truesee's Blog

Denied a kiss, woman, 92, charged with shooting neighbor's house

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/galleries/elizabeth_taylor/elizabeth_taylor.html

 

Emily Samantha Ruiz, age 4 and a U.S. citizen, was returning to the U.S. with her grandfather after visiting relatives. He was detained and she was deported back to Guatemala.

"I'm just shocked," the family's lawyer, David Sperling, said Tuesday.

"I think it's an outrage that Customs and Border Protection didn't do anything to reunite her with her parents....She is a U.S. citizen and she has every right to come to the U.S."

Emily Samantha Ruiz and her grandfather, who had a work visa allowing him to travel, were returning from seeing relatives March 11 when their New York-bound plane was diverted to Washington.

Officials at Dulles Airport noticed an illegal entry from the 1990s on grandpa's record and took him into custody, Sperling said.

He suffered what Sperling believes was a panic attack and was sent to the hospital. The lawyer declined to name the grandfather.

Emily was in federal custody for nearly a day in the airport while her parents in Brentwood wondered why the pair hadn't arrived home as planned.

When her father figured out what happened and spoke to a border control agent, the lawyer says, he was told he had two choices: Emily could be held at a juvenile facility in Virginia or return to Guatemala with her grandfather.

Worried she would be put up for adoption, he chose the latter option and has been trying to get her back ever since.

A Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed Emily was sent back but would not comment on her case further.

He said agents are instructed to tell parents in similar cases they can pick up their child, have the child turned over to child protective services or have the kid sent back to the country they left.

"We take every effort to reunite minors with their parents," said Steve Sapp. "The parents need to make the decision."

But he conceded undocumented parents like Emily's risk being detained if they show up. "They do have to face consequences," he said.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-L.I.) is asking Homeland Security to conduct a review.

"This bureaucratic overreach and utter failure of common sense has left a little girl - a U.S. citizen no less - stranded thousands of miles from her parents," he said.

Meanwhile, Sperling plans to have a staffer go to Guatemala and retrieve Emily.

"We hope there's a happy ending to this story," he said.

http://www.local12.com/news/local/story/Hamilton-Church-to-Give-Away-1-000-at-Service/E_u58RmYM0mPQcLhlSv3gw.cspx?rss=30

Cops: Swan Lake man drunk, toting beer at DWI hearing

MONTICELLO — A Swan Lake man facing a felony driving-while -intoxicated charge showed up at Sullivan County Court on Monday with a bag full of beer — and was promptly thrown in jail without bail, officials said.

Keith Gruber, 49, had a scheduled 10:30 a.m. pretrial hearing.

Gruber came to court about an hour and a half late carrying a black bag that contained four cans of Busch beer, authorities said. He also was carrying an open can and was obviously drunk, officials said.

He tried to throw away the can, but officers stopped him.

The bag was confiscated by court officers at the security check and was presented to Judge Frank LaBuda. Before Gruber arrived in court, LaBuda relieved Gruber's attorney from the case.

Gruber had been represented by the Greenwald law firm but hadn't cooperated with them.

LaBuda asked Gruber if he enjoyed his "liquid lunch." Gruber indicated he did and said he was sorry.

"It was obvious he was intoxicated," LaBuda said.

Gruber, who has prior DWI convictions, was arrested Dec. 27 in the town of Liberty and was out on $30,000 cash bail.

LINK TO PHOTO:

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110322/NEWS/103220320

NEW YORK (AP) — Want to take a quack at doing the new voice of the ever-abrasive Aflac duck? Now’s your chance.

Aflac Inc. will begin accepting submissions on Wednesday in its search for a unique voice to replace Gilbert Gottfried’s signature squawk. Gottfried was ousted last week after voicing the duck for more than 10 years because he made insensitive remarks on Twitter about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Anyone interested can submit a 30-second audio or video file belting their best version of the “Aflac” squawk at www.quackaflac.com. A 2006 ad featuring the Aflac duck in a silent movie — with no dialogue at all — was re-edited to promote the search and will begin airing Wednesday.

The submission deadline is midnight on April Fool’s Day.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Too many of our dreams are rooted in a desire for wealth or fame.

Then there is the dream of Alyssia Crook, a girl who craved to play just one basketball game with her teammates, for her school, in a real uniform.

Before the surgeons take her leg.

This is the story of a young sprite from Ottawa County’s Georgetown Township who made an adult decision on faith — and it is tied to the kids she hopes to have in another 10 or 12 years.

It includes a coach from Hudsonville’s Baldwin Middle School who put doing the right thing ahead of winning and a school community sharing what you can’t discover in books.

Alyssia, 12, was born with defects to her legs that affect her nerves, arteries, veins and cartilage. When her parents, Chad and Karen Crook, adopted her from a Russian orphanage, she was 5 and walked on the balls of her feet. To feel the long, taut braid that runs behind her left knee is to grip a knotty cord.

But she was the little girl they chose to adopt, a girl whose eyes Chad saw even before they met. Rounding a corner in the orphanage, he turned to his left, and there in the first crib were the brown eyes he had imagined.

The legs didn’t matter.

“That’s her,” he turned and said to Karen, and they flew her home.

Alyssia has had “dozens of surgeries” in an effort to relieve pain and improve circulation and mobility. For too long, she and her parents have endured trips to specialists in Chicago, where every three months Alyssia would submit to painful straightening of her limbs, followed by trips home in yet another cast.

On Feb. 28, Alyssia’s parents were told by doctors that they were reduced to two choices: Either shorten Alyssia’s legs and live in fear of ever incurring an injury to the limbs, or undergo an amputation of the left leg, which was more severely affected.

They went home to cry, deliberate.

It was on an impromptu walk that the answer was delivered. Alyssia was humming a song when she says God whispered to her, “You have fought long and hard enough. It’s time to let go.”

She recoiled in wonder and remembers yelling, “What?!”

Then she saw a vision of a boy and girl playing soccer, then basketball, then softball, then playing catch with a Frisbee. Eventually, she saw herself in the vision, a young mother with a prosthetic leg, and the kids were her own.

She shared the vision with her parents, and they started to speak, but she held her hand out.

“This is my body, my leg, my life, and I know God told me it’s my decision,” she said. “I choose to be a mom that can play with her children.”

And then the seventh-grader implored her mother to call the doctors and tell them she wouldn’t be hobbling around on legs half their size, “because (the doctors are) going to be cutting off my leg.”

The surgery likely will occur in days or weeks, not months from now.

For years, Alyssia had been competing on a Special Olympics girls’ basketball team. She qualifies because she has mild cognitive impairment that manifests itself in a learning disability and trouble reading.

But her dream, since entering middle school last fall, was to play on the team with her classmates at Baldwin Middle.

She tried out but was one of seven girls cut by coach Steve Roth from 20 who tried. She took it like a champ and reinvented herself as a cheerleader and booster for the team.

“She kept the scorebook for our away games,” Roth said. “I told her, ‘Maybe next year. Come out and prove me wrong.’”

But then he found out the latest news.

And he acted.

On March 9, in a game against Rockford, the team exited the locker room with a new player. It was No. 32, Alyssia Crook. Her parents had no idea it was coming and, when the tough little waif with brown eyes streamed out with the others, they wept.

She dressed again last week. That time she scored a point.

Last Thursday was to be her last game on two legs.

She started, had two steals and made a layup for two solid points in the win.

The little crowd roared.

“What a story,” said Baldwin Principal Dave Powers. “I don’t know how many of our own kids know what she has going on yet.”

On Thursday, he read to his staff an update of what Alyssia faced, complete with her version of the vision. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.”

Alyssia allowed the tears to flow from her 4-foot-8, 71-pound frame in a hallway after the game.

“I wanted to play with the real team,” she said. “I wanted to be part of something. And when I grow up, I want to be playing with my kids, not a spectator.”

Inside the gymnasium at Baldwin Middle, Alyssia’s grandfather, Dave Bundick, was pocketing his video camera. Alyssia had asked him to chronicle her last time.

“Someday,” she told him, “I want to be able to show my kids that I played basketball with both legs.”

LINK TO PHOTO GALLERY:

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/03/girl_facing_amputation_makes_t.html

NOTE:  "YOUTUBE HAS REMOVED THIS VIDEO BUT I FOUND AN ALTERNATIVE SOURCE!!!"

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/World_News_3/article_7666.shtml

Charlie Sheen offered Two and A Half Men job back?

Charlie Sheen: sources close to Charlie Sheen say the actor has been offered his job back, but will fans ever see Sheen on Two and A Half Men after all that has happened?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U60XAy02Pw