General
For a list of my articles found on Muck Rack, click here.
Check below for examples of current and previous work.
The Fight for Ranching’s Future in Carson Valley
In what has now become a year-and-a-half long fight between ranchers and homeowners in Carson Valley, an appeal will be heard in late August for a proposed slaughterhouse in Centerville, a ranching community south of Gardnerville, which had been unanimously denied by Douglas County Commissioners in Nov. 2019.
The line was drawn in the sand between ranchers, who were in favor of a harvesting and processing plant for their livestock, and homeowners, who were worried about their housing prices being affected by a new facility.
Karin Sinclair and Mike Holcomb of the newly created Carson Valley Meats have been struggling to win approval for their proposed slaughterhouse and meat processing facility ever since, and the appeal next month will be the final decision on their endeavor.
to read the rest of the story in the sierra nevada ally, click here.
After six years, Silver City's Donovan Mill Restoration Project is nearly complete thanks to work of volunteers
Six years ago, it was determined that without direct intervention, Silver City’s Donovan Mill would crumble and collapse.
That’s when a core group of volunteers began their pursuit of the mill’s restoration, working tirelessly to not only save the historic building from imminent collapse, but to restore it to its former glory for the benefit of the public.
The project is spearheaded by Don and Elaine Bergstrom who, along with The Comstock Foundation, have been undergoing massive conservation efforts of the mill which can be traced as far back as the 1860s.
The Donovan Mill is significant on the international level, because some say it is the site where the cyanide/zinc process of refining was perfected through trial and error on the Comstock as millions of dollars worth of gold and silver needed to be refined and processed for the market.
To read the rest of the story in carson Now, click here.
What We Know: The Murder of Naomi Irion
On Saturday, March 12, 18-year-old Naomi Irion was waiting inside of her car in the parking lot of the Fernley Walmart just before 5:30 a.m., when the shuttle to her job at Panasonic would be arriving. Irion often waited in her car while waiting for the shuttle.
A tall man wearing a grey hoodie pulled up around his face and a mask could be seen on surveillance footage pacing in the parking lot for several minutes.
An early release from the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office stated the suspect had come from a “homeless camp” and was “lurking in vehicles” but these two pieces of information have not been mentioned again since.
In unreleased footage, the suspect is seen going up to Irion’s driver’s side door and either saying or doing something to force her to move into the passenger seat.
The car left the parking lot just before 5:30 a.m. Irion was never seen alive again.
to read the rest of the story in Carson now, please click here.
BLM protest in Douglas County draws hundreds of counter protesters, militia
A first-person account
I have deep roots in Carson Valley. I learned to swim at the Carson Valley Aquatic Center, where I was taught to monkey-tree-rocketship my way through the water. My mother taught special education at Gardnerville Elementary School. Our secret family cheesecake recipe actually came from Barbara Storke of the old Storke Dairy. My first job as a journalist was with the Record Courier. I have never felt unsafe in Douglas County, until today.
Douglas County Sheriff Dan Coverley made national headlines when he issued a public letter to the Douglas County Library Board after they proposed support for the Black Lives Matter movement. In the letter, Coverley threatened to ignore emergency calls for assistance.
Though Coverley later stated he would respond to calls for assistance, many across the country were outraged.
In Carson City, a group of about 30-40 people, most of them young and many of them juveniles, have been peacefully protesting and marching in front of the Nevada Legislature every Saturday this summer. It was these protesters, joined together with other regional Black Lives Matter movements, who organized a peaceful protest in Douglas County to support the library and express their outrage at the sheriff’s statement.
Armed, anti-BLM militia took up position near the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office – photo: Kelsey Penrose
Douglas County and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office (DCSO) released several press releases regarding the protest, including the fact that they would be providing “Free Speech Zones” in the parking lot behind the sheriff’s office, along with temporary bathrooms.
What the Sheriff’s Office failed to mention was that while the free speech zones were erected for BLM protesters, DCSO officers would not protect them.
To read the rest of the story on The Sierra Nevada Ally, click here.
When Joe Tummarello moved into a sober living home in Carson City called Lyfe Recovery, his friends and family thought he was doing well. However, at the end of July, he wound up in the hospital after his health declined rapidly. His family says this was due to severe neglect at the hands of the owner and manager of the facility. By several accounts, he was denied medical treatment until a senior living home provider stepped in and took him to the hospital, where he died a week later.
The question is: did Joe Tummarello die before his time? And if the answer is yes, then is someone responsible for his demise?
The manager of the house quit without notice days after Joe's death. The owner of the business shut the facility down and is in the process of filing bankruptcy. The Carson City Justice Court had a contract with Lyfe Recovery and placed clients from its drug court program into their sober living home.
When the court found out that a man had died on the premises, they were told by the owner of Lyfe Recovery the man was a homeless person who had no family and nowhere to go, and that he was only in the home for a few days before being transferred to the hospital, all of which, it turns out, was false. Neither owner nor manager called an ambulance or contacted a doctor for a man who had been a client of the rehab facility since 2018 and had several family members who had no idea he was ill.
For the weeks before Joe's death, according to the house manager, he continuously asked the owner to move Joe, but she took no action to find him a higher level of care.
One thing everyone involved can agree on: no one is taking responsibility for Joe Tummarello's death.
To read the rest of the investigative series in Joe’s death, click here.
Family searches for answers to why father died after stay in Carson City sober-living home
Tiny Living in Douglas County
Amy Kileen didn't always live small.
After living in Bakersfield for 35 years, she came up with a three-year plan: become debt free, retire from teaching, and buy a tiny home.
Her home in Bakersfield was 1,600 square feet, on a 12,000-square-foot-lot. Her tiny home now in a space in Silver City RV Park is a tiny 220 square feet.
Kileen grew up in Sutter Creek, Calif., but attended high school in the Douglas area for one year. She and her father came here to fish and prospect for gold during her childhood.
"I always wanted to come back," Kileen said. "Nevada is much more welcoming toward tiny homes than California, and I needed somewhere close to the airport with a good medical facility, and lots of sun."
After her children grew up and moved away, Kileen realized she was only really living in two rooms of her house, and felt a sense of guilt.
"This should be a house for a family," Kileen recalled thinking, "not just for me. Now one of my old students lives there with their family."
Kileen spent her life teaching English and Biology until she retired.
She sold her house in April of last year, and lived in her Airstream RV while she finished her last year of teaching, until her tiny home was finished.
She contracted the business California Tiny House to build her home, but wishes she had hired a builder in Nevada.
"My advice is, when you buy a tiny house, you should buy it from a builder in the state you will live in," said Kileen. "The heater doesn't work as well as I need it to here, because in California, there's no need for it. Once the temperature goes under 30 degrees, it stops working."
Her reasoning for living in a tiny home over an RV is simple: it's much more open, so she never feels claustrophobic, and the tiny houses are made with real products, like hard wood, cork flooring, corrugated metal; definitely no plastic.
"Things that last. It makes me feel much more comfortable."
Her greatest challenges in downsizing to a tiny home were narrowing things down. She held several garage sales in California, but still ended up bring items from a storage unit there, to a storage unit here.
"I wanted to live here for a full year before getting rid of everything else, to find out what I'd really need in the end."
Now in her spare time, Kileen is an avid fly fisher, as well as a skeet and trap shooter. After obtaining her Nevada residency she was able to receive her CCW permit. She also makes jewelry, ties fishing flies, and volunteers in the community.
Her advice to those who have toyed with the idea of downsizing but haven't made up their minds is to rent first. There is a tiny home community in Kings Beach with rentals, but Kileen said also renting an RV of the same size is a good start.
Tiny homes can range anywhere from $6,500 if the person uses salvaged materials, builds it entirely themselves, and has a lot of patience and time on their hands, to upward of $200,000, which, some would say, defeats the purpose of a tiny house.
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This is not the first time that D’Angelo has fought to make his dreams a reality. According to D’Angelo, he tried twice before in Las Vegas with similar ideas to help those in the homeless population by creating a subdivision-like community to help get them back on their feet. He also said he’d tried to create a project in Winnemucca, but according to Winnemucca City Manager Alicia Heiser she couldn’t find any information regarding a potential project by D’Angelo or under Joshua’s Community.
“Joshua’s Community” in Pahrump was the plan that had gone the furthest out of those previously mentioned. D’Angelo set out to build a community on 87,000 acres of land in the desert near Pahrump where those in poverty or people who were homeless could come and live in residential halls located on a campus that included features such as parks, a performance hall, a water park, museums, recreation centers, and a fairground.
D’Angelo met with the Town of Pahrump Board (which has now been disbanded) on May 25, 2010 to discuss Joshua’s Community. It appears the D’Angelo got the backing of the Board after they came to an agreement that Joshua’s Community would include the Pahrump Arts and Recreation Complex (PARC), which would be accessible to the public.
In the minutes of the meeting, D’Angelo said he was not asking the town of Pahrump for any money, and that the community would be privately funded, and would bring in an 800 bed surgical hospital, schools, parks and recreation venues, among other buildings.
He also stated that the McKinney-Vento Act would help obtain land from the Bureau of Land Management to Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.
D’Angelo asked that the town help in acquiring the land necessary for his plans, but that he needed no money to build the project.
According to the meeting minutes, he also promised that at a later date he would be prepared to name the companies that would be funding the projects, and that whether or not he would gain the contract or land for the Joshua Community, he was committed to building the PARC project for Pahrump because it would bring industry and jobs to Pahrump.
At this time, no such facility has ever been built in Pahrump.
According to Arnold Knightly, Nye County’s Public Information Officer, it appears that the project fell through because the land D’Angelo was asking for from the Bureau of Land Management was not available.
D’Angelo said that he had asked the BLM to give him the 87,000 acres so it could be developed into Joshua’s Community, but they refused.
“They told me that they owned the property, and I told them, ‘You don’t own it, you manage it’,” said D’Angelo.
D’Angelo said that the property belongs to the American people and not to the government, but the government disagreed, and the Joshua’s Community project never moved forward, until it’s new iteration now being planned in Carson City.
In a brochure and informational packet provided by D’Angelo (made available at the bottom of this article), it states that Joseph’s Community was asking for $18 million in loans to fund the program, along with 87,000 acres of BLM land located within the Nevada desert of Nye County.
In the packet, it explained that the proposed community would generate “non-philanthropic income” by meat and dairy operations, mining, green electrical power sales, and produce/aquaponic sales.
The packet outlined that the total planned investment capital for Joseph’s Community was over $250 million, with a required funding of $18 million. Assets were listed in the amount of a $45 million “non-cash asset.”
In the Joshua Community informational packet, Joshua Ventures International was listed as one of three “managers” of the community, and is described as:
“A for-profit corporation that has or will create and manage specific revenue sources to drive Joshua’s Community development programs. For example, state-of-the-art green technologies that are global leaders in the fields of construction, EVs, power generation and high-nutrient-value produce/fish will be demonstrated to US and global decision makers. Our critical goal is to show global decision makers a proven and better model for managing the disadvantaged.”
The packet also explains that Joshua’s Community was going to be funded because they had “private funds from personal business ventures, private loans, pledges and contractual commitments from private corporations. Ongoing funds are generated through our ‘Income Stream.’”
After failing to obtain the 87,000 acres of desert, D’Angelo has now set his sites on something much smaller: The Ormsby House.
As for “Joshua’s House,” D’Angelo wants it to become a cutting edge facility that includes biometric reading instead of keys, a green energy power plant that would be placed where the defunct ARCO station is now, an aquaponics grow house, a daycare facility for employees, and much more.
D’Angelo said he has a history in the music business, and he intends to bring the best and biggest musical acts to the showroom.
In addition, on the first floor which will contain several restaurants encircling the “living room,” D’Angelo has a vision to put in place a culinary art school. The students would come to learn from chefs and serve up food in a school-serviced restaurant, and a few times a year, D’Angelo would bring in celebrity chefs such as Gordon Ramsey, Guy Fieri, and more.
The first floor would also include an Ormsby House Museum detailing the history of the building from William Ormsby onward, a first-responders memorial, and a gift shop.
As for the exterior of the building, D’Angelo said he wants to bring a “Wow!” factor to downtown.
“I don’t have all the ideas like what color the building would be,” said D’Angelo, “but I want it to be appealing when you drive up. In Las Vegas you see the dancing waters, the Eiffel tower, the Luxor. What do you see when you drive down Carson? Carson is beautiful because it’s old. It’s eclectic, it’s got its little shops. Then you get to the Ormsby House and there’s no wow factor.”
D’Angelo clarified he wasn’t in the business of turning Carson City into Las Vegas.
“I don’t want to turn you into Las Vegas,” he said. “You’ll do that on your own in time. I just want to have one property, trick it out, put in some nice waterfalls, trim the trees. What’s the problem?”
“Carson City is a diamond in the rough,” he continued. “Let me make it into a diamond. This could be the model for the rest of the United States. This is how you turn around life and bring community back into your cities and towns. People want that now because we’re losing it.”
One of the ways he said his project will help the community is to bring a green-power plant into where the ARCO station currently sits, which would be water powered. The plant would be used to power the Joshua House project, but it could also be used to power the Governor’s Office, the Capitol, the Legislature, or even Carson City as a whole.
“I’ve got a team of engineers working on it,” said D’Angelo. “Our governor is always pushing green energy, green energy by 2030 for the State of Nevada. Well, here it is. This is new green power. Our governors have been touting that. There’s stuff besides solar. Everybody knows the oil companies and all that, they’re cartels within themselves. They don’t want green energy out.”
He said what sets him apart from others who want to bring cutting-edge energy technology to the world is that he cannot be bought out by bigger companies who wish to stifle the expansion of green technologies.
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To read the article in its entirety, click here.
Ormsby House potential buyer discusses vision for Carson City's historic building, plus: a look inside after 19 years
Man sentenced to 34 years in prison in Carson City's first convicted hate crime
Travis Mickelson, a Dayton resident, was sentenced to 11 to 34 years in prison Thursday in Carson City District Court in what was tried and prosecuted as Carson City's first hate crime.
In November of 2018, Mickelson was convicted by a jury in Judge James Russell's court of attempted murder with hate crime enhancements, as well as battery and assault with a deadly weapon.
In 2017, Mickelson shot more than a dozen rounds into a vehicle occupied by five Sikh men visiting the area, injuring one.
It took the jury less than three hours to convict Mickelson on all four charges, which were: Attempted murder, battery with a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon and discharge of a firearm into an occupied vehicle.
Sentencing was originally scheduled for Dec. 31, 2018, but had been pushed back several times until the sentencing took place Thursday.
Using offensive language, Mickelson claimed he had shot into the vehicle because men he thought were Muslims had looked at his wife in a way that “creeped her out.”
He further stated he believed the men were going to run him off the road and rape his wife, which, he claimed, was happening throughout the country.
The incident took place after leaving a convenience store. According to phone recordings made by Mickelson to family remembers while in custody, he said his wife went into the convenience store without shoes on, and the men were looking at her. Mickelson told them the woman was his wife, and they asked why she wasn’t wearing shoes. He told the family member on the recording that Muslim men had a problem with barefoot woman.
During witness testimony the men said they never made any such comment about the woman not having shoes, only having observed with their eyes the woman didn’t have any shoes on.
The five men in the vehicle, who are of the Sikh faith, not the Muslim faith, with family from India and not the Middle East, said they had no idea what had happened the night. They were driving on Highway 50 East and attempted to pass a Dodge van that was in the slow lane when Mickelson opened fire between 2 and 4 feet of the vehicle, hitting it multiple times, including through windows, with one of the bullets striking Harmandeep Singh Shergill in the torso area.
“I wish I would have killed one of them,” Mickelson was heard telling a family member during a recorded phone call the morning after the shooting.
During the sentencing, his defense attorney spoke about Mickelson's reasons and character.
“He did not go out that evening looking for trouble,” said Mickelson's defense attorney. “He did not follow them looking for trouble. He believed he was in danger and that he needed to use his firearm to protect himself. He realizes now he overreacted. He is not an evil person.”
“Based on the color of their skin and the language they were speaking, Mr. Mickelson decided these men were Muslim terrorists,” said Carson City's Prosecuting Attorney Melanie Brantingham. “You heard it in his own words. He was convicted of attempted murder by a jury, with a hate crime enhancement. He still maintains he was acting in self-defense.”
His defense attorney asked for probation, due to his lack of a criminal history, and that he knows now these men were not a threat to him. He went on to say that since Mickelson now has a felony conviction, he will not be allowed to own firearms, so this incident wouldn’t be likely to happen again.
“I think he’s learned to think a little bit more before he acts,” said his defense attorney.
Tensions flared between defense and prosecution regarding a claim that Mickelson had been a model inmate during the year and a half at the jail.
Brantingham rebutted this claim with an email provided to the court, which stated that in his time spent in the Carson City Jail, Mickelson had been written up multiple times for having contraband, misusing phone privileges, and more.
"This shows that Mr. Mickelson will do what he wants, when he wants," she said. "Who's to say he won't get a gun just because he's not supposed to?"
“The hate and the violence shown in this crime were frankly shocking,” said Brantingham. “What makes him deserving of any breaks? There’s nothing that should say to you if he got out he wouldn’t do the same thing again.”
Brantingham asked for Mickelson to be sentenced on the hate crime enhancement of the crime for attempted murder instead of the deadly weapon enhancement, as only one could be used.
“The gun was the instrument used,” she said. “Hate was the reason.”
Mickelson spoke to the court during sentencing. “I’m not a threat to the community," he said. "My actions were based on a perception that these men were a threat to me and my wife. I was just trying to protect myself and my family."
He told the court two months before the incident, his best friend had been killed in a vehicle crash, and now believes that trauma may have added to his overreaction. He said his actions were not based on hate.
He was sentenced to 545 days credit for time served.
On Count One, attempted murder, he was sentenced to a minimum of 36 months and a maximum of 120 months, with a consecutive hate crime enhancement sentencing of 36 - 120 months.
On Count Two, battery with a deadly weapon, he was sentenced to a minimum of 32 months and a maximum of 84 months with a consecutive deadly weapon enhancement of 32 - 84 months to run consecutive.
For Count Three, assault with a deadly weapon, a minimum of 12 months with a maximum of 48 months with a deadly weapon enhancement, both of which will run concurrent with counts one and two.
Count Four, discharge of a firearm into an occupied vehicle, he was sentenced to a minimum of 12 months with a maximum of 48, which will also run concurrent to counts one and two.
In total, he is facing 34 years in prison.
"I'm very very pleased with the District Attorney's Office. This is a small community. We don't see or tolerate this kind of crime. It was very aggressive, very hateful with no justification other than pure hate," said Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong regarding Thursday's sentencing.