Blinking furiously and looking up, only up, Vanessa Scott and Regan Bedortha made it through most of graduation without tears. It was difficult, though, even as a team effort.

“We didn’t want each other to cry, but if we were going to cry, it was going to be together,” Bedortha explained after she and her Two Rivers classmates were celebrating their high school graduation Wednesday, June 6, at Chief Kanim Middle School.

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“I remember graduation. I remember that feeling of elation and freedom, and I’m excited for them.”

Ann Landry, at her youngest daughter Sarah’s graduation from Mount Si High School Friday, was all smiles and a little introspective after the mostly rain-free ceremony. She was also practical.

“I feel like my responsibility for helping with homework is done!” she laughed. But mostly, she and her husband, Greg Pfiffner were proud of Sarah.

In the stands just before the big event, Rebecca Rowe’s family were in high spirits, her older sisters teasing her mother.

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By day, Laurie Gibbs deals with worst-case scenarios. Her analytical mind is constantly turning over prevention methods and damage mitigation for prison lockdowns, school break-ins, and worse.

For the rest of her day— she’s one of those people who seems to have more hours to get things done than the rest of us—her heart takes over. She organizes events for the Tanner Jeans Memorial Foundation that she started.

She goes to her daughters’ (Lainie, 14, and Lindie, 12) school concerts and soccer games, and gets herself and husband, Max, of almost 20 years, involved in their community.

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Every time Nels Melgaard puts his A-frame signs up on North Bend streets, he knows he’s breaking the law. He’s not happy about it, but feels he’s at an impasse with the city. He can still joke about it, though.

“Those are the criminals there,” he says, pointing to three sturdy A-frames lined up outside a shed.

Melgaard makes the distinction because he just made up 100 other signs—simple yard signs declaring support for his business, The Nursery at Mount Si just outside city limits on Southeast 108th Street. Since May 25, when he got the signs, people have taken more than 80 and put them up in yards around North Bend.

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As early shoppers admire displays of hand-made jewelry, Taylor Mosier hovers nearby, waiting to answer questions about the products, the event, or the causes it supports.

“I hope people are really touched by the stories of the women, and how they are trying to improve their lives,” she said. Mosier and her classmates, a Current Issues class from Two Rivers School, have been affected by those stories enough to throw this party, a fundraiser that will help both local families, and Ugandan women and their children.

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“What did you do?”

Tracie Smith’s howl shreds the stunned silence on Schusmann Avenue Thursday morning, as a sickening scene begins.

Staggering with shock and mindless of two cuts on her face, Smith confronts a dazed and bleeding Taylor Pearlstein, staring, horrified, at the hood of her car, where her boyfriend Chace Carlson is lying prone.

“You’ve been drinking! What have you done to my babies?” Smith screams again, but soon, all sound is drowned by incoming sirens, and the hydraulic pump for the “jaws of life” equipment.

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