take care

When Nick Arbelaez moved to South Lake Tahoe with his fiancee Stephanie Shamo, he was taking the Assistant Soccer Coach position at LTCC and she was headed to Barton Health.

After Head Coach Ben Wade and LTCC parted ways mid-season, Arbelaez stepped in as interim head coach, leading the Coyotes to the final four for California Community Colleges.

At Tuesday's board meeting, Arbelaez was introduced to the trustees along with
other coaches and volunteers that have helped both the men's and women's soccer teams have early successes in the young programs.

The Nevada Department of Transportation is urging residents to help protect water quality by preventing and reporting illicit drainage and discharge onto state roads and transportation facilities.

Illicit discharge is anything entering a roadway drainage system that is not natural stormwater. Pesticides, construction dirt or materials, as well as materials from neighboring properties and roadway runoff containing fertilizers, vehicle oil and chemicals are examples.

Its becoming a concern at beaches and venues around the country: increased trash left behind. Lake Tahoe sees massive amounts of trash on beaches after big weekends, especially the 4th of July, but the basin is not alone.

Headline in North Carolina: Residents upset with beach equipment and other trash left behind on shores.

Headline in Los Angeles: Trash left behind from the Made in America festival in downtown Los Angeles.

Headline in Indianapolis: Trail of trash left behind at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Lawmakers from Nevada and California met Monday on the shores of Lake Tahoe to discuss how to protect a national treasure as it faces continued threats to water clarity, invasive species, wildfire and drought.

Ever since President Bill Clinton held the first meeting in South Lake Tahoe in 1997, the annual focus of the Lake Tahoe Summit is to protect what Mark Twain called "the fairest picture the whole world affords."

History shows time and time again our greatest accomplishments at Lake Tahoe are achieved when people work together. In the past, Tahoe was known as a place where unproductive interactions between stakeholders led to a stunning decay in our environment and our economic vitality, creating a region that seemed frozen in time.

We face major environmental challenges at Tahoe, including the uncertainties of climate change. And as Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

A large team made up of members from multiple agencies served a search warrant on both the Tahoe Wellness Cooperative and owner Cody Bass's South Lake Tahoe home early Monday morning.

Agents from the Franchise Tax Board (FTB), Board of Equalization, Department of Insurance, South Lake Tahoe Police Department, and El Dorado County Sheriff's Department (EDCSO) were on scene at the co-op according to Tami Grimes, Information Officer with the FTB in Sacramento.

"The contents of the search warrant are sealed," said Grimes.

Litter. Dog poop. Unsafe fires. Bear safety. These are just some of the issues impacting our Region. Today, the Lake Tahoe Outreach Committee unveiled the Take Care™ campaign to help reduce these impacts and promote a more responsible use of our great outdoors.

The campaign was designed for use in outreach efforts by public agencies, private businesses and nonprofit organizations in the Region. Aimed at residents and visitors, the campaign is a series of reminders that poke fun at the mistakes we all make when we’re not paying attention.

Knowing that not all South Lake Tahoe kids plan on heading to a four-year college, John McDougall wanted to help those students find their vocational path.

And he is accomplishing this in two ways: Pay it Forward Scholarships and with a High School Mentoring Program.

"I'm helping kids that are taking the vocational path," said the 1972 South Tahoe high graduate.

Do you want to .....
- Help improve the quality of Barton’s care for all patients and family members?

- Give feedback to the hospital based on your own experiences as a patient or family member?

- Help Barton plan changes to improve how we take care of patients?

- Work with the hospital for either short- or long-term commitments, depending on the project?

"We made sacrifices to keep the fight outside of our homes." An emotional Sheryll Valencia spoke of why she joined the Army in 2004 and made three deployments to Iraq and now works for David & Johnson, Ltd in South Lake Tahoe. "It's important to always remember the ones who sacrificed their lives," Sheryll told the women gathered for Thursday's Soroptimist International of Tahoe Sierra meeting.

People coming into the basin to attend the annual Lake Tahoe Summit on Tuesday will find new signs on the three Nevada entrances: Kingsbury Grade (State Route 207), Spooner Summit (U.S. Highway 50) and the Mt. Rose Highway (State Route 431).

The signs read, “Entering the Lake Tahoe Watershed — Help Protect It!” They were put up to remind everyone passing by them that Lake Tahoe is a special place that needs protecting by everyone coming to visit (and those who are already here).

The League to Save Lake Tahoe will host its annual Keep Tahoe Red, White & Blue Beach Cleanups at five locations throughout Lake Tahoe on July 5. Volunteers of all ages and abilities are invited to join the effort from Tahoe City to Nevada Beach and South Shore.

The yellow jacket queens have already been seen in South Lake Tahoe, and if you don't want your backyard volleyball game or summer picnic ruined by them, now is the time to take action.

The queens are the only bee colony member to hibernate in the winter. She emerges in spring and begins to look for a suitable place to build a nest and begin her new colony. By the end of summer one colony can have 4,000 to 5,000 yellow jackets.

So if you take out one queen, you eliminate thousands of bees.

Two local businesswomen, Marianna Lucido and Suzette Waite, have teamed together to start a new company called Lake Tahoe Cosmetics. Their vision is to offer women a complete, affordable cosmetics line that gives them a finished, glamorous look, and also fits the lifestyle of living in Lake Tahoe. These products are made with the highest quality ingredients that create a light and natural feeling and provide a flawless, long-lasting look that is compatible with our mountain climate.

For those looking to boost career success and improve quality of life, head to the Thriving Community Program for an entertaining and uplifting presentation hosted by Tahoe Tallac Association.

March is, among other things, ColoRectal Cancer Awareness Month, so we're going to talk about your colon (if you're eating breakfast you may want to save this for later). Colorectal cancer is the s...

When Katie Schultz and Matt Hogan told the Sugar Pine Bakery staff that they were closing the bakery to take care of Hogan's parents in New York, Jonathan and Teresa Aragon faced a difficult cho...

The environmental non-profit Tahoe Fund presented a $27,500 check to the California Tahoe Conservancy yesterday to allow completion of the Lower Blackwood Creek and Eagle Rock Restoration Project, a critical creek restoration and trailhead project on Lake Tahoe’s west shore.

If the TTD took the $70 Million that they say it will cost to build the loop road and fix up the area they would still have enough over to give us a free bus system like most of the other resort towns. They are not alleviating any traffic flows or amount of cars only diverting them faster to Nevada. How is diverting the traffic helping the traffic situation, we will still have the same amount of cars on the road. I have said this before about other things done to us by our Government agency’s doing what’s best for them and us(mostly them).

Director-producer Steven Spielberg's film "War Horse," currently showing at Heavenly Village Cinema in South Lake Tahoe and elsewhere, is fine movie making, with a splendid cast. If it sinks into sentimentality at times, bear with it because the story, from a British children's book of 1982.

A gunman who opened fire inside a Carson City restaurant has torn a hole through the South Lake Tahoe community, taking the life of a long-time local woman, maiming her disabled husband, and sending shock waves in the community after learning the gunman has family business ties in town.
The brutal murder that happened inside the International House of Pancakes this week claimed the lives of three U.S. Army National Guard personnel and Lake Tahoe Keys resident Florence Donovan-Gunderson, 67. Shooter Eduardo Sencion, 32, of Carson City turned the automatic weapon he was packing on himself and left both communities stunned and asking questions about why such a senseless act of violence happened.