Featured Articles from the Glendale News-Press

Qualifying to Saturday's CIF Southern Section Track and Field Divisional Championships at Mt. San Antonio College required the local entrants who earned such advancement to turn in very good results at last weekend's divisional prelims all over Southern California. This weekend, however, the bar will be raised from very good to exceptional. Of course, that's to be expected as divisional championships and CIF-Southern Section Masters Meet berths are on the line with the trip to Cerritos College available for the top 12 finishers in the 800-meter, 1,600-meter and 3,200-meter runs and top nine in every other event.

A 28-year-old Van Nuys man has been charged with the kidnapping and murder of a Glendale man who was run over with a vehicle and shot to death in Sun Valley, authorities said. Hachik Maskovian faces four felony murder-related charges in the death of 33-year-old Joshua West, including that the incident was premeditated and that he was kidnapped during the April 24 incident, according to a Los Angeles County Superior Court criminal complaint. West died of multiple gunshot wounds, but was also cut and suffered blunt force trauma, said Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter.

Those tending the flame of those who perished in the Armenian Genocide had a bit of a mixed bag this week. In happy news, Glendale Unified and its teachers' union agreed to make April 24 - the day that commemorates the horror - an official day off. This agreement makes a lot of sense for all involved. Students of Armenian descent have skipped going to class on that day for years, and as public school funding is significantly based on attendance, making the day a holiday of sorts is an elegant end-around of this problem.

A 19-year-old Los Angeles man was stabbed twice in his arm, possibly by his brother, on Saturday near the Glendale Galleria, police said. The man, whose name wasn't released, told police he was jumped at about 8:32 p.m. and stabbed twice in the left arm by two men, but declined to talk about the incident, according to Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz. A witness, however, reported seeing something different. The witness told police the man was arguing and fighting with his brother inside a van just before officers arrived to the scene.

At least 15 vehicles and motorcycles have been stolen off Glendale streets in the past two weeks, although police say the figure doesn't necessarily represent a trend. Police officials say they haven't established any leads, or made any arrests in connection with the thefts, which have been occurring at rate of about one a day since Aug. 29. Few details about the thefts and the types of vehicles were released because the cases were under investigation. “As for the methods, number of suspects…it really varies,” Glendale Police Sgt. Dave Higgins said in an email.

The real estate market in Glendale ticked upward again last month after a brief stall in March, reflecting an ongoing limited number of homes for sale and a multitude of potential buyers, according to the latest real estate report. The median price of a single-family home nudged up 2.4% compared to April 2012, from $625,000 to $640,000, according to statistics compiled by Realtor Keith Sorem with Keller Williams Realty in Glendale. The median price of a condominium increased more dramatically, rising 19.5%, from $266,000 a year ago to $318,000 last month.

Two sisters who were fighting with each other on Saturday allegedly decided to take their rage out on a police officer by punching and kicking him, officials said. The sisters - Delmi Carranza, 21, and Patricia Carranza, 28 - were fighting and screaming at each other about 7:41 p.m. on the porch of a home in the 600 block of Arden Avenue, according to Glendale police. They were reportedly fighting because the father of Delmi Carranza's baby was allegedly having an affair with her sister.

A small notice in a 1916 edition of the Glendale Evening News informed readers, "Emil Kiefer, an employee at the White Store, is now working for Pulliam Undertaking Co. He intends to make this his life's work. He is a young man of great energy. He came here from Minnesota two years ago and has made many friends. " But shortly after this notice ran, Kiefer said good bye to his many friends - including a young lady we'll meet later in the story - and left town. He was in the first group of volunteers who responded to the call to fight in the Great War, as World War I was known in those days.

What kind of a job is the Glendale City Council doing? Does the City Council really represent the citizens of Glendale? Let's look at the Council's agenda: 1) It is refusing to stop taking $21 million annually in transfers from the fund-drained Glendale Water and Power Department, an action which is clearly in violation of the charter. That money is used to pay for some of the city's public services. If the time ever comes when the city admits it is in the wrong, it will have to pay back huge amounts of that money to the GWP. This illegal transfer began in 1941 with “a reasonable portion” being taken each year from the GWP. That amount has now grown to $21 million annually for well over 10 years.

Sean Sauceda moved quickly through dry brush near a Pasadena freeway off ramp before dawn Tuesday morning, looking for the homeless people most at risk of dying on city streets. He stopped to peer inside a cluster of bushes. “People hollow them out by breaking the branches inside,” Sauceda said as he snapped a branch. “It's natural shelter. It's large enough where you can fit a dome tent inside of it. I've done it.” Sauceda, 41, a Fresno-area native, lived on the streets of Los Angeles for 13 years.

Beneath a starry sky, Sosé Thomassian and Allen Yekikian held each other on their wedding night, arms looped around hips, eyes locked, for more than 20 minutes so the photographer could capture what would become their favorite wedding photo. Back at the wedding reception in a lakeside Armenian town, the photographer showed off the shot and the crowd cooed. The couple got their wedding, but there will be no first anniversary. About eight months after the wedding, on May 10, Thomassian and Yekikian died in a head-on car crash while on a weekend getaway in Georgia, Armenia's neighbor to the north.

A recent revelation that Leslie Combs Brand, the so-called Father of Glendale, probably fathered two children with a secret mistress came as a shock to many, but local history enthusiasts are downright delighted. Longtime Los Angeles Times columnist Cecilia Rasmussen, who concluded her “L.A. Then and Now” history column with the piece on Brand on April 6, backed up her scoop with a DNA test that linked Brand to a descendant of his alleged mistress, Birdie Esther Carpenter Gordon.

I n 1974, Judy Weber's son, Tobin, was dealing with autism so severe that it would manifest itself as destructive behavior. "He faced state hospitalization," she said. At the time, Weber was serving on a committee serving autistic children within the Los Angeles Unified School District. Tobin was living at UCLA, where researchers were using him as a subject for early autism research. When UCLA was close to completing their research, Weber became frustrated when she found that no school would take Tobin due to the severity of his autism.