4/8/2022
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Wall St Journal
Spokesman-Review
High-rise apartment fire seriously injures man, forces evacuations
Despite ongoing problems, VA official calls launch of health record system a success
Providence opens primary care clinic on SHMC campus
KHQ
The Inlander
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Wall St Journal
The Matchbox Twenty singer-songwriter barely escaped childhood as his mother struggled after a divorce
Marc MyersApril 5, 2022 11:15 am ET
Rob Thomas, 50, is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, a solo artist and lead singer of Matchbox Twenty, which is planning an upcoming tour. He spoke with Marc Myers.
When I look back at the low points in my childhood, I’m amazed I survived and emerged where I am now.
My mom, Mamie, married at age 14 to escape her abusive mother, Mattie. She had her first child at 16, divorced, remarried, had me at 21, and divorced again when I was 2 in the mid-1970s.
We were all but doomed to a life of poverty. But to her credit, my mother did manage to give us a better life.
After my mother’s divorce, we had to move into Mattie’s two-story house outside Lake City, S.C. It was attached to her general store. My mother, my sister, Missy, and I lived downstairs. Mattie sold liquor illegally stored in a secret space under the stairs.
Rob Thomas and his sister moved around after their mother’s divorce.
Photo: Rob Thomas (Family Photo)
We lived in the area until I was 10. Mattie was rough. If you screwed with her, she’d come after you with a gun. And after drinking sprees, she’d physically abuse my mother.
During this time, my mother got a job as a low-level computer programmer. We moved about an hour to Columbia. That gave us distance, but enough proximity so my mother could check on Mattie.
I was always a sensitive kid in an area where there weren’t a lot of sensitive kids. They were all into football and hunting, and I was scared of both. Instead, I found refuge in music and singing.
Mattie died when I was 10 under mysterious circumstances. She was hit by a car in a place where there were no driver obstructions. We moved to Sarasota, Fla.
There, the places we lived were run-down, pay-by-the-month apartment complexes. Not long after, Mom got a new job and we moved to a ratty apartment complex in Orlando.
On the last day of sixth grade, I came home to find Missy gone. She had run away to join her boyfriend in Sarasota.
Now I was in a toxic situation. My mother wanted to relive the childhood she’d missed out on. She spent large amounts of time away and left me home at age 12.
Next, we lived with her boyfriends, which had an upside. One Christmas, I got a bike, a Walkman and two cassettes—one by the Cars and the other by Billy Idol. I played them over and over through my headphones.
When I was 13, my mother was diagnosed with lymphoma. I took care of her. After she recovered, she became a computer whiz. Her advancement at work allowed us to move to Wekiwa Springs, a comfortable, middle-class Orlando suburb.
Rob Thomas and his mother, Mamie; Rob Thomas and his sister, Missy. Photos: Rob Thomas (Family Photo)(2)
In ninth grade, I tried out for a musical, but I wasn’t happy singing the silly song lyrics. The chorus teacher, Mr. Deuce, told me my voice had a nice quality, so I remained. It was the first time a teacher told me I was good at something.
My mom’s boyfriend, Rick, gave me a Casio electric keyboard when I was 15. I didn’t know how to play it, so I figured out chords, melody and theory from songbooks. I also began singing in Fair Warning, a band with musicians who were all juniors and seniors.
Desperation crept in when I was left alone. I’d become upset and throw big parties that wrecked the house. My mom and I had a hard time living together. I moved out.
For three years, I was homeless. I tried to stay in school by sleeping in friends’ cars and on their couches. But by 11th grade, I dropped out. Our band had landed a gig at a hotel in Vero Beach. I thought we’d made it. Two weeks later we were fired.
I considered joining the service and playing in an Army band, but I needed a high-school diploma. So I got my GED. But before I enlisted, I started singing with a band called Tidal Wave.
After I wrote “3 a.m.,” I formed Tabitha’s Secret. The band did well and we toured as far north as Tennessee.
When the band split up, I had interest from Atlantic Records, so two of the band members—Brian and Paul—and I stayed together. We needed a name for our new band. One night, during a gig, a guy walked in wearing a jersey with the number 20 and a patch for Matchbox cars sewn on. We went with Matchbox Twenty.
Rob Thomas and his wife, Marisol Maldonado, in 2017.
Photo: Amy Sussaman/Invision/The Humane Society of The United States/AP Images
Today, my wife, Marisol, and I live with our dog, Ollie, north of New York. We moved here 15 years ago. We feel safe and liberated with a bit of land and plenty of space in the house.
My wife and I met backstage in 1998 in Montreal after a Matchbox Twenty concert. On tour, I called her the entire time. By the time I returned, we had a real sense of each other.
My mother-in-law hates the childhood stories I tell her. She wishes she took care of me when I was little. Then we realize that if she had, I probably wouldn’t be who I am now.
Rob’s Roost
What’s your house like? It’s a remote Colonial built in the 2000s.
Favorite spaces? Marisol has a cozy sitting room in our bedroom and an office off the family room that she loves.
And yours? I have a recording studio in the basement that’s my go-to spot.
Nostalgic furnishing? A 19th-century French wood daybed in our family room. We dragged it home to our apartment in Manhattan’s Soho when we lived there in the 2000s.
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Spokesman-Review
High-rise apartment fire seriously injures man, forces evacuations
By Emma Epperly
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
A fire in a high-rise apartment building in downtown Spokane left one man with serious injuries and forced dozens of elderly and disabled residents to shelter in place.
The fire started in a ninth-floor apartment and brought more than 70 firefighters to the Park Tower apartments at 217 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. at around 1 p.m. Thursday, said Spokane Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer.
Carol Hart heard the small fire alarm inside the apartment adjacent to her unit go off. She stuck her head out in the hallway and saw that it was filled with smoke.
“I pounded on all my neighbors’ doors and said to go and go now,” Hart said. “Nobody responded and I said, ‘Hey, I’m going. That’s all I can do for ya, get out of here.’” Hart rushed back to her apartment to grab her tiny white dog, Cowboy, before heading down the nine flights of stairs to evacuate the building.
The tower is a 20-story concrete building across the street from the Spokane Convention Center. It has 185 units for residents over 62 or those who have disabilities. The building is subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Crews rushed up the nine flights of stairs caring heavy hose line to get to the resident trapped in his burning apartment.
Firefighters rescued the man by bringing him out of his window, then down to the ground in a ladder truck basket for transport to Providence Sacred Heart MedicalCenter, Schaeffer said.
He was awake but had significant injuries, Schaeffer said.
Firefighters crawled on their hands and knees, searching the adjacent apartments, he said. The only victim injured as a direct result of the fire was the resident of the initial apartment.
People on the floors above the fire were getting a large amount of smoke, complicating their pre-existing conditions, Schaeffer said. Some of those residents are being treated for smoke inhalation, distress and anxiety.
The Spokane County disaster plan was initiated to sort patients to area hospitals and prevent overloading any one emergency room, Schaeffer said. Ultimately, only three residents were transported for additional care.
Other occupants were assisted by firefighters, the department said.
Residents who were unable to evacuate on their own were asked to shelter in place. Firefighters will be working at the apartment tower until all units on every floor are checked to ensure residents are safe. The cause of the fire remained under investigation.
Eighth-floor resident Ken Slack said he heard the fire alarm go off and thought it was a drill, until he saw smoke in the hallway.
He rushed back to his apartment and corralled his cats Claudia and Turtle into their carriers before clambering down the stairs to safety.
Tim Ruckhaber, who said he is “totally blind,” has lived in the tower for more than a decade and was able to evacuate.
“I was completely calm and I took the stairs,” he said.
Living in the building for such a long time, Ruckhaber was able to navigate the stairs himself until reaching the ground floor, where an aide helped him outside.
“I am blessed,” he said of evacuating safely.
Employees from nearby Main Market rushed drinking water to the scene to aid displaced residents, who gathered in a nearby parking lot.
Hart said she has raised concerns with the building’s management company for months about residents smoking inside.
“That’s probably where the fire came from,” she said.
Residents, some on oxygen, have refused to stop smoking, making the building unsafe, Hart said.
“I don’t feel safe up there at all, and neither does Cowboy,” Hart said as she stroked her little dog.
The fire department spends quite a bit of time at the tower tending to residents’ medical needs, Schaeffer said.
“We love the people that live here,” he said.
Schaeffer is concerned the large building doesn’t have sprinklers, leaving the building and its residents vulnerable. The apartments heat up like an oven during a fire, increasing harm to residents, he added.
It’s difficult for firefighters to access the upper floors of the building in a fire, purely due to the number of stairs crews must climb while carrying hoses, breathing apparatuses and other gear.
“This is a high-rise building that is not protected with a fire suppression system,” Schaeffer said. “The consequences are very predictable.”
A resident of the Park Tower apartment building in downtown Spokane was badly injured in a fire on Thursday.
EMMA EPPERLY/ THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Despite ongoing problems, VA official calls launch of health record system a success
By Orion Donovan-Smith
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
WASHINGTON – Two weeks after the Department of Veterans Affairs launched its new electronic health record system at its hospital in Walla Walla – and a day after the system went down for more than two hours – a top VA official said Thursday the rollout has been a success.
On a call with reporters, VA Deputy Secretary Donald Remy acknowledged Wednesday’s outage and another problem with the system a week earlier but said the transition to the new computer system, which health care workers rely on to track patient information and coordinate care, was “going pretty well.”
The March 26 launch made the Walla Walla hospital, whose director joined Remy on the call, the first VA medical center to adopt the system since it was deployed in October 2020 at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, where a slew of problems has threatened patient safety and left employees frustrated and demoralized. The system is also used at clinics associated with the two hospitals in Washington, Idaho and Oregon.
“We’re making progress, and I’ve got to tell you I’m pleased,” Remy said. “We’ve learned quite a few lessons from our deployment at Mann-Grandstaff and we’ve incorporated those learnings into this go-live.”
While VA employees in Walla Walla had been submitting “trouble tickets” when they encountered problems with the new system, Remy said, as of Thursday all of the tickets related to patient safety had been addressed.
“We continue to monitor staff morale and clinical productivity, both at Mann-Grandstaff and at Walla Walla, to make sure that we’re providing our team with the tools that they need to be successful,” he added.
The launch went ahead over the objections of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who called on VA to halt the rollout until it fixes problems identified by a Spokesman-Review investigation last December and a trio of reports released by the VA Office of Inspector General on March 17.
Problems with the system, developed by Cerner Corp. in a program projected to cost at least $16 billion, have continued in recent weeks. On March 3, a system update by Cerner corrupted data in some veterans’ records and forced Mann-Grandstaff to stop admitting patients for a day. While the hospital kept operating, workers had to use “downtime procedures,” a now-common process that involves hand-writing information that must be entered into the computer system once it is restored.
On March 31, an issue with Cerner’s prescription management system caused employees at Mann-Grandstaff to again resort to pen and paper for medication-related work for 3½ hours, VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes confirmed in an email, “because the issue caused extreme delays” with the computer system. That issue affected all Cerner customers, including the Department of Defense, whose adoption of a Cerner system in 2017 prompted VA to sign its own $10 billion contract with the company without going through a competitive bidding process.
Less than a week later, on Wednesday, Mann-Grandstaff Director Robert Fischer ordered staff once again to use “downtime procedures” for more than two hours due to “a medical center-wide outage in accessing and maintaining connectivity” with the system, according to emails obtained by The Spokesman- Review.
Terry Adirim, who heads VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office, told reporters Thursday that the previous day’s outage was caused by a “bug” in a server run by Oracle, the technology giant in the process of buying Cerner for $28.3 billion. Neither problem in the past week was directly caused by the launch in Walla Walla, Adirim said, and VA was “not aware of any disruptions to care” as a result.
Still, Adirim, who practiced pediatric emergency medicine for more than 25 years, said not being able to use a computer system makes it harder for clinicians to do their jobs.
“Speaking as a health care provider, you really don’t want disruption to your work,” she said. “And I would not want them to expect that this is going to happen routinely.”
In the year and a half since launching the system at Mann-Grandstaff and its associated clinics, Adirim said, “VA was not idle.”
“Numerous changes and improvements were made,” she said, “which has led to the success we are experiencing at Walla Walla. Our veterans deserve the very best health care, and to do that VA medical personnel must have modern tools to deliver that care. This is why we’re working so hard to get this right.”
Adirim and other VA officials say the Cerner system promises to streamline the transition from military service to veteran status by having the Defense Department and VA use the same system. While the health record system being replaced by Cerner’s at Defense Department facilities like Fairchild Air Force Base is famously clunky, VA hospitals use a different system that has been finetuned over the years and remains popular with its users.
Adirim suggested VA employees who are frustrated by the Cerner system need to understand how it can help them.
“The technology is complicated enough,” she said, “but we also need to account for the enormous change to how we are delivering health care, which relies on people to adopt the new ways – and people are more complex than the technology.”
Scott Kelter, director of the Wainwright Memorial VA Medical Center in Walla Walla, told reporters on the call his workers had benefitted from an influx of support staff from VA and Cerner, including more than twice the number of Cerner staff that had supported the launch at Mann-Grandstaff. Also unlike in Spokane, Kelter said, that support would continue for 90 days.
Adirim declined to answer directly when asked if VA and Cerner could replicate that level of in-person support at the much larger facilities scheduled to adopt the system later this year, including in Seattle and Boise, saying the rollout is “in a pilot phase” that could help identify the best ways to launch the system elsewhere.
“We want to see what works and what doesn’t work,” she said, adding that having in-person support staff “has been very helpful, but at a certain point, people want to start using the system on their own.”
Kelter said VA employees in Walla Walla were learning the new system quickly and already increasing the number of patients they can serve each day, which was dramatically reduced when the hospital made the switch.
“The staff in clinical and administrative areas have really been quite adventurous, quite accepting,” Kelter said. “I think the morale is quite good.”
Meanwhile, in Spokane, Adirim said “there were things that we should have done better” and promised not to give up on health care workers there.
“As we move forward, with our new approaches and new way of doing things, we’re going to continue to go back to Spokane and help them, support them and determine what their needs are, for them to be successful,” she said.
While Adirim promised to listen to the concerns of Mann-Grandstaff employees, she suggested that those who continue to complain about problems with the system may be “a small minority of people, because they’re using the system and they’re using it effectively.”
The Cerner system is scheduled to launch at VA facilities in Columbus, Ohio, on April 30; Roseburg and White City, Oregon, on June 11; Boise on June 25; Anchorage, Alaska, on July 16; Seattle and American Lake on Aug. 27; three sites in Michigan on Oct. 8; and Portland on Nov. 5.
Providence opens primary care clinic on SHMC campus
By Arielle Dreher
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Providence is opening a family medicine clinic on the Sacred Heart Medical Center campus.
This is the 10th primary care clinic Providence operates in the greater Spokane area.
The clinic is led by two primary care physicians, Dr. Robert Sibley and Dr. Richard Deppisch.
“This practice is an exciting addition to Providence’s family of medicine clinics because it’s serving the community by delivering a comprehensive model of care that attends to the whole person,” Dr. Cara Beatty, chief medical officer at Providence, said in a news release. “We look forward to patients coming here to experience a true partnership with their care team.”
The new clinic is in the Providence Spokane Heart Institute building near Cowley Park.
On Monday, the clinic opened to patients, and it is accepting new patients.
Arielle Dreher can be reached at (509) 459-5467 or at arielled@spokesman.com.
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KHQ
SPOKANE, WASH- Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers office is announcing first to KHQ that she will host a Fentanyl Roundtable at the start of next week.
The congresswoman’s office says drug overdose deaths are at a record high and fentanyl seizures in Spokane County have surged 1,100 percent.
“This is a crisis, and [the congresswoman] is committed to addressing it,” a spokesperson for her office said via email.
The congresswoman will bring together multiple big names from across the Spokane community to hear firsthand stories from parents who have lost children to overdoses.
Those names include:
Former U.S. Attorney Bill Hyslop
Chief Craig Meidl / Lt. Rob Boothe, Spokane Police Department
Undersheriff John Nowels, Spokane County Sheriff’s Office
Dr. Francisco Velazquez, M.D. Spokane Regional Health Department
Dr. Nicole Rodin, PharmD, WSU College of Pharmacy
Marsha Maslam, Rayce Rudeen Foundation
Tim Kilgallon, Ideal Option
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The Inlander
Young Kwak photo
Culinary arts students Jacob Thueringer (left) and ShamRae Strain (center) serve diners at Orlando's Restaurant.
You don't need a culinary degree to emulate the career trajectory of Kitchen Confidential chef-author Anthony Bourdain, who, like many celebrated chefs, started in the dish pit. After all, humans have been cooking since acquiring fire, passing the knowledge of all things culinary across generations and geography. All that information has since been codified into books, videos and other instructionals, allowing would-be cooks to more or less teach themselves.
However, the culinary industry is broader than just restaurants, says Hillary Faeta-Ginepra, North Idaho College's culinary arts program instructor. It also includes cooking for hospitals and schools, product development, catering and retail, food systems, and even teaching others about food and cooking.
And there's a clear difference between observing kitchen mechanics and running a kitchen.
"Culinary school helps students understand why they're doing what they're doing," Faeta-Ginepra says. "And when you go out into the industry... you know what you're doing, and that propels you not only in creativity, but speed and confidence."
Those qualities are especially important in an industry with a high projected growth rate — around 25 percent over the next 10 years, according to 2020 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — combined with existing labor shortages that were exacerbated by the pandemic. High turnover and other pressures make it key for restaurant operators to be able to hire staff who can hit the ground running and handle whatever's thrown at them.
Both North Idaho College and Spokane Community College are helping prepare tomorrow's highly skilled, adaptive culinary workforce to do just that. Although the two programs differ slightly, each offers courses that weave practical and applied skills, including reading, writing and science, with vital hands-on experience at each program's on-site restaurant.
It's Tuesday, March 22, and diners are queuing up for the end-of-quarter buffet at Orlando's Restaurant, which doubles as SCC's on-the-job training facility for its Inland Northwest Culinary Academy, or INCA.
Over the next hour and a half, approximately 80 diners are greeted, seated and pointed toward the smorgasbord: wine-braised chicken, short ribs, numerous salads, chowder with scratch-made croutons, and a dozen-plus desserts from huckleberry macarons with silver leaf to turtle brownies.
Every bite has been prepared and is being served by 30 or so SCC culinary students for whom meal service is a culminating project. Prior to the buffet, they'd all earned their chops serving and preparing food during other times Orlando's was open for take-out and on-site dining.
To work at Orlando's, students must learn to set up a mise en place food prep station, follow a prep list, and time the creation of dishes just like at a full-service restaurant, says Julie Litzenberger, one of INCA's seven culinary instructors.
At $13 per person including tax, the buffet is "wildly successful," Litzenberger says.
Litzenberger's students are responsible for front-of-house operations during the buffet. One of them is 21-year-old Connor Ramey, whose patches on his white chef coat indicate he's the captain, ready to jump in as servers bustle back and forth: filling water, taking plates, checking on guests.
"When we say it is a 100 percent student-run restaurant, we mean it," Litzenberger says.
Orlando's is located inside SCC's recently remodeled and expanded Building 1, which faces East Mission Avenue and also houses the baking program, as well as cosmetology and counseling services. Orlando's is named for Orlando Longos, who taught food trade classes at the college from 1963 to 1975.
"Musical instrument repair, custom apparel and watch repair have fallen by the wayside, but culinary training continues to remain a strong presence on campus," Litzenberger says.
To earn an associate degree, students must complete 105 credits, typically spread over two years or six quarters (fall, winter and spring). Culinary basics, nutrition, baking, menu planning and mechanics of the hospitality industry are all part of the curriculum. Industry-specific fundamentals like food science and written communications ensure interdisciplinary competency beyond cooking. Taking the food service safety and sanitation class earns students a certification by the Educational Foundation of the National Restaurant Association.
INCA also offers a separate three-quarter, certificate-only program in professional baking, which many culinary students pursue after completing their associate degree. Students in the professional baking program contribute desserts and breads to the buffet, and also stock and staff Orlando's retail bakery.
Culinary students during the recently ended quarter range in age from 18 to 65. Many of them already work in hospitality, both for the pay and for experience.
"Many 'seasoned' cooks come to INCA because they've found that promotions and advancement often require or prefer a culinary degree," Litzenberger says.
And like everyone in the hospitality industry, many students were especially hard-hit by the pandemic, she adds.
"Those working in restaurants were faced with unemployment and isolation, and our students became part of an experiment in attempting to teach very hands-on content in online format," Litzenberger says.
Unable to offer in-person dining for much of the past two years, INCA pivoted to take-out meals, which it continues to offer.
"While the sales are helpful to the overall success of the program, more importantly the students are learning what it means to produce a different style of profitable service," says Litzenberger.
She's also begun training students to explain the ordering process and menu via phone, as well as manage orders, schedules, payments and pickup.
Not all who start SCC's program earn a degree — sometimes less than half of the students — due to reasons like lack of finances and poor study habits, factors not necessarily unique to this area of study. Moreover, Litzenberger says, some students don't realize the rigor required by INCA's program, which emphasizes cooking as much as management and business skills.
"It is not an easy program, and our standards are very high to send the most dedicated, qualified and ambitious students out into the industry," she says.
Similar to Orlando's, Emery's restaurant at North Idaho College provides real-life opportunities for students to hone front- and back-of-the-house skills.
The restaurant and a smaller grab-and-go deli service are open on select days throughout the semester. Each week features a new, student-planned menu, such as Irish fare around St. Patrick's Day and more recently, Filipino food like lumpiang shanghai or spring rolls ($6) and sinigang, a savory-sour stew ($8).
Emery's is located in the college's Hedlund Building with an enviable view of Lake Coeur d'Alene and a modest dining room befitting the still-growing program, which began in 1989.
In 2019, the program transitioned from offering a technical certificate to a two-year associate degree. The college hopes to expand enrollment caps for the 2022-23 school year, and is pursuing accreditation through the American Culinary Federation (similar to SCC's program), says program instructor Feata-Ginepra.
Currently, students' first semester courses include customer service, menu planning and procurement, as well as interdisciplinary classes in writing and communication.
Dakota Hughes, a first-year student, relocated from McCall, Idaho, to attend NIC after searching the internet for "best culinary" school, she says. Like many of this year's 14-member cohort, Hughes works in a local restaurant, Bardenay Restaurant and Distillery in Coeur d'Alene, while attending college.
"I've done about everything you can do in a restaurant," says Hughes, who grew up in the industry. Her father helped open Bardenay in Boise, and she wants to be an executive chef.
By their second year at NIC, culinary students develop an entrepreneurial project, and learn about purchasing, nutrition, alcoholic beverages and restaurant supervision.
Scott Adamson, who graduates in May, left his job teaching middle school to pursue a culinary career after taking personal enrichment classes taught by Faeta-Ginepra. Although he's contemplating developing a food truck for his final project, at 56, he's not sure what he's going to do with his culinary degree.
"It's been all about the journey," he says. ♦