Dinuba Sentinel 1-11-18 E-edition

Dinuba Sentinel Serving the communities of Dinuba, Cutler-Orosi and Monson-Sultana
Emperors of the Month
Dinuba High School honors top students for the month of December
Established 1909, Dinuba, California
Community, Pages A6 & A7
Thursday, January 11, 2018
50 Cents
Crime in Dinuba drops in 2017
less crime.”
The Dinuba Police Department
handled a total of 41,668 calls for service in 2017, down from 42,245 in 2016, Popovich said. Those calls resulted in 4,579 reports in 2017, down from 4,845 in 2016.
“The stats are pretty close so we’re staying consistent,” Popovich said. “Of course, as the chief, I’d like to see all the stats go down, especially in the Part I crimes ... Our calls for service are pretty consistent across the board. We’re still busy all the time.”
As for the department’s goals in 2018, Popovich said, “The focus for 2018 is to continue to provide proactive law enforcement to the community, try to stay on top of trends, continue to keep our staffing where it’s at and continue to build our staffing. And continue to be involved in the community with neighborhood watches and any other events in the community we can help or assist them with their needs.”
One new law that’s affects are yet to be seen is the legalization of recreational marijuana in California. The city of Dinuba has a strict stance in its city ordinance as to what is allowed within city limits.
“The city does not allow dispensaries or distribution in the city,” Popovich said. “The law says you can grow up to six plants per person. If you do, our city ordinance says that you are to register with the police department and code enforcement.”
No Dinuba residents had registered as of Monday, Popovich said.
Popovich added, “We’re early on into the new year with the new law. We’ll have to see how that goes and if people actually come in and report that they are growing. That’s one of those new things that it is going to take some time to see what the outcome of the law is and how it affects our department. I’m sure we’ll be responding to complaints and we’ll deal with those accordingly."
Open Gate volunteer Aiko Takeda works on creating a centerpiece for the annual soup lunch fundraiser on Feb. 7.
Creating beauty after overcoming tragedies
By Keven J. Geaney graduation ceremony was in the evening and Aiko and four
Editor@thedinubasentinel.com
Open Gate's boutique and centerpiece creator Aiko Takeda didn’t let numerous obstacles and tragedies growing up dissuade her from helping
others as a teacher and volunteer.
“Whatever happens to you just make the best of it,”
Takeda said.
The 89-year-old Orosi resident suffered her first tragedy
as a child when her mother died of tuberculosis [TB].
She was one when her mother got TB and was sent to a sanatorium [medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of TB]. Two years later she passed away.
Her mother, Chizu Tsuchida, came to America from Japan with her family in 1911. They settled in San Francisco. That same year her father, Kiichi Tasiro, was working on the railroad in San Francisco. He came to America in 1902. The two already knew each other from Japan and quickly got married. A short time later they moved to Selma as Kiichi got a job as a sharecropper. He then saved up his money and bought land in Orosi.
By 1918 the family of four at that time moved to a barn on the family's 10 acres of land. The family grew oranges, lemons and tomatoes. Aiko, which means “child of love” in Japanese, was born in 1928.
“I was embarrassed to be living in a barn, luckily we lived far outside of town and the bus dropped us off a distance from where we lived,” Aiko said.
The barn had a kitchen and beds to sleep in, along with storage for the farming equipment. The bathroom was the only thing outside as she had to walk to a latrine.
Kiichi built a house for his family in 1940 and they moved into it in 1941. That same year, on Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese forces, propelling America into World War II. The war changed everything for Aiko and other Japanese-Americans.
Signs were put up in some businesses around town saying “No Japs!” A curfew of 6 p.m. was also put on Japanese-Americans.
In 1942 Aiko graduated from eighth grade. But the
other Japanese-American classmates had an early curfew. The five students asked the school if graduation could be held during the day, but their request was denied. The five students received their diplomas the next day during class.
“I wasn’t happy to miss graduation, but there was nothing we could do about it,” Aiko said.
Not long after the graduation Aiko’s family found out that they, and 120,000 other Japanese-Americans from across the West Coast, were being sent to one of 10 internment camps. They had two months to prepare for the uprooting of her family to a camp in Arizona.
“Luckily we had time to prepare for it,” Aiko said. “We heard about one family in Southern California who only had days to prepare and ended up losing their house and all their furniture.”
Aiko’s family had a Mennonite couple and their child watch over their property and take care of their land while they were gone. It ended up taking nearly four years to return home. Families were also able to leave items at the Dinuba Japanese Methodist Church.
Before leaving to the camp Kiichi was taken by the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] to Visalia. He was a leader amongst the Japanese people in the Cutler-Orosi area and the FBI was gathering all the local leaders. Aiko thought her dad might never come back as she heard that some were being sent back east.
“As it turned out he came back the next day,” Aiko said. “I think him being a Christian is what saved him.”
Aiko didn’t mind camp life. She stated that at 14 years old the people in charge of the camp wanted the teens to stay active, so they had them create volleyball and basketball teams in each block of the camp. The different blocks would then play against each other.
“I had a great time there,” Aiko said about the camp.
She stated that the camp had a mess hall, laundry room, church and school. She lived in a barrack, which had one big open space. They used sheets to divide the living area and the sleeping area. The only problem she remembered having was holes in the walls that let in the cold weather
See Tragedy, Page A7
Rain totals down despite recent storm
benchmark to see how much water we have sitting up in the hills ... I’ve got the impression it can go either way.”
As far as Alta Irrigation’s storage for the immediate area, the 2016-17 downpours and snowpack have the district above average at about 24,000 acre feet of water.
“It’s where we like to be in the latter part of fall to hit the first part of winter,” Wegley said.
The storage is thanks to a near- record of diversion – 252,000 acre feet of water diverted from the Kings River into Alta Irrigation. The figure was 800 acre feet shy of the record set in 1974. The diverted water is used for direct use, recharge, storage and more.
The stored water has also helped recharge the water table within the area. In 2016 the average water level was 76 feet, up to 86 feet in 2017.
Said Wegley, “That’s a great metric to measure – what does the water table show. We bring water in and we get a chance to shut the pumps off and the water table comes up ... Our aquifer can recover when you have water.”
While the Central Valley hopes for more rain, the city of Dinuba is actively seeking grant funding to prevent storms from damaging the downtown district. City staff is applying for $4.8 million in funds from the Community Development Block Grant for the Kern Street Storm Drain project that would alleviate flood concerns in downtown. The highly competitive grant has $35 million available in 2018.
Keven J. Geaney | The Sentinel
The city of Dinuba saw a slight dip in crime in 2017 compared to 2016, most significantly in burglaries and thefts.
There were 384 thefts in 2017, down from 455 in the prior year. Burglaries also decreased by 21 percent.
The Dinuba Police Department recently added to its investigations force, which could have played a role in the decrease of thefts in city limits.
“It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why they went down,” Dinuba Police Chief Devon Popovich said. “I want to say it’s our very proactive enforcement. We have assigned a third detective into the investigations division that focuses on thefts and burglaries. It could be the economy ... It could be the fact that more people are working.
“In the past we were having a lot of door kicks and people doing burglaries and that’s declined significantly for us.”
Overall, Part I crimes – including homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assaults, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and arson – decreased by 71 in 2017 from 2016.
According to a report by Dinuba Police Detective Baldo DeHaro, commercial thefts declined from 100 to 75. Commercial burglaries, commercial armed robbery and identity theft all declined as well.
Overall arrests, which spiked in 2016 at 1,685, declined to 1,414 in 2017.
DeHaro said in a presentation to the Dinuba Government Affairs Committee on Tuesday, “We’re arresting more people, which is causing the people that are most likely to commit the thefts or commercial crimes to be put in jail, or at least hinder them from doing it again because they know they’ll be caught. We’ve arrested a lot of people in the last couple of years. You see the crime going down ... it’s that arrests are going up so it’s causing
By Jackson Moore
News@thedinubasentinel.com
thedinubasentinel.com
Inside | Lights and SirensA2 | ObituariesA2 | OpinionA4 | SportsB1 | Classi edsB4
Emp wrestlers win tourney Two Dinuba wrestlers take
home titles in host tournament Sports, Page B1
By Jackson Moore
News@thedinubasentinel.com
At this time last year Dinuba had received much-needed rain storms and the Sierra’s were filled with snow. The Dinuba area entered the new year by receiving only .06 inches of rain in December, but the verdict on 2018 is still out after rain covered the area over the last week.
Alta Irrigation recorded .65 inches of rain from Jan. 5 to Tuesday morning alone. The recent precipitation nearly matched the .91 inches of rain that had fallen in the 2017-18 year prior to January.
In comparison, the wet 2016-17 year had already produced 7.58 inches of rain by Jan. 9, 2017 and 16.8 inches in all.
Alta Irrigation General Manager Chad Wegley says it’s too early to worry about the low rain totals to date.
“We’re still watching,” Wegley said. “I think it’s a little too early to tell. All it takes – we hit three or four good storms and then the next thing we know, we’re flushed with water again and life is good. We’re just a little too early in the season. I consider this at least a nice start to 2018 ... It was a welcome change to actually see some water on the ground.
“It’s hard to say what the prediction is for the upcoming water year. We’ll have a better idea with the February snow survey. That will be a really good
Orosi High graduate receives his diploma 72 years later
Sentinel staff report
The Cutler-Orosi Joint Unified School District last month righted a wrong the was made 72 years earlier.
The school district found out that at least two Japanese-Americans in 1945 were not allowed to attend their graduation and receive their diplomas. The school district looked at
transcripts from back then and it was determined that the students should have received a high school diploma.
Micaela Macareno, administrative assistant to the superintendent, was instrumental in gathering all the data, including the names of the principal and superintendent from 1945, and created a diploma. The current superintendent, Yolanda Valdez, and
school board president, Eddie Valero, signed the diploma.
Macareno personally delivered one of the diplomas to a graduate of the Class of 1945. The 90-year-old didn't want his name mentioned.
The other 1945 graduate had already passed away. The school district mailed his diploma to his sister in Sacramento.