brazil is a member of Soroptimist International Tahoe Sierra.

To the community,

The South Lake Tahoe Fire Department will be performing hydrant maintenance on all of the city’s hydrants and flow verification tests on many of them throughout the city in every neighborhood during the months of May and June. This requires the fire department to flow small amounts of water at every hydrant when performing simple maintenance and requires substantial continuous flowing when testing the capacity of the hydrant.

We will only flow the amount of water as needed to perform these tests. Due to system changes and normal usage of the domestic water system, the fire department must verify the ability of the system and its individual hydrants to deliver the proper amount of water to fight fires.

Every hydrant must be tested once every five years as required by the Insurance Services Office in order to verify the flows and maintain current records. When flow testing, the water lines can and do become disturbed causing water to be discolored in homes.

South Tahoe Public Utility District recommends that if this happens, open an outside faucet and run the water until clear. The water companies know that we are performing these tests and services.

The fire department understands that our actions may cause some inconvenience for our citizens but we are attempting to minimize the impact with this notice. Thank you for your patience.

South Lake Tahoe Fire Department

Using public transportation to get around on the North and West shores of Lake Tahoe will become easier when the soon-to-be built Tahoe City Transit Center is finished. The Placer County Board of Supervisors moved that closer to reality when it awarded the construction contract for the center this week.

The center will serve as an intermodal transportation hub for both residents and visitors.

The center, which will cover about 2.5 acres on a tract of land west of Highway 89, will serve as a hub for Placer County’s Tahoe Area Regional Transit (TART) buses. The center will be situated adjacent to hiking and bike paths and provide parking for commuters and visitors to utilize buses to get around on the North and West Shores of Lake Tahoe.

The Transit Center is part of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s Environmental Improvement Project program for improving air quality, which in turn will benefit lake clarity. The project is also consistent with numerous agency transportation plans, community plans, and studies.

The $4.2 million contract was awarded to Aspen Developers Corporation. Construction of the project should begin this summer. Completion of the Transit Center will likely stretch into an additional building season.

“The Tahoe City Transit Center represents a critical public transportation component in North Lake Tahoe,” Public Works Deputy Director Peter Kraatz said in a statement. “It will significantly enhance our existing public bus system at a key bus transfer and multi-modal transit location, providing needed amenities such as a sheltered waiting area, public parking, bike lockers, better access to existing walking and bicycle trails, and elimination of the unprotected highway crossing for bus transfer patrons in Tahoe City. The project fulfills the County’s and TRPA’s vision of encouraging more opportunities for using alternative modes of transportation and becoming less reliant on the personal automobile that will ultimately result in less traffic congestion and cleaner air.”

Placer County previously put the project out for bid in 2009. The county decided to reject all bids at the time and re-advertise the project. The bid that was awarded to Aspen is $44,000 less than the 2009 lowest responsive bid.

The total project cost is estimated to be $7.4 million, which includes construction costs, environmental documentation and design. The project is fully funded through grants from Federal Infrastructure Stimulus funds, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Proposition 1, FTA Alternative Transportation in Public Parks and Lands, Placer County Redevelopment Agency, Placer County Traffic Mitigation Fees, a Placer County Air Pollution control District Clean Air Grant, California Tahoe Conservancy, the North Lake Tahoe Resort Association, and the State Local Partnership Program. Funding for the construction of this project is included in both the 2009-10 and 2010-11 fiscal year budgets.

Dooryard burn permits are required beginning today in the Amador-El Dorado-Sacramento-Alpine Unit of CalFire. These permits are issued to the landowner free of charge for a period of three years and allow for the burning of dry vegetation (not household trash) that originates on the landowners property.

Unit Chief Bill Holmes is strongly encouraging everyone to begin disposing of all the vegetation (whole trees, tree branches and shrubs) that ended up on the ground. He said in a statement, “We have a lot of extra vegetation all over the county from the storm and if we don’t begin to aggressively dispose of this fuel immediately, come summer our wildfires will have the potential of becoming catastrophic. It is estimated that in some areas there is 33 percent more fuel on the ground than in past years.”

Holmes states that annually 16 percent of our wildland fires in Amador and El Dorado counties are from burning debris piles that escape the control of the person in charge; this year we anticipate that the unit will see a significant increase in the number of debris burn pile escapes during fire season as residents work towards disposing of the dead vegetative material around their homes.

To reduce your risk of starting a wildfire, begin disposing of your vegetation now when it is safe to burn your piles. Keep your pile(s) to 4 feet by 4 feet, scrape a 10-foot wide ring around each debris pile down to bare dirt, have a shovel and water supply (charged hose) nearby to use in the event your fire escapes from the pile and make sure an adult is in attendance until the pile is completely extinguished.

Remember, you can only burn on permissive burn days. For Amador County, call (209) 223.6246 and for El Dorado County call (530) 621.5897.

For tips on burning debris piles safely or other fire safety topics, visit www.fire.ca.gov for fact sheets. For alternatives to burning piles, contact the El Dorado County Fire Safe Council at www.edcfiresafe.org.

By Matt Weiser, Sacramento Bee

Along the rusted tracks of the Amador Foothills Railroad, woodpeckers hammer drooping oak trees and hawks cry overhead. The birds command attention, because the sharp clatter of train wheels has stopped – perhaps forever.

The railroad runs 10 miles from Ione to Martell in Amador County, one of the curviest and steepest short-line railroads anywhere. Built in 1904 to serve bustling gold mines in a time before

Photo/Sierra Nevada Logging Museum

the automobile, the railroad may have seen its final train car last month.

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