Tunnel found; ejected over e-cigarette; goat cleanup
- Updated
Odd and interesting news from the West.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
CALEXICO, Calif. — The U.S. Border Patrol says an agent found a tunnel extending across the Mexican border to California.
The passage extends about 60 feet into Mexico and at least 80 feet into the United States. It was not immediately clear if the tunnel was completed.
An agent assigned to patrol near the city of Calexico on Thursday spotted unusual soil, which caved in. Mexican authorities later found an entry in open desert south of the border.
The Border Patrol says the passage was about 18 inches wide, reinforced with wood and equipped with lighting and ventilation.
U.S. authorities have found more than 75 tunnels along the U.S.-Mexico border in the last five years, mostly in California and Arizona and many of them incomplete. They are typically designed to smuggle marijuana.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
VICTORVILLE, Calif. (AP) — A 17-year-old boy has been arrested after he accidentally fired a gun and killed his friend in a Southern California home.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said deputies found the body of 18-year-old Ronald McKinzie in the bedroom of the home in Victorville Thursday night.
He was shot in the torso and pronounced dead at the scene.
The teen, who was not identified because he's a juvenile, was arrested on suspicion of negligent discharge of a firearm resulting in death. He was booked into juvenile hall.
No further details were released.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
LOS ANGELES — Strong winds buffeted many areas of Southern California on Friday, fanning a small brush fire, toppling trees and knocking out power to thousands.
The fire was reported at 7:12 a.m. in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Fire Department said it was being held at about 8 acres in size.
A 61 mph gust was recorded in the Saugus area of Santa Clarita just before 7 a.m., the National Weather Service said.
In a neighborhood near Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon, a small house was left surrounded by fallen trees and a broken power pole leaned precariously over the street. Among other damage, a toppled tree crushed several cars in West Hollywood.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said heavy winds caused 290 power outages that affected a total of about 23,000 customers.
Outages were scattered over a wide area ranging from the coastal Pacific Palisades to the Los Angeles basin and the San Fernando Valley. The utility said crews were working in dangerous wind conditions to restore power as quickly as possible.
High wind warnings and wind advisories were in effect for large swaths of the region including the Indio desert area, where thousands of people were expected to attend the three-day first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
The National Weather Service said the northerly winds were being created by low pressure dropping through the Great Basin.
Gale warnings were posted along the coast and high surf advisories were issued for west- and northwest-facing beaches from the Central Coast to Los Angeles County as a large northwest swell combined with large wind-generated waves.
The winds were forecast to become northeasterly Santa Anas as an upper level ridge builds into the West Coast and surface high pressure moves into Nevada during the weekend.
The offshore flow will bring warming, with temperatures well above normal until a cooling trend in the middle of next week, forecasters said.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
DENVER — Researchers who studied a southwestern Colorado river after a massive mine spill say runoff from autumn storms kicked up the levels of some contaminants in the river but not others.
A report released by the Environmental Protection Agency Friday may offer clues about what will happen this year when melting mountain snow makes the Animas River run higher, potentially stirring up pollutants that settled to the bottom.
The EPA inadvertently triggered a 3-million-gallon spill from the Gold King Mine in August during cleanup work. Rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah were polluted.
The Mountain Studies Institute in Silverton monitored the river about 60 miles downstream from the mine for the EPA. Its report said concentrations of six contaminants increased after some storms while levels of five others decreased. Seven didn't change.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas police have placed a high school on lockdown as it searches for a person with a gun.
Police said they were notified about 10 a.m. Friday of three youths in a fight with another person in the northwest corner of Ed W. Clark High School, about 3 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.
At least one person in that confrontation is believed to be armed with a handgun.
Police said the three youths ran off onto the school property when officers approached.
The school remains in lockdown as police search for the people involved.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A man stabbed another man to death on a commuter train platform in Long Beach early Friday, shutting down the station during the morning commute, authorities said.
Investigators were searching for the attacker following the stabbing shortly after 2 a.m. at the Blue Line's Wardlow Station, Metro Rail spokeswoman Kim Upton said.
Trains were operating at the time, but it was not known if the men were passengers, Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Lisa Jansen said.
No other details were released, including what led to the killing.
The investigation forced a shutdown of the station, and passengers were shuttled around the closure on buses.
The Blue Line runs 22 miles between downtown Long Beach and downtown Los Angeles. Wardlow Station is an open platform with a parking lot near the city's Wrigley Heights neighborhood.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
SALT LAKE CITY — Officials say a woman flying into Salt Lake City was escorted off her plane by airport police because she used an e-cigarette during the flight.
Salt Lake City International Airport spokeswoman Nancy Volmer told The Salt Lake Tribune (http://bit.ly/22zOd98) that the passenger activated the e-cigarette during a flight from Bozeman, Montana, and refused to put it out.
Volmer says the incident is now a civil matter between the woman and the Federal Aviation Administration.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that allow users to inhale vapor for a cigarette-like buzz.
Federal law has banned smoking on all U.S. airline flights since the late 1990s. The U.S. Department of Transportation considered the ban to cover electronic cigarettes, but created a rule explicitly banning their use to avoid confusion.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
LA GRANDE, Ore. — A judge set bail at $400,000 for a 15-year-old boy accused of threatening mass violence at La Grande High School and denied release for a 14-year-old boy.
The Observer newspaper reports that Assistant Principal Scott Carpenter urged a judge Thursday to keep the boys in custody, saying it was the first time he's ever had students develop a plan to kill him.
"They boasted they were going to do something like Columbine," Carpenter told a crowded courtroom that included relatives of the accused.
"Knowing what's been reported to me, (the plan was) on April 13, 2016, during third period, the individuals were planning to murder me," he said. "It has made a significant impact on my life. For the first time, I've questioned whether my job was worth my life. Whether my job is worth not seeing my wife and kids again."
Defense attorneys argued for their release, saying the teens have no prior criminal history. Wes Williams said his 15-year-old client has never, to his parent's knowledge, fired a gun or even held one.
"My preliminary investigation is this was merely talk between two boys," Williams said.
La Grande police made the arrests this week after learning of the alleged plot from school staff. The boys are charged with conspiracy to commit murder. The 15-year-old has been charged as an adult and the 14-year-old is being tried as a juvenile.
Though the hearing was in eastern Oregon, the boys appeared by teleconference from a juvenile jail in Walla Walla, Washington.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Vancouver is relying on about two dozen goats to remove invasive plants in an overgrown park in what city officials are calling a "green" alternative to spraying.
The Columbian reports that 25 goats will be clearing the brush in the enclosed 10-acre site for two weeks. It's the first time the city has used goats for such labor, and Vancouver Parks Planner Monica Tubberville says the animals could be used for future projects.
The city is renting the herd for about $4,700.
Tubberville says the project is meant to determine whether the city can get rid of invasive plants in a way that's better for the environment. She says it also helps cut down on physical labor.
The park is closed to the public while the goats are there.
- By BRALEY DODSON Daily Herald
- Updated
PROVO, Utah — Nazreen Khan locks onto eye contact and refuses to drop it.
"I'm not going to tell you the horrors I've been through," she said. "But I'm going to tell you the positive side of it." She paused for several seconds. She'd gone back and forth about this all day. "I grew up serving humanity."
But even that censored story has its own share of horrors and hope, the Daily Herald reported (http://bit.ly/23C9QId).
From what she's pieced together, Khan, an environmental services lead at Timpanogos Regional Hospital in Orem, was born in Fiji and taken by a family member to India. The relative panicked because of the rampant poverty there and left Khan on the streets, where she was then picked up by nuns and taken to an orphanage run by Mother Teresa, who named her Nazreen.
The orphanage was open to the elements, and the thousands of naked children housed there slept on concrete slabs. Khan wore a rice sack with holes cut in it until she was 17. There was no sanitary water, and food, which she once went 12 days without, was scarce.
She was tasked with collecting firewood, starting fires, massaging infants suffering from polio and, in a chore personally given to her by Mother Teresa, dragging dead bodies out of the street to where they were piled up.
"Sometimes, you find body parts, and you put it in a black plastic bag and you put it on the side of the road," Khan said.
At 6, she began questioning that gruesome task. She asked a nun, who took her to Mother Teresa. With a small Khan on her lap, she said, "My child, you think I would ask anybody else? Do you think they would do that?"
"'The reason I'm asking is because I knew you would not say no to me,'" Khan said. "And I didn't."
The children ate lentil, and brown rice whenever it was donated. The orphans got milk from the government, but then it was taken away.
When they had food, it was hard for Khan to eat it when there were other needy eyes looking at her.
"You think of someone who is sitting opposite you and you give them food," she said.
Even with a grumbling, hungry belly, she would pass the plate, a large, heart-shaped leaf, to another child.
"You just move it to another child who is sitting by you and he is looking at you," Khan said, tears in her eyes, breaking eye contact to focus on the wall. "You can't take that. You can't sleep with it."
Taking charge of her hunger, she changed her starvation into fasting and found ways to feed herself. Away from the orphanage, she'd break open lotus flowers to get to the sugar and water within. She'd pick leaves and flowers, and learned which ones were poisonous by what made her sick.
At the orphanage in southern India, Mother Teresa stressed the importance of education to Khan, who learned from newspapers. Despite not going to school, she earned her GED in 2011.
Nazreen means "gentle soul," and Khan strives to live up to it. Mother Teresa also gave her a middle name, which means "mother's crown."
"She said to me, 'I am giving you this name because you are that way and I will raise you that way,'" Khan said. "She said, my child. I bless you that as you grow up, you will have compassion. You will be a kind person and you will spend your life reaching out to people, especially the sick and the dying.'"
And that's how she's lived her life, even one day when she was dragging a body and was stopped by an elderly man. He'd be dead in the morning, he said, but he'd be smiling while she dragged him.
"I looked into his eyes and found out that he was telling the truth," Khan said. "The next day, I came and he was gone. And it happened that I had to drag his body."
He was smiling.
She has detailed her traumas within 26 journals, written in her own mish-moshed language.
"You carry that with you," Khan said. "And if you cannot heal, you cannot help. You have to heal from your wounds before you can be a good example to the world. You have to be a healer in order to heal other people, and I do that with my smile."
When she reached 17, despite a hesitant Mother Teresa, Khan set out to find her family in Fiji. After six years of searching, she found a relative who recognized her eyes through the rear-view mirror in his cab. The driver pulled over and she panicked, but he gave her a name she recognized as the name of her older brother, and he led her to the rest of her family.
Throughout her life she's thrown her soul into service with the steadfast belief that everything in her life has happened for a reason. Khan speaks multiple languages and has been a translator for doctors in southern California. She's traveled across the world, working with the Red Cross, UNICEF and Habitat for Humanity. She's helped people after disasters, rescued animals, trained therapy animals and taken them to hospitals and built houses.
But those old scars are still there. After fighting starvation throughout her childhood, it's still hard to eat. Khan eats only one meal a day and gives the other two away.
"I think that serving people, it has made me a better person," she said. "It has totally changed my life ... I don't know what I'd do without service."
Her desire to help people led her to the position at Timpanogos Regional Hospital, where others began to uncover her story. Khan recently won a regional humanitarian award after Chief Nursing Officer Sandy Ewell shadowed her and learned her background.
"She is not out for any praise," Ewell said. "She is seriously the kind of employee you'd walk by and never notice your entire life until you get to know her."
In addition to cleaning the rooms, Khan gets to know the patients, creating friendships that last long after they're discharged and making an impact on other employees.
"You feel like you're in the presence of Jesus when you talk to her," Ewell said.
Khan's far from finished with service. She wants to aid refugees and educate those in places where the people don't have anything and where mothers are forced to give birth in the streets because there aren't any hospitals nearby.
"I want to go out and help in those isolated places where you pick up things which nobody else wants," Khan said. "And I think I was born to serve."
For now, she plans to stay put and pursue a nursing degree when her 12-year-old son is older, not wanting to miss out on his life.
Her guidance for others is simple. Seek out service opportunities. Go to those who need help. Help local refugees. Be a support for those who need it.
Women should help other women. Hold someone's hand, learn the language of those you want to help and listen with your heart and soul.
- Updated
DENVER (AP) — A newly appointed Denver school board member who pleaded guilty to a minor case of child abuse says she won't take the job because she doesn't want to be a distraction.
MiDian Holmes announced her decision Thursday night after explaining how she pleaded guilty to child abuse without injury in 2006 after her toddler got out of their apartment while she was taking a shower. In her statement, she also says she left her three children at home alone while she went to work when she was a single mother a decade ago. One of them called 911 and police responded.
School board president Anne Rowe says that although the board doesn't condone some of Holmes' decisions, she noted that Holmes faced some of the same challenges that district families struggle with.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
BEND, Ore. (AP) — A Bend man is facing charges in the death of his neighbor's cat after the animal was found hanging from the fence between their homes.
KTVZ-TV reports (http://goo.gl/DlcLQI ) that 55-year-old Glenn William Lacoss was arrested after last week's incident and booked into the Deschutes County Jail. He has since posted bail and faces one count of aggravated animal abuse.
Police had been called to Shannon Garza's home after the woman found her cat named Sweetie dead and hung over her fence.
Police say Lacoss told them he had been upset about feral cats in his backyard and had killed the cat because it was scratching his trees.
The case remains under investigation.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
SAN DIEGO — Federal prosecutors say a Mexican man has been charged with smuggling mislabeled painkillers across the border to San Diego.
The U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of California said Thursday that 19-year-old Sergio Mendoza of Tijuana was charged with trying to bring in nearly 1,200 pills that contained fentanyl. They were allegedly labeled oxycodone, a less powerful painkiller.
U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations says it is the first time that fentanyl tablets labeled oxycodone have been seized at a California border crossing with Mexico.
Mendoza allegedly hid the pills in his underwear when he crossed on foot at the Otay Mesa port of entry. A border inspector grew suspicious and ordered him aside.
- The Associated Press
CALEXICO, Calif. — The U.S. Border Patrol says an agent found a tunnel extending across the Mexican border to California.
The passage extends about 60 feet into Mexico and at least 80 feet into the United States. It was not immediately clear if the tunnel was completed.
An agent assigned to patrol near the city of Calexico on Thursday spotted unusual soil, which caved in. Mexican authorities later found an entry in open desert south of the border.
The Border Patrol says the passage was about 18 inches wide, reinforced with wood and equipped with lighting and ventilation.
U.S. authorities have found more than 75 tunnels along the U.S.-Mexico border in the last five years, mostly in California and Arizona and many of them incomplete. They are typically designed to smuggle marijuana.
- The Associated Press
VICTORVILLE, Calif. (AP) — A 17-year-old boy has been arrested after he accidentally fired a gun and killed his friend in a Southern California home.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said deputies found the body of 18-year-old Ronald McKinzie in the bedroom of the home in Victorville Thursday night.
He was shot in the torso and pronounced dead at the scene.
The teen, who was not identified because he's a juvenile, was arrested on suspicion of negligent discharge of a firearm resulting in death. He was booked into juvenile hall.
No further details were released.
- The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Strong winds buffeted many areas of Southern California on Friday, fanning a small brush fire, toppling trees and knocking out power to thousands.
The fire was reported at 7:12 a.m. in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Fire Department said it was being held at about 8 acres in size.
A 61 mph gust was recorded in the Saugus area of Santa Clarita just before 7 a.m., the National Weather Service said.
In a neighborhood near Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon, a small house was left surrounded by fallen trees and a broken power pole leaned precariously over the street. Among other damage, a toppled tree crushed several cars in West Hollywood.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said heavy winds caused 290 power outages that affected a total of about 23,000 customers.
Outages were scattered over a wide area ranging from the coastal Pacific Palisades to the Los Angeles basin and the San Fernando Valley. The utility said crews were working in dangerous wind conditions to restore power as quickly as possible.
High wind warnings and wind advisories were in effect for large swaths of the region including the Indio desert area, where thousands of people were expected to attend the three-day first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
The National Weather Service said the northerly winds were being created by low pressure dropping through the Great Basin.
Gale warnings were posted along the coast and high surf advisories were issued for west- and northwest-facing beaches from the Central Coast to Los Angeles County as a large northwest swell combined with large wind-generated waves.
The winds were forecast to become northeasterly Santa Anas as an upper level ridge builds into the West Coast and surface high pressure moves into Nevada during the weekend.
The offshore flow will bring warming, with temperatures well above normal until a cooling trend in the middle of next week, forecasters said.
- The Associated Press
DENVER — Researchers who studied a southwestern Colorado river after a massive mine spill say runoff from autumn storms kicked up the levels of some contaminants in the river but not others.
A report released by the Environmental Protection Agency Friday may offer clues about what will happen this year when melting mountain snow makes the Animas River run higher, potentially stirring up pollutants that settled to the bottom.
The EPA inadvertently triggered a 3-million-gallon spill from the Gold King Mine in August during cleanup work. Rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah were polluted.
The Mountain Studies Institute in Silverton monitored the river about 60 miles downstream from the mine for the EPA. Its report said concentrations of six contaminants increased after some storms while levels of five others decreased. Seven didn't change.
- The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas police have placed a high school on lockdown as it searches for a person with a gun.
Police said they were notified about 10 a.m. Friday of three youths in a fight with another person in the northwest corner of Ed W. Clark High School, about 3 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.
At least one person in that confrontation is believed to be armed with a handgun.
Police said the three youths ran off onto the school property when officers approached.
The school remains in lockdown as police search for the people involved.
- The Associated Press
LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A man stabbed another man to death on a commuter train platform in Long Beach early Friday, shutting down the station during the morning commute, authorities said.
Investigators were searching for the attacker following the stabbing shortly after 2 a.m. at the Blue Line's Wardlow Station, Metro Rail spokeswoman Kim Upton said.
Trains were operating at the time, but it was not known if the men were passengers, Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Lisa Jansen said.
No other details were released, including what led to the killing.
The investigation forced a shutdown of the station, and passengers were shuttled around the closure on buses.
The Blue Line runs 22 miles between downtown Long Beach and downtown Los Angeles. Wardlow Station is an open platform with a parking lot near the city's Wrigley Heights neighborhood.
- The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — Officials say a woman flying into Salt Lake City was escorted off her plane by airport police because she used an e-cigarette during the flight.
Salt Lake City International Airport spokeswoman Nancy Volmer told The Salt Lake Tribune (http://bit.ly/22zOd98) that the passenger activated the e-cigarette during a flight from Bozeman, Montana, and refused to put it out.
Volmer says the incident is now a civil matter between the woman and the Federal Aviation Administration.
E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that allow users to inhale vapor for a cigarette-like buzz.
Federal law has banned smoking on all U.S. airline flights since the late 1990s. The U.S. Department of Transportation considered the ban to cover electronic cigarettes, but created a rule explicitly banning their use to avoid confusion.
- The Associated Press
LA GRANDE, Ore. — A judge set bail at $400,000 for a 15-year-old boy accused of threatening mass violence at La Grande High School and denied release for a 14-year-old boy.
The Observer newspaper reports that Assistant Principal Scott Carpenter urged a judge Thursday to keep the boys in custody, saying it was the first time he's ever had students develop a plan to kill him.
"They boasted they were going to do something like Columbine," Carpenter told a crowded courtroom that included relatives of the accused.
"Knowing what's been reported to me, (the plan was) on April 13, 2016, during third period, the individuals were planning to murder me," he said. "It has made a significant impact on my life. For the first time, I've questioned whether my job was worth my life. Whether my job is worth not seeing my wife and kids again."
Defense attorneys argued for their release, saying the teens have no prior criminal history. Wes Williams said his 15-year-old client has never, to his parent's knowledge, fired a gun or even held one.
"My preliminary investigation is this was merely talk between two boys," Williams said.
La Grande police made the arrests this week after learning of the alleged plot from school staff. The boys are charged with conspiracy to commit murder. The 15-year-old has been charged as an adult and the 14-year-old is being tried as a juvenile.
Though the hearing was in eastern Oregon, the boys appeared by teleconference from a juvenile jail in Walla Walla, Washington.
- The Associated Press
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Vancouver is relying on about two dozen goats to remove invasive plants in an overgrown park in what city officials are calling a "green" alternative to spraying.
The Columbian reports that 25 goats will be clearing the brush in the enclosed 10-acre site for two weeks. It's the first time the city has used goats for such labor, and Vancouver Parks Planner Monica Tubberville says the animals could be used for future projects.
The city is renting the herd for about $4,700.
Tubberville says the project is meant to determine whether the city can get rid of invasive plants in a way that's better for the environment. She says it also helps cut down on physical labor.
The park is closed to the public while the goats are there.
- By BRALEY DODSON Daily Herald
PROVO, Utah — Nazreen Khan locks onto eye contact and refuses to drop it.
"I'm not going to tell you the horrors I've been through," she said. "But I'm going to tell you the positive side of it." She paused for several seconds. She'd gone back and forth about this all day. "I grew up serving humanity."
But even that censored story has its own share of horrors and hope, the Daily Herald reported (http://bit.ly/23C9QId).
From what she's pieced together, Khan, an environmental services lead at Timpanogos Regional Hospital in Orem, was born in Fiji and taken by a family member to India. The relative panicked because of the rampant poverty there and left Khan on the streets, where she was then picked up by nuns and taken to an orphanage run by Mother Teresa, who named her Nazreen.
The orphanage was open to the elements, and the thousands of naked children housed there slept on concrete slabs. Khan wore a rice sack with holes cut in it until she was 17. There was no sanitary water, and food, which she once went 12 days without, was scarce.
She was tasked with collecting firewood, starting fires, massaging infants suffering from polio and, in a chore personally given to her by Mother Teresa, dragging dead bodies out of the street to where they were piled up.
"Sometimes, you find body parts, and you put it in a black plastic bag and you put it on the side of the road," Khan said.
At 6, she began questioning that gruesome task. She asked a nun, who took her to Mother Teresa. With a small Khan on her lap, she said, "My child, you think I would ask anybody else? Do you think they would do that?"
"'The reason I'm asking is because I knew you would not say no to me,'" Khan said. "And I didn't."
The children ate lentil, and brown rice whenever it was donated. The orphans got milk from the government, but then it was taken away.
When they had food, it was hard for Khan to eat it when there were other needy eyes looking at her.
"You think of someone who is sitting opposite you and you give them food," she said.
Even with a grumbling, hungry belly, she would pass the plate, a large, heart-shaped leaf, to another child.
"You just move it to another child who is sitting by you and he is looking at you," Khan said, tears in her eyes, breaking eye contact to focus on the wall. "You can't take that. You can't sleep with it."
Taking charge of her hunger, she changed her starvation into fasting and found ways to feed herself. Away from the orphanage, she'd break open lotus flowers to get to the sugar and water within. She'd pick leaves and flowers, and learned which ones were poisonous by what made her sick.
At the orphanage in southern India, Mother Teresa stressed the importance of education to Khan, who learned from newspapers. Despite not going to school, she earned her GED in 2011.
Nazreen means "gentle soul," and Khan strives to live up to it. Mother Teresa also gave her a middle name, which means "mother's crown."
"She said to me, 'I am giving you this name because you are that way and I will raise you that way,'" Khan said. "She said, my child. I bless you that as you grow up, you will have compassion. You will be a kind person and you will spend your life reaching out to people, especially the sick and the dying.'"
And that's how she's lived her life, even one day when she was dragging a body and was stopped by an elderly man. He'd be dead in the morning, he said, but he'd be smiling while she dragged him.
"I looked into his eyes and found out that he was telling the truth," Khan said. "The next day, I came and he was gone. And it happened that I had to drag his body."
He was smiling.
She has detailed her traumas within 26 journals, written in her own mish-moshed language.
"You carry that with you," Khan said. "And if you cannot heal, you cannot help. You have to heal from your wounds before you can be a good example to the world. You have to be a healer in order to heal other people, and I do that with my smile."
When she reached 17, despite a hesitant Mother Teresa, Khan set out to find her family in Fiji. After six years of searching, she found a relative who recognized her eyes through the rear-view mirror in his cab. The driver pulled over and she panicked, but he gave her a name she recognized as the name of her older brother, and he led her to the rest of her family.
Throughout her life she's thrown her soul into service with the steadfast belief that everything in her life has happened for a reason. Khan speaks multiple languages and has been a translator for doctors in southern California. She's traveled across the world, working with the Red Cross, UNICEF and Habitat for Humanity. She's helped people after disasters, rescued animals, trained therapy animals and taken them to hospitals and built houses.
But those old scars are still there. After fighting starvation throughout her childhood, it's still hard to eat. Khan eats only one meal a day and gives the other two away.
"I think that serving people, it has made me a better person," she said. "It has totally changed my life ... I don't know what I'd do without service."
Her desire to help people led her to the position at Timpanogos Regional Hospital, where others began to uncover her story. Khan recently won a regional humanitarian award after Chief Nursing Officer Sandy Ewell shadowed her and learned her background.
"She is not out for any praise," Ewell said. "She is seriously the kind of employee you'd walk by and never notice your entire life until you get to know her."
In addition to cleaning the rooms, Khan gets to know the patients, creating friendships that last long after they're discharged and making an impact on other employees.
"You feel like you're in the presence of Jesus when you talk to her," Ewell said.
Khan's far from finished with service. She wants to aid refugees and educate those in places where the people don't have anything and where mothers are forced to give birth in the streets because there aren't any hospitals nearby.
"I want to go out and help in those isolated places where you pick up things which nobody else wants," Khan said. "And I think I was born to serve."
For now, she plans to stay put and pursue a nursing degree when her 12-year-old son is older, not wanting to miss out on his life.
Her guidance for others is simple. Seek out service opportunities. Go to those who need help. Help local refugees. Be a support for those who need it.
Women should help other women. Hold someone's hand, learn the language of those you want to help and listen with your heart and soul.
DENVER (AP) — A newly appointed Denver school board member who pleaded guilty to a minor case of child abuse says she won't take the job because she doesn't want to be a distraction.
MiDian Holmes announced her decision Thursday night after explaining how she pleaded guilty to child abuse without injury in 2006 after her toddler got out of their apartment while she was taking a shower. In her statement, she also says she left her three children at home alone while she went to work when she was a single mother a decade ago. One of them called 911 and police responded.
School board president Anne Rowe says that although the board doesn't condone some of Holmes' decisions, she noted that Holmes faced some of the same challenges that district families struggle with.
- The Associated Press
BEND, Ore. (AP) — A Bend man is facing charges in the death of his neighbor's cat after the animal was found hanging from the fence between their homes.
KTVZ-TV reports (http://goo.gl/DlcLQI ) that 55-year-old Glenn William Lacoss was arrested after last week's incident and booked into the Deschutes County Jail. He has since posted bail and faces one count of aggravated animal abuse.
Police had been called to Shannon Garza's home after the woman found her cat named Sweetie dead and hung over her fence.
Police say Lacoss told them he had been upset about feral cats in his backyard and had killed the cat because it was scratching his trees.
The case remains under investigation.
- The Associated Press
SAN DIEGO — Federal prosecutors say a Mexican man has been charged with smuggling mislabeled painkillers across the border to San Diego.
The U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of California said Thursday that 19-year-old Sergio Mendoza of Tijuana was charged with trying to bring in nearly 1,200 pills that contained fentanyl. They were allegedly labeled oxycodone, a less powerful painkiller.
U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations says it is the first time that fentanyl tablets labeled oxycodone have been seized at a California border crossing with Mexico.
Mendoza allegedly hid the pills in his underwear when he crossed on foot at the Otay Mesa port of entry. A border inspector grew suspicious and ordered him aside.
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