(February 25) In a tentative ruling that could go into effect as early as next week, the Fontana Water Company has been enjoined from any further pumping of water from the Rialto-Colton groundwater basin beyond its established water rights there.
According to allegations in a 2013 lawsuit filed by the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, the West Valley Water District, and the cities of Colton and Rialto, the Fontana Water Company, at the direction of its parent company, the San Gabriel Valley Water Company, has since 2005 extracted nearly three times its base water pumping allotment established as part of a water rights adjudication regime put into place 54 years ago. That lawsuit was followed with another in 2014, filed by the cities of Colton and Rialto and the West Valley Water District, essentially reiterating the charge that the Fontana Water Company is utilizing more water from the basin than it is entitled to.
Three weeks ago, San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Bryan Foster granted the cities of Colton and Rialto a preliminary injunction against Fontana Water/San Gabriel Valley Water Co., instructing them to stay within their legal pumping limits in the basin.
As of this week, the ruling was not being enforced. It will go into effect as soon as Foster’s ruling is put into a formal order. At that point, Fontana Water will need to end its pumping immediately, as it has already exceeded its water allotment for the operational year running through September 30.
The court’s ruling will allow all parties to the 1961 decree to continue to pump groundwater under that judgment until the current litigation about the Rialto-Colton Basin is completed.
Fontana Water will have the option of purchasing water from the state water project, which conveys water from Northern California to Southern California by means of the California Aqueduct, subject to availability and a price that has fluctuated in recent years from $500 to $1,200 per acre foot. An acre-foot is the amount of water that will cover an acre to a depth of one foot, that is 43,560 cubic feet or 325,853.4 gallons, which is typically the amount of water consumed by a household of four people in one year.
In the West Valley Water District, which has declared a Stage II Drought Alert and requested that its customers voluntarily reduce their water usage by 10 percent, district general manager Anthony “Butch” Araiza hailed the court’s decision.
“Judge Foster’s ruling confirms that everybody, even Fontana Water Company, must play by the same rules, especially during a historic drought,” said Araiza. “Nobody is exempt from the drought and Fontana Water Company can no longer take everyone else’s water in violation of established water rights agreements.”
San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District General Manager Doug Headrick said, “As supplemental water supplies from the State Water Project are becoming more limited, it is essential that we preserve our local water supplies. The water rights judgments and agreements established in the 1960s were designed to maintain balance in our groundwater basins, even during times of shortage like we are facing today. We applaud the court and the cities of Colton, Rialto and West Valley for calling Fontana Water Company to task to do their part.”

Efforts to rescind the court realignment put in place in San Bernardino County’s judicial system by Presiding Judge Marsha Slough last May are continuing, including a move to have the legislature add new code sections to the Trial Court Facilities Act of 2002 to ensure the public’s ready access to the courts is ensured.
Last May amid widespread protest by elected officials. lawyers and members of the public, the realignment of San Bernardino County courts as was formulated by San Bernardino County Presiding Judge Marsha Slough was effectuated.
The realignment entailed transferring all civil cases countywide to the new San Bernardino Justice Center, which is located at 247 West Third Street and contains 35 courtrooms within its 11 floors. San Bernardino district criminal cases, which were previously heard in the San Bernardino Central Courthouse built in 1927, are also being tried in the new San Bernardino Justice Center.
West Valley Superior Courthouse in Rancho Cucamonga, which was formerly a venue for both civil and criminal cases originating on the west end of the county, is now devoted almost entirely to criminal cases and hearings on both civil and domestic violence restraining order matters, including those arising on the county’s west end and other felony and misdemeanor cases from the county’s central district which were previously routed to the Fontana Courthouse. A small portion of the criminal cases once heard in Fontana are now being adjudicated in San Bernardino. The historic San Bernardino Courthouse remains as the forum for family law cases. The Fontana Courthouse has become the stage for all small claims, landlord tenant disputes and traffic/non-traffic infractions from the San Bernardino, Fontana and Rancho Cucamonga districts. The Victorville Courthouse remains a venue for High Desert family law cases. The Joshua Tree Courthouse remains in operation. The Barstow Courthouse, where previously all order of criminal and civil cases were heard, is now open two days a week exclusively for traffic cases.
From the time she first proposed the realignment as a way to deal with dwindling revenue provisions from the state for court operations in October 2013, the wisdom of Slough’s transformation of the county court system and the centralization of all civil courts in downtown San Bernardino has been sharply questioned.
Far flung San Bernardino County, which spans 20,105 square miles, is the largest county in the lower 48 states, with a land mass greater than the states of Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. Slough’s change is imposing a tremendous logistical burden on many of the county’s citizens who need to access the courts. Driving distance from Needles to San Bernardino is 212 miles, with an average one-way traveling time of three hours and nine minutes.
In the months prior to and after the initiation of the realignment, a group of legal professionals, including lawyers and former judges, importuned Slough to reconsider what she was contemplating and then what she had done. They also sought, and obtained, support from county elected officials in their efforts to have Slough rethink the change she had imposed on the county’s residents.
The Rancho Cucamonga City Council, which on April 2, 2014 adopted a resolution calling upon the managers of the court system in San Bernardino County to preserve its branch courts unless it could be demonstrated the closures have created a savings of at least ten percent of the court system’s budget, went further, asking Mayor Dennis Michael to take up the court realignment issue with the San Bernardino Association of Governments, the county’s transportation agency and regional planning board which has as its voting directors mayors or council members from each of the county’s 24 cities as well as all five members of the board of supervisors.
Michael did so and on May 7, 2014 all 29 members of the SANBAG board considered the resolution. A staff report by SANBAG Director of Legislative and Public Affairs Wendy Strack stated, “For a county spanning 20,000 square miles, the proximity of courthouses to those with matters pending before the court carries significant cost and time pressures for impacted parties. San Bernardino County is already facing the largest shortage of judges in the state of California. According to the statewide judicial needs study released in October 2012, the San Bernardino Superior Court system should have 156 judges and more than 1,500 staff members, yet it operates with only 43 percent of that suggested staffing. The state has already closed the Chino, Needles, Twin Peaks, Redlands and Big Bear courthouses and shuttered courtrooms in Joshua Tree. The reduction in service and pending closure of courtrooms in Barstow will mean that crime victims, jurors, law enforcement officers, court personnel, and others are forced to drive many more miles to make court appearances. Our cash-strapped local governments are already struggling to provide basic services to residents. The overtime and fuel costs associated with longer court trips will create even more budget pain for our 24 cities and the county of San Bernardino.”
The resolutions were provided to local members of the state legislature, who were requested to use their authority to explore legislation that would either return funding to the courts and render the economies contained in Slough’s realignment unnecessary or mandate that the court’s must maintain reasonable local access to their facilities.
Among those contacted was California State Senator Mike Morrell. He has carried no legislation relating to redressing the conflation of the court system. However, in November, Marc Steinorth, who was a member of the Rancho City Council that passed the resolution in April, was elected to the California Assembly.
This week, Steinorth told the Sentinel, “The court closures throughout San Bernardino County has resulted in unacceptable conditions for citizens seeking access to justice. I am seeking every possible solution to help our county court to remain open. The solutions that I am advocating are commonsense approaches that will give our courts a better opportunity to service our county residents.”
Specifically, Steinorth said, he intends to author a bill this year that will “raise the 1% reserve cap to 12%. Currently state law limits local trial court reserves to just 1 percent of prior-year expenditures. At the end of the year, any court that has funds above 1% is swept back up into the state’s general fund. This 1 percent cap has resulted in cash-flow problems that hurt the courts’ operational ability, especially when there are unexpected costs.”
Furthermore, Steinorth said, “I am advocating legislation that would authorize ten new San Bernardino County Superior Court judges and two appellate court judges. If judges are placed in our county court, it comes with additional funding and staff. The need for additional judges is critical in order to reduce backlogs and accelerate access to the courts. In the entire state, the Fourth Appellate District in Riverside, which serves San Bernardino County, is identified as one of the highest-need courts for an appellate judge.”
Steinorth said that San Bernardino County was among the hardest hit jurisdictions by the parsimony imposed on the courts. Nevertheless, he said, courts up and down the state were being crunched, and for that reason he believes there is an impetus for the legislature to act to reduce the burden on the courts generally.
“The unprecedented budget cuts since 2008 have closed 52 courthouses statewide,” Steinorth said. “The governor has proposed funding increases for trial courts by about 5% compared to last year. However, this falls well short of what trial courts need to tread water and stop further courthouse closures and staff reductions.”
He continued, “The San Bernardino Superior Court is the second most underresourced and underfunded court in the state. The court’s judicial positions meet just 60% of the court’s 2014 assessed judicial need. Since 2006/07, the Twin Peaks, Redlands, Chino, Needles, and Big Bear courthouses have closed. The court’s current number of staff just meets 63% of the 2013 resource allocation assessment. Each court’s clerk’s office is now closed to the public at 3 pm. The workload-based allocation need in San Bernardino is $137.8 million but the court received just $75.1 million.”
Meanwhile, a group of attorneys based in San Bernardino County have formulated proposed new code sections relating the Trial Court Facilities Act of 2002, which they claim would go a good part of the distance in preventing further erosion of the court system, particularly in San Bernardino County.
That proposal calls for the addition of Section 70395 which states “The responsibility and authority granted to the Judicial Council under Section 70391 and Administrative Office of the Courts under Section 70392 and delegable by the Judicial Council or the Administrative Office of the Courts to the local courts shall be subject to the standards and procedures set forth in this Section.
(a) In exercising any responsibility, authority or power to locate, relocate, deploy or redeploy trial court facilities, the Judicial Council shall consider the following criteria, among others, in its deliberations and decision:
(1) The impact of any change on the public’s access to the justice system.
(2) The financial benefit of the change to the local trial court as compared to the financial detriment of the change to users of the court facility.
(3) The environmental impact of the change.
(4) The impact on disadvantaged users of the court facility.
(5) Travel burdens imposed upon users of the court.
(6) The effect upon the safety of users of the court.
(7) The financial impact on the community acquiring or losing the trial court facility.
(8) The history of the use of branch courts in the local communities.
(9) Geographic features of the County.
(10) Delays in resolving disputes and other court business.
(b) Branch courts shall not be closed or their use be curtailed or limited unless, as a direct result of such change, the local court achieves net savings of ten percent or more of its annual budget.
(c) The decision to close trial court facilities or to move them shall not be taken by the Judicial Council or by the Administrative Office of the Courts or by the local judiciary without consultation with and advice from local public officials as follows:
(1) The Administrative Office of the Courts shall call, notice and convene a meeting of local public officials and such meeting shall be open to the community. Citizens of the community shall be allowed to comment at the meeting. The meeting shall be called at an appropriate time and place, and sufficiently noticed in advance so that members of the public are aware of it.
(2) The local public officials shall include the mayors or council persons of at least three cities affected by the proposed changes, as appointed by those cities, at least two members of the County Board of Supervisors as appointed by the Board of Supervisors, two members of the local judiciary and one representative of the Administrative Office of the Courts.
(A) The Judicial Council shall determine the cities affected by the movement of court facilities.
(B) In the absence of special circumstances, the committee should not exceed nine persons.
(3) The local community meeting or meetings shall be presided over by a chair person who shall be the representative of the Administrative Office of the Courts, if available, and if not then by the person designated by the Board of Supervisors.
(4) The representative of the Administrative Office of the Courts or substitute chair shall prepare a written summary of the proceedings, submit it to the local officials who served on the committee and who may add their comments and then the representative shall submit the report with comments to the Judicial Council. The revised summary shall be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the community where the local court facilities proposed to be closed are located and posted on the court’s website al least 30 days before the public meetings required by this statute.
(d) Any delegation of responsibility, authority or power to the Administrative Office of the Courts or by the Administrative Office of the Courts shall be subject to the same rules, standards, policies, procedures, guidelines and limitations as apply to the Judicial Council.
(e) Any delegation of the responsibility, authority or power to locate, relocate, deploy or redeploy court facilities may be delegated to the local trial court that may exercise such responsibility, authority or power in conjunction with the Judicial Council and the Administrative Office of the Courts and only acting in compliance with this section.

ADELANTO—Adelanto City Manager Jim Hart, whose grip on the well-remunerated top administrator’s post in this High Desert city of 31,765 began to slip as a consequence of the November election, was given his walking papers Wednesday night, February 25.
Hart’s looming departure had been hinted at for weeks. Last month, whatever honeymoon he may have had with the newly formulated post-election city council that was installed in December expired, as some members of the council became openly vocal about his inability to steer the financially challenged city off a path leading toward bankruptcy.
As February dawned, finance director Onyx Jones, who had been a key member of Hart’s administrative team, announced her upcoming resignation. After delivering the state of the city address earlier this month, Hart, who was being paid an annual salary and add-ons of $280,000, together with a retirement and health care package valued at $50,105 for a total compensation package of $330,105 per year, did not attend the city council meeting later that day, instead going out on a two-week administrative leave. The city’s mid-year budget report showed Hart’s resignation was projected for the end of the month.
Hart, who had been Adelanto city manager since 2004 and was city manager in Twentynine Palms and Rancho Margarita and administrative services director in Rancho Cucamonga before that, appeared to be in a perpetual state of paralysis the last several years as the city was overwhelmed by financial challenges.
In 2013, the city council, as it was then composed, at Hart’s urging declared the 31,765 population city was in a state of fiscal emergency. The city’s residents, however, refused to consent to impose on themselves a tax that city officials insisted was needed to stave off bankruptcy. Hart’s only other alternative was to seek out development projects that offer the prospect of fee or tax generation, but his performance in that regard was lackluster at best. Last year, he advocated the city approve the development of two privately-run prisons within its city limits.
Adelanto is already host to three detention facilities and has another one on its border with Victorville. One of the two more recent proposals has been approved and the other was withdrawn. Hart was attacked for a lack of imagination in wrestling with the fiscal dilemma and for advocating bringing in more detention facilities, which some say will further erode the city’s reputation and lessen its ability to attract other types of development.
On November 4, incumbent councilmen Charles Valvo and Steve Baisden, along with mayor Cari Thomas, were unsuccessful in their reelection bids. Thus, a majority of the five-member council was freshly installed, although councilman Charley Glasper was formerly on the council. Glasper and John Woodard were sworn in to replace Valvo and Baisden, while Rich Kerr replaced Thomas.
Emerging as a strong and early advocate for Hart’s removal was councilman Jermaine Wright. Wright was on the losing side of several votes taken over the last two years by the Thomas-led council that included Valvo, Baisden and councilman Ed Camargo.
Glasper was of a like mind to Wright, feeling that the city had stagnated during the four years he was not on the council. Hart’s strongest supporter was Camargo. But Camargo’s political stock has been in eclipse, as he is fighting off charges of being involved in a conflict of interest that grew out of his November vote in support of the prison project that was subsequently withdrawn. Camargo’s girlfriend is employed by the company seeking to develop that prison.
On February 25, Hart was not in attendance at the city council meeting. Finance director Jones, in her last official act, presented a report informing the city council the city is in dire financial straits and will be out of money and will have eaten up all of its remaining reserves by the beginning of the upcoming 2015-16 fiscal year on July 1. Jones said without new revenue sources the city’s only option will be to make “drastic cuts.”
Mayor Rich Kerr said the city’s circumstance has deteriorated to the point where it will need to disincorporate. “We will shut down City Hall, people will get pink slips and there will be no more Adelanto,” he intoned.
Hart’s axing took place in closed session, in which, despite the city’s untenable financial situation, a $225,352.93 severance package was conferred upon him. That package includes a severance payment, benefits and employer taxes, along with the continued provision of Hart’s medical insurance. The city will also provide Hart with a used city vehicle.
During the same closed session, the council elevated city engineer/public works director Thomas Thornton to serve as interim city manager.

(February 27) The city of Ontario on Thursday February 26 suffered third and fourth setbacks in its litigative quest to reassume control of Ontario Airport.
Riverside Superior Court Judge Gloria Connor Trask, who in January issued two tentative rulings that the 1967 joint-powers agreement between Ontario and Los Angeles that gave Los Angeles managerial and administrative control of the airport and the 1985 vote by the Ontario City Council that deeded the airport to Los Angeles were valid, confirmed those rulings yesterday.
Ontario, through its law firm, Washington, D.C.-based l Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, maintains those agreements are not binding. Trask said Ontario’s opportunity to rescind the transfer of the airport once existed but elapsed in 1989 because of the statute of limitations.
Ontario has three other claims remaining intact in its suit, which was filed in June of 2013.
In 1967, the airport had fewer than 200,000 passengers pass through its gates. Under Los Angeles’ management and ownership, ridership at the airport climbed to 7.2 million in 2007. But passenger traffic dropped off steadily after that, dwindling to 4.03 million in the year ending in July 2014. Ontario now wants to take back ownership and control of the airport.

(February 23)  Members of the Chino Valley school board are praying that a law firm devoted to doing pro bono work to uphold Christian values and vindicate religious activity in public forums as an exercise of free speech will successfully fend off a lawsuit charging the school district with allowing school board meetings to become a forum for Christian prayer recitals, Bible readings and proselytizing.
In November, the Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin filed suit against the district on behalf of two named and 21 unnamed plaintiffs who asserted they were alienated or intimidated at school board meetings because of overt and constant references to Christianity, including “prayers, Bible readings and proselytizing.” The plaintiffs want the intrusion of religiosity into the conduct of district business to cease.
The board last month voted 3-2 against hiring the law firm which normally represents the district to respond to the suit. Instead, the district has engaged the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) for $1 to defend the district in the civil lawsuit.
The Pacific Justice Institute touts itself as a public interest law firm that “handles cases addressing religious freedom, including church and private school rights issues, curtailments to evangelism by the government, harassment because of their religious faith, employers attacked for their religious-based policies, [and] students and teachers rights to share their faith at public schools.”
According to the Pacific Justice Institute’s website, it stands “at the forefront of attorneys who recognize the need to preserve religious liberty in America.” The institute has sought to make a name for itself by taking on cutting edge religious activity-as-free speech cases which ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Nevertheless, according to the institute’s website, “The Pacific Justice Institute does not focus on just those cases that are likely to go to the Supreme Court. While PJI is willing to take cases to the Supreme Court, PJI has a unique commitment to provide legal counsel and representation to everyone they feel falls within their mission.”
According to the Pacific Justice Institute it “receives almost all of its funding through donations by individuals who believe in the Pacific Justice Institute’s work.”
Pacific Justice Institute attorney Michael Peffer, who works out of the firm’s Santa Ana office, has been assigned to handle the Chino Valley Unified School District case through much of its pre-trial stage. But if the matter goes to trial, the Pacific Justice Institute will roll out its big guns. These include, Brad Dacus, who founded the Pacific Justice Institute in 1997. He was a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Phil Gramm before he got his law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. Dacus spent the early stage of his law career pursuing and coordinating religious freedom and parental rights cases throughout the Western states. He is seen on television expounding on his theories regarding the constitutional protections afforded to Christians as much as he appears in a courtroom. He has been a guest speaker on numerous radio and television programs, participates weekly in several radio talk show interviews, and has appeared on America Live, CBS Evening News, CNN, Dateline NBC, Good Morning America, MSNBC, NBC News, News Talk TV, The Today Show, and many times on the O’Reilly Factor.
Kevin Snider, the chief counsel for the Pacific Justice Institute since 2004, has been an attorney since 1994, practicing primarily in the area of constitutional law and civil rights during that time. The Pacific Justice Institute legal department that he heads has approximately 1,000 volunteer attorney affiliates who represent people of faith and religious organizations.
Snider has litigated a number of cases which have garnered national attention, including the defense of the national motto – In God We Trust – in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and representing Pastors Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery in opposition to a case which sought to enjoin them from giving the invocation and benediction at the inauguration of President Obama. Snider successfully argued against the request for an injunction in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia just days prior to the inauguration.
Pacific Justice Institute Staff Attorney Matt McReynolds has been with the institute since early 2005, having defended religious liberties by clerking for the American Center for Law and Justice. Among the cases McReynolds has litigated while with the Pacific Justice Institute are the cases International Church of the Foursquare Gospel v. City of San Leandro, establishing one of the leading precedents on the West Coast favoring religious land use; Snatchko v. Westfield LLC, the first case to extend free speech protections in the California Constitution to shopping mall evangelism; Welch v. Brown, defending the rights of Christian counselors to present Biblically-based viewpoints to their minor clients; and Newdow v. Lefever, defeating a challenge to the national motto, “In God We Trust.”
The firm has agreed to represent the school district through trial and all appeals. The Freedom From Religion Foundation suit seeks attorney fees and “nominal” damages for the foundation and the plaintiffs, who include Larry Maldonado and Mike Anderson and parents, students and employees with the district.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
I have received some information on the down-low which indicates that the goings-on, or at least past goings-on, at Upland City Hall are being given a very close examination…
The information I have is sketchy, having originated with a partially heard conversation between two people obviously in the know. I’ve tried to fill in the gaps as best I could, but obviously there are some details that yet elude me…
It seems that late last summer, Upland’s then-executive assistant to the city manager, Annette Guthrie, fell under suspicion of having done work on the political campaigns of two of the city’s incumbent city council members who were then vying for reelection, Gino Filippi and Debbi Stone. Miss Guthrie was put under watch, and when some actions that might have otherwise seemed benign occurred, those moves were interpreted as vindicating the initial suspicions. This then formed the basis for placing her on administrative leave on August 26 and ratcheting up the investigation, which included examing in some depth her internal city emails and her phone calls logs…
I have no inkling of what the phone logs turned up, but apparently the email exchanges she had with a whole host of individuals were very telling, essentially indicating that she was carrying out various tasks related to political campaigns, including gathering information valuable thereto. Additionally, it has been hinted at, there were other exchanges relating to matters that alarmed those reading the emails…
With this information in hand, higher city officials moved to get her out of her executive assistant position. At that point, Ms. Guthrie threatened to lodge a sexual harassment suit against the city. There ensued a negotiation process in which then-city attorney Kimberly Hall Barlow, who is with the law firm of Jones Mayer, became involved. A separation agreement was worked out in which she officially left the city’s employ as of September 22 and was given a $50,000 severance…
Ms. Barlow had discouraged any further action with regard to the matter and considered it closed. However, less than two months later she found herself excused from the city attorney’s position because of some too-strong language she put in a letter to the Colonies Partners over the ten-year expiration of a timetable to develop some property. With Barlow gone, members of the council again took up the issue of the political activity on the part of the former city staff member during the election and the other issues discovered in Miss Guthrie’s emails. They began to pressure Ms. Barlow’s successor, Richard Adams, also of the Jones Mayer firm, to look into it. Adams begged off, and instead had Los Angeles-based Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, a public sector employment and labor law firm representing management in labor and employment matters, scrutinize the known facts…
The Liebert Cassidy Whitmore report, I am told, while somewhat equivocal, found that the evidence, i.e., the emails, shows that political activity on Guthrie’s part did take place and that Stone and Filippi receiving the benefits of her action could be construed as a misappropriation of public funds. While a referral to the FPPC to determine if Stone and Filippi had erred in not reporting Guthrie’s assistance as an in-kind contribution on their campaign donation reporting forms might be deemed appropriate, Liebert Cassidy Whitmore recommended that the issue also be referred to the district attorney to see if misappropriation of public funds charges are also warranted…
The cover page of the Liebert Cassidy Whitmore report indicates that no attorney client confidentiality issues would hamper the disclosure of the information, but Adams, who is highly conscious of how what transpired reflects poorly upon his law firm colleague Barlow, has advised that the council keep the entire matter under wraps while hoping the district attorney’s office will decline to prosecute so this chapter in the history of the City of Gracious Living, which has the further potential of complicating his relations with two of the members of the city council, can remained buried…

HESPERIA—(February 26) Jango, the Rialto police dog who attacked its handler’s four-year-old son on February 8, has been retired from its police department duties.
The dog, a 7-year-old Belgium Malinois, will not be euthanized as was earlier feared. Instead, the dog which had worked the department’s patrol, SWAT and narcotics details will be readopted by the training facility in Riverside, where Jango had originally been groomed to work for the department.
Jango’s handler, detective Michael Mastaler, kept the dog at his Hesperia home when they were not on duty. The dog, which was trained to bite suspects and felons during police pursuits, was normally kept in a kennel in the back yard and had interaction with the rest of the Mastaler family only in Michael Mastaler’s presence.
On February 6, a Friday, Michael Mastaler had left to take part in a boot camp for at-risk youth in Big Bear. Upon returning home late in the afternoon on Sunday, he went out in the backyard to allow Jango out of his kennel.
He closed the sliding glass door and went up to the house’s master bedroom to take a shower, leaving his son, Hunter, playing video games while his wife took the couple’s younger child to the store.
Hunter, apparently, let himself out into the backyard through the sliding glass door, at which point Jango attacked him.
The dog bit Hunter, whose screams prompted neighbor Jeff Houlemard to crash through a fence gate to rescue the boy. For an unknown reason Jango remained in “bite mode,” having clamped onto the boy as he was trained to do in criminal situations when his handler is encountering a resistant or fleeing suspect. Houlemard had to pry the dog’s jaw open so his son, Logan, 13, and his friend, 14-year-old Anthony Montalvo, could lift Hunter’s leg from Jango’s mouth.
The attack on Hunter lasted at least two minutes, according to estimates. Jango was born in the Netherlands and responds primarily to commands in Dutch.
Hunter was airlifted to Loma Linda University Medical Center, where part of his left leg below his knee was amputated on February 12. He will be fitted with a prosthesis within the next two months.
Jango underwent a ten-day quarantine, during which time discussions about options for its future were ongoing, including being put down. Because of the attack on Hunter, Jango was ruled ineligiblefor further police work. Returning him to live with the Mastaler family was deemed unacceptable.
Euthanizing Jango will no longer be necessary, as Riverside-based Adlerhorst International, Inc. which serves as the police dog training academy for the Rialto Police Department and other departments and where Jango was given his orientation to American police dog function, agreed to take him in.

By Mark Gutglueck
The Lost Dutch Oven Mine is one of the most famous lost mines in California and likely the most famous of those in San Bernardino County. The tale is a rich one, with several variations, as is often the case with lost mine legends. Some of the particulars are verifiable, and indeed it seems very likely the mine actually existed and may yet be out there, waiting to be found.
In 1894, Tom Schofield was working for the Santa Fe Railroad at the Danby watering station. In those days, trains pulled by locomotives carried enough coal to go more than half way across the country, but needed to constantly replenish their water stores as the steam used to power the locomotives was lost at a rapid rate. At the extreme end of San Bernardino County were six watering stations along the Santa Fe line, named in reverse alphabetical order after the track came west across the Arizona border: Goffs, Fenner, Essex, Danby, Cadiz, Bolo and Amboy. Schofield manned the Danby station. His job was to maintain the apparatus from which the water for the steam engines that rolled down the track were supplied.
The Danby station’s water came from what is known as Bonanza Spring located in the Clipper Mountains, which was claimed by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1893. The railroad company had constructed a four-inch pipe running from the spring to the Danby Station. That pipe continued to provide water to Danby until it was replaced by a well near the station in the 1930s.
Trains travelled on strict schedules and Schofield was free to roam about the area around Danby during the hours when no trains were due. On occasions, at that time, as long as a day-and-a-half or two days might pass without a train passing through the six watering stations.
Schofield, who was then 42, one day had noticed during his sojourn to the spring in the Clipper Mountains that there was what appeared to be a long neglected, indistinct trail leading off to the side of the mountain where the spring was located. On one of the days when there was a long gap between trains into Danby, he resolved to follow the faint path to see where it would lead him.
Here the story begins its deviation.
According to one version, he hiked some distance, coming upon a recently abandoned miner’s camp. He then continued up a steep bank and scaled the edge of a narrow shale wall, before arriving at a mine shaft of some depth with sides well boarded up by old railroad ties. In this version, he sensed, based upon its appearance, that the ore on the tailing pile next to the shaft was exceedingly rich. However, it was getting on in the afternoon and so he decided to stay the night at the small miner’s camp below. In the morning, he happened to kick the lid off of an old Dutch oven located near the fire pit and from that old pot gold ore “rich-to-the-eye” spilled onto the ground. According to this version, he gathered up as much of the ore as he could carry and headed down the mountain and back to Danby.
Another version is that on his trek that day he was about three miles up the side of the mountain when he came upon a long abandoned stone house. He continued on, hiking what he later reckoned was about nine more miles when he came upon a spring. He followed a trail from the spring leading over a hill at the peak of which was a rock or boulder he described as being the size of a house. The boulder was split in two and the trail continued straight through it. Beyond this passageway he encountered what appeared to be an old Spanish camp.
Shortly beyond this he found himself upon a high shelf, surrounded by high walls. Through other openings in the rock walls, he could see that the “shelf” was sitting high above the ground at about 500 feet. The only way in or out of the little flat was through the split rock. Scattered about the long deserted camp, Schofield found rusty mining tools, pots, pans, fragments of a bedroll, and an old iron Dutch oven.
Also on the shelf was a mine shaft, in which he found the skeletons of seven burros. Next to the shaft was a mine dump that contained numerous stones still containing rich gold quartz. Night was approaching, and he bedded down on the shelf planning to leave at daybreak. In the morning, as he was leaving, he tripped over the Dutch oven and out tumbled a mound of pure gold nuggets. He gathered up the gold nuggets, and fashioning a makeshift pack from one of the side packs found next to the burro carcasses, carried out as much of the ore as he could manage.
A third version is that he hiked for some distance, passing through a huge split boulder and came upon a wooden cabin with a hitching post, in front of which were the carcasses of several dead burros. In the cabin were the skeletons of three or four humans. Also in the cabin was a Dutch oven. When he kicked the top off the oven, he saw it was filled with rich gold ore. Outside the cabin and not too distant from it, a mine had been dug between ten and fifteen feet into the side of a hill. He retrieved several gold quartz samples from this mine, and was able to easily pull them from the wall of the mine using just his hands. He used the canvas burro side packs to take as much of the ore and nuggets he could carry back with him to Danby.
Schofield caught the first train into Los Angeles.
How do we know that one of these three versions or some order of a combination thereof is true? Because records show that Tom Schofield had testing done on the ore he had with him. Those tests showed that the ore in the Dutch oven had indeed a very high gold content and that the ore he had personally removed from the mine was also quite rich. For just the nuggets and ore he had been able to carry with him, Schofield netted over $200,000. In just two years, he spent all of his newfound wealth gambling, on liquor and fast women.
Two years later, he headed back to the Clipper Mountains, searching, searching, searching, for what he had stumbled upon. He was never able to find it. Schofield spent the rest of his life, essentially, as a prospector. He worked claims in the Old Woman and Turtle Mountains. He mined salt in Danby Dry Lake for a time. He even mined for iron ore in the Marble Mountains and prospected in other locations between Essex and Amboy. Beginning around 1920 and for a few years he held an interest in the Iron Hat Mine located about twelve miles east of Amboy in the Marble Mountains.
In the 1930s and into the 1940s, when he was in his 80s and early 90s, he was still wandering around Danby and the Clipper Mountains, seeking the Lost Dutch Oven Mine.
In 1936, while he was living in an abandoned store outside Danby, Schofield was interviewed by Walter H. Miller and George Haight. The gist of that interview formed the basis for much of what we know today as the Legend of the Lost Dutch Oven Mine.
There is no record of the Dutch Oven Mine ever having been found again. The Clipper Mountains are located just south of Interstate 40 and the Clipper Valley, between the freeway and National Old Trails Highway, northwest of the small community of Essex. The range is home to at least three springs, as well as the Tom Reed Mine. The Danby Station is located about 1.6 miles southeast of Highway 66 on Danby Road.

The Whitestem Blazingstar, which flourishes on dry, sandy soils in the desert valleys, foothills, gravel fans, washes, and scrub to pinyon/juniper woodlands, goes by a number of names, such as the White-stemmed Mentzelia, Mentzelia albicaulis, the Acrolasia albicaulis, Acrolasia gracilis, Mentzelia albicaulis var. albicaulis, Mentzelia albicaulis var. ctenophora, Mentzelia albicaulis var. gracilis, Mentzelia albicaulis var. tenerrima, Mentzelia gracilis, Mentzelia mojavensis, Trachyphytum gracile. It is of the family Loasaceae.
The whitestem blazingstar is an annual wildflower with simple to freely branched stems from two-and-a-half to 16.5 inches long. The stem is often glabrous below but becomes white and shining above. The hairs are often minutely barbed. The leaves measure from less than an inch to four inches long with the basal leaves typically linear to lanceolate in shape with variously fully-lobed, shallowly few-lobed to deeply pinnatifid margins narrowing gradually to the petioles. The stem leaves are linear to lanceolate with subentire to irregularly lobed margins.
The inflorescence consists of open, few-flowered cymes at the ends of the branches. The calyx is one-third inch to four-fifths of an inch long with short, triangular lobes from four-fifths of an inch to an inch-and-three-fifths inch long. The yellow petals are four-fifths of an inch to two-and-two-fifths of an inch long and often copper-colored at their base. The 15-35 stamens are shorter than the petals. The capsules are one-twelfth-of an inch to one-eighth of an inch long, covered with firm, stiff hairs and are narrowed toward the base.
Most often the whitestem blazing Star grows erect. An annual herb, the yellow flower has five shiny yellow petals. The fruit is a narrow, straight or curving utricle two-fifths of an inch to one-inch-and-a-fifth in length. It contains many angular seeds covered in tiny bumps.
In San Bernardino County, they are plentiful in the area around Barstow, Daggett, north of Barstow on the Fort Irwin Military Reservation, and in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Their flowering time runs from March to July. The Whitestem Blazingstar is edible and has medicinal uses.
The orange seed is put in a hot frying pan and when the seed turns a darker color warm water is added and stirred until it forms a gravy. The oily seed is parched and ground into a meal and then mixed with water to make a mush. The seed meal can be kneaded into a seed butter and used as a spread on bread. The minute seeds are much used for food by several native North American Indian tribes.
A poultice of the crushed, soaked seeds has been applied to burns and also to relieve toothache pain.

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Sentinel 02-20-15