Tag: Tacoma news Tribune
Will paying homeless people to spruce up Tacoma help them and city? Program begins soon
Standing in Alling Park in Tacoma on Thursday, Parker Wilson said passersby wouldn’t know he was homeless.
“For this program I think people see us, and (we) look, like actual workers,” the 29-year-old told The News Tribune in between pouring mulch around the trees in the park.
Parker is part of a two-year program with nonprofit Valeo Vocation called Transitional Employment Pathway (TEP), which aims to help people experiencing homelessness build up job skills.
This month, a spin-off pilot program with Valeo called the Hire Program will launch, thanks to $60,000 from the City of Tacoma’s general fund. The pilot is expected to operate through December.
In the Hire Program, people in encampments or shelters across the city will be asked if they would like to take on tasks like landscape work or cleaning up litter and get paid for it. People will be selected based on input from the homeless outreach team.
The program is similar to TEP, but the Hire Program will recruit from across the city, rather than a handful of shelters.
“We can go meet people where they are in the community in different places instead of just being limited to stability sites,” said TEP case manager Benjamin McLean, adding that the program seeks to make “people productive members of society.”
Participants will be paid minimum wage, or $13.50 an hour, and can work up to 20 hours four days a week, said Sherri Jensen, CEO of Valeo Vocation. The pilot is aiming to serve about 70 people.
Council member Robert Thoms was behind the creation of the Hire Program and worked to get funds into the budget to launch the project. He said the program provides a pathway toward stability for people who are homeless and puts resources directly into the hands of people who need it most.
“It’s not a program being done to them — it’s a program done by them,” Thoms said.
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Tacoma nurse brought COVID-19 home. Now her husband is on a ventilator, fighting for his life
Tammy Edwards remembers closing her front door and falling to her knees.
Moments earlier, the nurse at Tacoma General Hospital had watched her husband of nearly 10 years, Brian Edwards, strapped to an oxygen tank and taken away in an ambulance.
She knew he was stricken with COVID-19, because she had brought it home from work.
She knew, because of her medical training and the overwhelming signs, he was struggling — most notably an inability to breath and dangerously low oxygen levels.
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And, amid the coronavirus precautions and limits on visitation, she knew precisely what a trip to the hospital under such circumstances could mean — that the kiss on the cheek she’d given Brian moments earlier might be the couple’s last.
Three hours later, Edwards said, her husband had been intubated — sedated and placed on a ventilator that has been helping him breath ever since.
“I said, ‘I love you. You know I can’t be with you,’” Edwards recounted Monday, eight days after Brian, 50, was rushed to the hospital where she works.
“I remember closing my door, and I just lost it. I just had a meltdown,” Edwards, 51, continued. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to see him again. It was really hard. I paced around in my house for a couple hours, crying and praying.”
That night, Edwards also took to social media, posting photos and an update on Brian’s condition to Facebook. The couple grew up in Tacoma — both graduating from Wilson High School — and have a large circle of friends and relatives. She wanted people to know how he was doing.
As a nurse, Edwards said she also wanted people to take COVID-19 seriously. Brian had no underlying health conditions, she explained, and yet he was still fighting for his life.
“I decided, you know what, there’s so much going on in the news right now — so much controversy — that I wanted to reach out to our community and show this is real,” Edwards said of the Facebook post, which has now been shared thousands of times and garnered widespread attention.
“This is not a hoax, and it’s not a conspiracy,” she added. ”This is the real deal.”
Since her husband was admitted to Tacoma General, the emotions have been overwhelming and come in waves, Edwards said.
She’s often terrified and unable to sleep for fear of missing a call from the hospital. Her husband is now in stable but critical condition, but the illness is unpredictable, and he’s “very sick and has a long road ahead of him,” Edwards said.
Edwards also longs to hear her husband’s voice again — to connect with him, even from afar. Right now, her contact with him has been limited to nightly, one-way video chats. Edwards talks to Brian for hours every evening, she explained, confident he can hear her through a phone placed next to his ear, while she watches for small signs to confirm it.
“I just talk to him until his phone dies,” Edwards said.
Then there’s the guilt — which might be the hardest part of all and underscores the incredible sacrifices being made by medical professionals during the coronavirus pandemic.
The registered nurse, who works on Tacoma General’s birthing and postpartum unit, said she became ill earlier this month and tested positive for COVID-19 on April 10. Previously, Edwards was notified of exposure on her unit, she explained.
Brian, meanwhile, developed symptoms the day before her test results came back.
Today, Edwards is still recovering, and has yet to return to work.
The toll COVID-19 has taken on her husband is much greater, she said.
“When he first went in (to the hospital), I figured that he was likely not going to make it. That was awful,” Edwards said, recounting Brian’s persistently worsening cough, gasps for air and exhaustion-induced delirium.
“When he left that day, on Sunday, I buckled and I had to sit down. All I thought about is, ‘This is your fault. It’s your fault,’” Edwards said. “I’m devastated by it. I’m heartbroken. I know I likely caused this, even though we were taking precautions.”
The “only thing that really keeps me strong,” Edwards said, is how Brian supported her career, even after he became ill with COVID-19.
That doesn’t stop Edwards from apologizing to him every night over the phone, she said.
“He knows I’m a nurse, and we know the risk. We talked about it, and he’s not upset with me. But I still tell him I’m sorry,” Edwards said.
”I apologize to him, because I brought it home and he got sick. I have a lot of guilt about that.”
Read more here: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/matt-driscoll/article242275096.html#storylink=cpy
Pierce County coronavirus cases now at 231 with five deaths
Pierce County on Friday reported 45 new confirmed cases and another death in the coronavirus pandemic.
The county now has 231 cases and five deaths out of 4,310 tested by University of Washington virology lab and state public health labs.
The latest death from Lakewood, a man in his 80s with underlying health conditions, follows two also from Lakewood reported Thursday, a man and woman both in their 70s, also with underlying health conditions.
Pierce County’s case numbers from Friday are below, with Thursday’s numbers in parentheses.
▪ Bonney Lake: 6 (5)
▪ Central Pierce County: 11 (7)
▪ East Pierce County: 9 (7)
▪ Edgewood/Fife/Milton: 13 (12)
▪ Frederickson: 7 (6)
▪ Gig Harbor area: 14 (13)
▪ Graham: 6 (5)
▪ JBLM: 3 (no change)
▪ Key Peninsula: 2 (1)
▪ Lake Tapps/Sumner area: 7 (6)
▪ Lakewood: 12 (10)
▪ Parkland: 17 (13)
▪ Puyallup: 16 (14)
▪ South Hill 10 (6)
▪ South Pierce County: 4 (4)
▪ Southwest Pierce County 3 (no change)
▪ Spanaway 8 (5)
▪ Tacoma: 75 (60)
▪ University Place: 8 (6)
On Thursday, Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department again changed its reporting methods, adding more cities to the list and redistributing case numbers to different cities as it removed more general county locator descriptions.
As case numbers have grown in the county, the health department has adjusted its reporting style and has added a map to view case locations on its website.
The outbreak of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19 respiratory disease, has now claimed five lives in the county, including three from Lakewood, one from Puyallup and one from Spanaway.
Underlying medical conditions have been tied to many of the deaths. On Friday, the health department issued a reminder on its blog of what classified as underlying conditions putting patients in the high-risk category:
▪ Heart disease
▪ Diabetes
▪ Lung disease
▪ HIV
▪ Asthma
▪ Pregnancy
▪ Auto-immune disorders
▪ Recent surgery
▪ Cancer treatment
▪ Severe obesity
Read more here: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/coronavirus/article241569046.html#storylink=cpy
He tried to break into a teen girl’s home because he wanted to ‘start a family,’ Tacoma police say
A man tried to break into a Tacoma home Wednesday because he wanted to “start a family with” a 13-year-old girl inside, Pierce County prosecutors allege.
The 27-year-old, whose address was not listed in court records, was arraigned Thursday in Superior Court. He faces charges of attempted residential burglary, communication with a minor for immoral purposes, obstructing police, lying to police and two counts of third-degree assault. Bail was set at $200,000.
According to charging documents:
A 13-year-old girl called police from her home on East 34th Street about 12:15 p.m. and said a man was trying to open the windows of her house.
“I want to date you,” the girl said he was calling from outside. “I want to start a family with you.”
Officers arrived to find the man in the backyard of the home. When he saw them, he fled but was captured nearby.
The 13-year-old told police she saw the man in a nearby church parking lot, where he could have seen into her bedroom. The man then removed a bungee cord from the fence, knocking down part of it.
The man approached the home and tried to open the back door, begging the teen to let him in. She called her father, who told her to call 911.
The man refused to give his name to police, instead telling officers to take him to jail. Once there, he spat on a Tacoma police officer. The officer tried to put a spit sock over the man’s head, which prompted the man to kick the officer.
Once inside, the man tried to sneak up on a corrections officer but was thwarted. He then lied about his name, and gave three different spellings of what his would-be alias was.
Officers eventually determined the man’s identity and discovered he had a warrant for his arrest.
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They planned to ‘shoot off some rounds.’ Two men ended up fatally shot in the head
News from Tacoma Washingtion
Two men shot to death inside a car in University Place went with their alleged killer to fire off random rounds while driving around, court documents state.
On Tuesday, Pierce County prosecutors charged Javgier Valenzuela Feliz, 30, with two counts of second-degree murder for the May 14 deaths of Adrian Valencia, 19, and Wilberth Acala, 22.
A 21-year-old man also arrested in connection with the homicides has not been charged. He was released to the the U.S. marshals earlier this month on an unrelated matter.
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