State Briefs
Pioneer environmentalist dies
FAIRBANKS - A longtime Alaska environmentalist died Saturday in Fairbanks.
Celia Hunter, an original member of the Alaska Conservation Society, died at her home. She was 82.
Hunter was honored this year with the Alaska Conservationist Lifetime Achievement Award, an honor created by the Alaska Conservation Foundation as part of its new Alaska Conservation Hall of Fame.
Former Republican Gov. Jay Hammond called Hunter and close friend Ginny Wood "the grand dames of the environmental movement."
"Her death leaves a monumental smoking crater in the environmental landscape," Hammond said Saturday.
Hunter once told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that her prominence was not planned.
"I didn't set out when I came to Fairbanks to become a leader of the environmental movement," she said. "It just happened."
The night before she died, Hunter was on the telephone compiling a list of senators who were on the fence regarding a scheduled vote today in the U.S. Senate about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, friends said.
In 1960, Hunter joined a small group of Fairbanks conservationists and founded the Alaska Conservation Society, the first statewide conservation organization. They took part in many environmental causes, including opposition to Project Chariot, a proposed experiment with nuclear explosives to build a deep-water harbor near Point Hope.
Victim's rights advocate dies
ANCHORAGE - A woman who pioneered the victim's rights movement in Alaska after her parents were murdered died at her Anchorage home Friday after a fight with a rare disease.
Janice Lienhart, 62, died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, an always-fatal brain disorder that kills about 270 Americans a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
In 1985, Lienhart and her sister, Sharon Nahorney, lost both parents and an elderly aunt in one of the city's most notorious murders. Teen-agers Cordel Boyd and Winona Fletcher executed Tom and Ann Faccio and Emelia Elliot at their home.
Hungry for information about the investigation and court case, the family discovered victims had no standing in the criminal justice process. Because she was 14, Fletcher went through a mini-trial called a waiver hearing to determine if she should be charged as an adult. The hearing was closed to the public, including the victim's family.
Lienhart and Nahorney were outraged. The sisters created Victims for Justice, a grass-roots organization devoted to helping victims negotiate the system and to lobbying the Legislature for changes in the law.
Today, victims rights are enshrined in a voter-approved constitutional amendment.
Robbers injure elderly couple
ANCHORAGE - Two elderly Anchorage residents are recovering after their home was invaded by robbers early Saturday morning.
Anchorage police said Ida Curtis, 65, and Isaac Curtis, 72, were assaulted during a robbery shortly after midnight.
Ida Curtis said she responded to her doorbell and three individuals pushed their way into the home. She was struck several times with a gun as the intruders demanded to know the location of her valuables.
Isaac Curtis told police he was asleep and one of the attackers struck him on the back of the head with what he believed was a handgun.
The intruder bound Curtis' hands behind his head.
The couple drove themselves to the hospital after the incident and were treated for cuts to the head.