Articles by Kirk Boxleitner
Merriah Sample
Marysville parents, teens urge School Board to end...
By Kirk Boxleitner • April 20, 2011 2:51 pm

MARYSVILLE — Merriah Sample still doesn’t feel like she’s being heard by the Marysville School District.
“It’s the same rote answer I heard for four years,” said Sample, who was joined by two other parents of teens at the MSD Board of Directors’ April 18 meeting to speak on bullying in Marysville schools. “We were forced to leave our home here in Marysville because our daughter was bullied so much, and she tried to commit suicide over it.”
Merriah Sample was unsatisfied with the response she received from Board President Cindy Erickson, after Aryana Sample, 15, fought back tears as she recounted how her bullying began at Marysville Middle School in 2008, and continued until she left the school district.

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Marysville Police arrest seller of stolen guns
Marysville Police arrest seller of stolen guns
By Kirk Boxleitner • April 14, 2011 2:12 pm

MARYSVILLE — Marysville Police detectives had a unique opportunity to team up with a Puget Sound citizen to help prevent illegal weapons trafficking.
Shortly after some of William Webster’s guns were stolen in a Pierce County burglary, he found two of them listed for sale on the Seattleguns.net website, one of which he was able to identify through its distinctive carrying case.
Webster arranged a meeting with the seller of the guns for April 12 in Marysville and contacted the Marysville Police Department on April 11, along with the Pierce and Snohomish county sheriff’s offices, to get their detectives involved. The meeting took place at a gun shop directly across the street from the Marysville Police Station.
“We had a couple of SWAT team members there and our detectives went undercover as buyers,” Marysville Police Cmdr. Robb Lamoureux said. “After they verified that the serial numbers of the seller’s guns matched those of Webster’s guns, we took the seller into custody without incident.”
Lamoureux explained that the arrested seller claimed not to have known the guns were stolen, and was very cooperative in supplying information for further investigation.

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Marysville Historical Society spring tea & fashion show raises $11,000
Marysville Historical Society spring tea & fashion show...
By Kirk Boxleitner • April 12, 2011 9:45 pm

MARYSVILLE — Focusing on fashion in film seems to have yielded blockbuster returns for the Marysville Historical Society.
The Marysville Historical Society’s eighth annual spring tea and fashion show on April 10 featured “Fashion in Film: A Focus on Iconic Films and Film Stars” as its theme, and while last year’s spring tea and fashion show netted an estimated $7,000, this year’s fundraiser drew donations totaling close to $11,000, even more than event chair Rietta Costa had hoped for.

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Marysville Legion Auxiliary receives its Charter
Marysville Legion Auxiliary receives its Charter
By Kirk Boxleitner • April 11, 2011 5:01 pm

MARYSVILLE — A year after its first meeting, the Marysville Legion Auxiliary has received its Charter.
When Marysville Unit 178 of the American Legion Auxiliary met on Feb. 18 of last year, it became the first active Legion Auxiliary unit in Marysville in 50 years.
When Unit 178 received its Charter at a dinner hosted by the Lake Stevens Unit 181 on March 7 of this year, Legion Auxiliary National President Carlene Ashworth and 2010 Department President Kathy Kerr were in attendance, which Marysville Unit President Kay Smith considered a special honor.

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Marysville student raising funds to attend National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine
Marysville student raising funds to attend National Youth...
By Kirk Boxleitner • April 11, 2011 4:47 pm

MARYSVILLE — For Alexander Larsen, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a head start on his aspirations of pursuing a medical career as an adult, but he’ll need some help from the community to get there.
Larsen, a 16-year-old sophomore at the Bio-Med Academy at Marysville Getchell High School, has been invited to attend the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine in Houston, Texas, but to afford the tuition for the 19-day program, running from July 19-26, he needs to raise $2,560 by April 22.

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Marysville author signs copies of her book at Wit’s End on April 29
Marysville author signs copies of her book at...
By Kirk Boxleitner • April 8, 2011 5:16 pm

MARYSVILLE — What began as one Marysville woman’s way of recovering from her own wounds has become something that she now shares with others to help ease their suffering.
Marysville’s Kathy Goodhew will be signing copies of her first book, “A Vision Beyond Abuse,” at the Wit’s End Bookstore in Suite H at 1206 State Ave. in Marysville on April 29 from 6-8 p.m. The book details the decades of abuse that Goodhew endured in not just one but two relationships.

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From left
‘Wizard of Oz’ comes to Shoultes Elementary
By Kirk Boxleitner • April 5, 2011 7:04 am

Even after three years, Shoultes Elementary’s school plays still manage to surprise Nancy Hammer.
Hammer, a 15-year teacher at Shoultes who’s also served as a school librarian for the past few years, has directed versions of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Peter Pan” in the past two years that were specifically adapted for large casts of young performers. This year’s version of “The Wizard of Oz” boasted 38 students in the cast, only three more than last year’s play, but it presented new challenges nonetheless.

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Lakewood High School cheerleaders congratulate Marysville’s Gretchen Littell
Rain doesn’t dampen spirits at MS Walk at...
By Kirk Boxleitner • April 5, 2011 7:02 am

Although the morning’s rain brought with it a significantly reduced attendance, the enthusiasm of those who did turn out for the Walk MS at the Tulalip Amphitheatre wasn’t dampened.

Not all of the 35 members of “Goochi’s Gang” were able to make it in time for the kickoff of the three-mile walk fundraiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society at 9:30 a.m. on April 2, but team captain and Marysville resident Gretchen “Goochi” Littell promised a fun after-party for those who had.

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Native American author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie
‘Part-Time Indian’ Sherman Alexie speaks at Tulalip Resort
By Kirk Boxleitner • March 30, 2011 5:46 pm

TULALIP — Native American author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie couldn’t get over how far Indian people have come when he visited the Tulalip Tribes.
“It’s so fancy it’s hilarious,” Alexie said March 29 in the Orca Ballroom of the Tulalip Resort Hotel and Casino. “You have an outlet mall on your reservation. My sons have never seen an Indian take a sip of alcohol. It was different being an Indian when I was growing up.”
The Tulalip campus of the Northwest Indian College hosted Alexie’s speaking appearance, part of the first in what they plan to make an annual “Tulalip Reads for Unity” program. Copies of Alexie’s novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” were distributed to Tribal members who made it the subject of book clubs before Alexie’s visit. During his engagement at the Tulalip resort, Alexie recounted his own childhood on the Spokane Indian Reservation, which served as the basis for the life story of his novel’s protagonist.

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